Academic Skills: help with academic writing and exam preparation

The Academic Skills Team are here in the Library during the current vacation and throughout next term.  We can help you to polish your academic writing as you complete your current assignments and dissertations, and can give you advice on revising effectively and making the most of exams on the day.  You can make an appointment to see a tutor, or come along to one of the Get a Better Grade workshops we are running in April.

Don’t forget – you can also access the academic skills information and guidance available on our Library Resources page from anywhere, at any time – just browse the drop-down menus under ‘I need help with…’.

If you need advice, just get in touch!

 

The Academic Skills Team

Academic Skills – help available over the Christmas break

As we get to the end of term, lots of you are working on assessments that you need to submit soon or are preparing for exams in the new year (or both!).

Our Academic Skills Team can offer advice on developing your skills and will be available until the end of next week, and we will be back in the Library offering appointments from 3rd January.  If you find yourself in need of information on academic skills in the meantime, don’t forget that you can access our online skills resources at any time, from anywhere.  We have guidance available on academic writing, referencing, revision strategies and much more: it can all be found on via our Library Resources page.  Look particularly under ‘I need help with…’, and if you haven’t accessed these resources before and want some information on how best to find your way around, we have a handy video guide at http://libguides.staffs.ac.uk/firstweeks/onlinestudyskillsresources.

We hope everybody takes some time to rest and re-charge after a busy term, and we look forward to seeing you all in the new year.

Merry Christmas to all

The Academic Skills Team

 

Get a Better Grade

We’re partway through Future Fest, and there’s a huge range of activities and skill-building opportunities on offer to help you to enhance your employability and achieve your goals.

Here in the Library we have sessions available all year to help you to succeed in your studies, and we can support you in developing skills that you will take you beyond your degree and into your future careers.  Check out our Get a Better Grade workshops and drop-in sessions;  we have sessions running until the end of term and there will be more on offer in the New Year (including sessions on exams and revision).

As ever, if you want any advice on researching, writing or reviewing your work, just get in touch!

The Academic Skills Team

academicskills@staffs.ac.uk

Calling all new students!

We hope you’re settling in well and that you’re having a great time as you begin your studies.

Here at the Library we want to help you to succeed in your course, and we can offer guidance all the way through your journey.  To get you started, we’ve created Now I’m Here: a collection of top tips, resources and quizzes that we hope you’ll find useful in the first few months.

If you have any questions about academic skills, just get in touch.  You can email academicskills@staffs.ac.uk or check our What’s On page to find out about our workshops and drop-ins.

Good luck in your studies!

The Library

Staffordshire University Library Teachmeet – ‘Information Literacy and Making Judgements: from Brexit to The White House’

This event, sponsored by the CILIP Information Literacy Group, took place on 4th May 2017. We wanted to ask librarians and information professionals about their experiences of how political campaigns use messages, slogans, stories and statistics to persuade voters. Information Literacy skills can be employed to dissect the messages and uncover what truths may lie within them.
“Information literacy is knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner.” (CILIP, 2015)

All the presentations, notes, guides and weblinks from this event are available on our libguide: http://libguides.staffs.ac.uk/teachmeets/infolit

Throughout the event, attendees were able to play the prototype ‘Writing Essays by Pictures’ game. This gave the opportunity to visualise the process of researching and writing an evidence-based essay using the format of a boardgame, The game was being funded by a Kickstarter campaign, which has now reached its target and will be produced.

Julie Adams presented on “The Power of (short) Stories… or Feelings v Facts” asking attendees to consider how short stories and slogans play on nostalgia, sadness, hope and fear. Attendees were invited to come up with a slogan of up to 6 words for the political party randomly chosen for their table. Slogans (pictured) included “Not old, not new, just Labour”, “Save Their Future” (Green Party) and simply “Tough” (Conservatives).

We were also fortunate enough to have a live Skype from Graeme Baxter and Rita Marcella, School of Creative and Cultural Business, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. They presented on “#alternativefacts – citizens’ perceptions of the reliability of ‘facts’ presented online by political parties in Scotland”. They have had over 500 responses to their study and although their research is still at an early stage, so far they can say that factors affecting trust in ‘Facts’ include:
Levels of trust in politicians in general
Levels of trust in specific politicians or parties
Political allegiance – e.g. 74.5% of SNP supporters felt the SNP facts were very or quite reliable (cf. 44.8% of entire sample)
Perception that ‘facts’ will be biased in some way, or subject to some form of ‘spin’
Whether or not the source of the ‘facts’ has been given
Respondents’ professional or personal experience, particularly in relation to education, healthcare and childcare.
Rita and Graeme intend to publish their full findings later this year.

There was then a discussion of the Information Discernment component Rubric Geoff Walton from MMU has been developing and details about the ILG Research Bursaries.

Finally, Eleanor Johnston from Staffordshire University talked about her experiences blogging from the US in November 2016. This blog contains interviews with ordinary voters in Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. Voting judgements truly ran the gamut, from “If Donald Trump is elected, it will make both parties think about what they have done to mess up America….stupidity and putting Government first” to “We don’t want to wake up tomorrow with a world full of hate”.

The event took place in the new Jisc ‘Digital Classroom ‘ (T101, Beacon Building). We tested out the Skype for Business the day before with Robert Gordon University and soon realised they were unable to connect. We had to use ordinary Skype (you are unable to share your desktop) which we had to download. We had to connect by phone as there was no audio from our end, but this was fine. Generally, it was a positive experience despite our lack of experience in the room. Good things were being able to display on all of the screens around the room and it seemed easy to switch from displaying the main screen to the tables’ own. Some people used the screens on the tables and seemed to use these easily, although some struggled a bit more. Visualizer worked well too and we were able to display documents from each group. Something to note was not being able to annotate the PowerPoint slides as we had hoped to. Also it was a shame that there was no kit on the podium. We had to bring our own, and it seemed to need an up to date machine. John Erskine was in the room just before us with his students, so we were able to use the library issued laptops for attendees to use the Via Kramer App.

On our feedback forms, under the section ‘What did you find most useful / any other suggestions’, these are the comments that directly related to the classroom:

Great practicing new technologies / apps
Maybe less time on video links – risky tech, good if it works
Great room facilities for presentation and group discussion
Double check tech further in advance
Fun to try new app on i-pad

These were good to hear as essentially our session was about Information Literacy and Voting Judgements, but the upshot of taking the plunge with the digital classroom was a positive experience and we were pleased we went for it.

 

Kathleen’s Prize

Kathleen’s Prize is a prize and certificate awarded in recognition of
“..submission of the most outstanding piece of First Semester Level 4 Coursework.” The work must demonstrate academic excellence and sound discipline-based knowledge and understanding, it must also be exemplary in the choice and range of resources used to
support argument.

Background
On September 9 2014 our dear friend and colleague
Kathleen Morgan died following a long fight with cancer at the age of just 43. She was an amazing person and a wonderful librarian and we have honoured her memory by creating a prize in her name: Kathleen’s prize.
Kathleen first joined the University Library in November 1992 and retired due to ill health in November 2012. In the course of the several roles she filled while working at Staffordshire University her passion to help students realise their potential shone out. She instigated the InfoZone programme which helps orientate first year students and assists them in making the transition from school or college to University level research.

Reflecting and remembering this passion, in her memory we have created a prize which rewards research excellence in first year undergraduate work. The prize is awarded to the level 4 student who submits the best researched piece of first semester work. In order to decide this, each tutor who marks any Semester One level 4 work can submit outstanding examples of work to the Library panel. The Librarypanel choose the final winner from all the tutor submissions across the University. The winner is awarded the prize which Mrs. Mavis Morgan, Kathleen’s Mum, presents.

All other entrants are invited to the ceremony and are given a certificate indicating that their work was thought worthy to be considered for the prize. Submitting tutors are also invited as are parents and friends of all entrants.

The prize is awarded each year in the last week of March (Kathleen’s birthday was 25th March) and the ceremony is an informal event with tea and cakes- just as Kathleen would have enjoyed herself!
The first presentation will happened in March2016. This year’s presentation is the second year of the award and it took place on March 30th.

This year 8 students were entered to win Kathleen’s Prize. Chosen by their tutors, the students were first years from across all subjects studied at the University. All entrants received a certificate commending their work and the winner received an Amazon voucher. Pro Vice Chancellor Sue Reece was in attendance and congratulated all students on their splendid achievements.

This year’s winner was animation student Philip Hallworth, nominated by Alke Groppel Wegener. Also present at the ceremony were Rachel Wakelin (Biomedical Science) and her tutor Paul Orsmond and sport and exercise students Dominic Podmore, Kerry Malik and Bradley Smith. Three students from sport and exercise won a certificate but could not be present at the event Liam Baggley, Dan Gowans and Tom Priestley. All sport and exercise students were nominated by Matt Slater.