Resources

Student Survival Kit

This kit has been put together with 1st year undergraduate university students in mind. However, I believe it to be a good reference for all students studying at university, whether you are an undergraduate or postgraduate student.

The resources and tips put forward in this survival kit are general, simple and basic towards the needs of most students undertaking any discipline of study. I therefore welcome suggestions from students and interested teachers and academics on what other resources they would like to see added to this survival kit.

Five Tips to Gaining Good Grades

1. Do not rely on the Internet to research your assignments

A common mistake of 1st year students is to access only Internet resources when researching and preparing for an assignment. If you only intend to rely on the Internet for referencing and argument for your assignment you are pretty much guaranteeing yourself at best a pass mark, at worst a fail.

To get your markers attention, impress them by accessing the library and searching for peer reviewed publications. What is a peer reviewed publication, you ask? It is a scholarly journal published in a specific research area (e.g. if you're studying biology, you look up biology journals. If you are studying child psychology you look up journals in that area as well as general areas for research on children and psychology).

A scholarly journal means the research has been conducted by research professionals and reviewed by experts in the field before it was published. This is done to ensure that the research is of a high quality and is also reliable and valid in its contribution to the field. Websites are rarely reviewed in such a vigorous manner and therefore are mostly viewed as poor reference sources in academic assignments.

2. Use the Internet in moderation

I do not want to dissuade students from using the Internet at all. On the contrary. I do want you to use the Internet, especially to learn about the area you are studying and to find out what professional organisations are online that could provide you with quality resources for your studies.

Having said this, referencing sources gained on the Internet is different to referencing journal and book articles [More about this in point 3]. Be sure that when you do choose to use a website as a reference source that it is a source that is well known and preferably professionally based (e.g. World Health Organisation).

3. Learn how to reference in your assignments correctly

Writing assignments at university is very different from writing in high school or in most places of employment if you have not come from an academic or research background. There are 3 things you should absolutely learn to do if you wish to gain better than average marks for your assignments:

i) Learn how to write in a scientific style.
ii) Learn how to reference research resources in-text.
iii) Learn how to reference research resources in a bibliography or reference list.

Each of these styles takes time to master. To help you learn the most common style of writing and referencing performed at university, see the book by Bruce Findlay, listed in the Survival Resources column left of this page.

If you take the time to learn how to reference in the American Psychological Association (aka: APA Style, or Harvard Referencing System) in the early parts of your university studies, you can not go wrong when preparing the majority of your assignments in future semesters and even degrees!

4. Learn to write using your own thoughts

At high school you are taught to write by repeating as much information as you can remember about a topic in your assignments. At university, we only want you to repeat in your essays what you have learnt to a general degree and then support what you have learnt with your own thoughts and research on the topic supplied to you.

In short - universities do not produce parrots - they produce thinkers!

Learning to think critically does take a lot of time for some people. Therefore it is recommended that you discuss your ideas about a project you are working on, or an assignment you have to write with your fellow students, your teachers, your family, even your cat and dog. The point we are trying to convey, no matter what the topic is that you are studying is to question everything and formulate your own opinions based on the research in that topic area that has already been conducted.

5. Never plagiarise

Plagiarism is the act of knowingly submitting someone else's work as your own, whether it be a written assignment, or other form of assessment. Most universities, if not all of them, take this act of deception very seriously. It can lead to the student failing an assignment or more seriously, being expelled from a university.

In the information age students are tempted to copy sentences, paragraphs and even whole documents from websites. It is very easy for academics to trace suspect papers back to these sources and will most definitely lead to reprimand if you are found to have committed this offence.