Exam season mood lifters

By Gordon Rugg

It’s exam season. Academics are feeling blue because they have to do piles of marking. Students are feeling blue because they’re dreading the results of that marking.

It’s a good time for a mood lifter.

Still from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amCeqrpYzes used under fair use principles, as a low-resolution still used for humorous purposes.

Here’s something that should brighten your day without demanding too much mental effort. It’s Japanese idols singing Dschinghis Khan. The song is indeed about the Mongolian leader Genghis Khan, whose name has an impressive number of variant spellings. It had its origins in Eurovision, in 1979, where it was performed by the band Dschingis Khan. I’ll draw a discreet veil over that experience. Anyway, here’s the Japanese idols version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtFSCvLLluw

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Life at Uni: After uni

By Gordon Rugg

If you’re trying not to think about life after university because it all feels too scary and depressing, then you’re in good company. Most students feel that way sooner or later.

This article is about other ways of looking at life after university, particularly if you’re scared and/or depressed and/or have no idea what to do next. It’s a gentle article. Here’s a picture of some kittens to set the mood.

“4 Kittens” by Pieter Lanser from The Netherlands – IMG_9051Uploaded by oxyman. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:4_Kittens.jpg#mediaviewer/File:4_Kittens.jpg

The Knowledge Modelling Book

By Gordon Rugg

Over the last year, we’ve blogged about various aspects of knowledge modelling. That’s allowed us to go into depth about specific topics.

We’re now pulling that information together into a structured format, as an online book. This article contains the core structure of the book, with links to our previous blog articles about the topics within the book. Those articles cover about half of the material that the final version of the book will contain.

We’ve gone for this format, rather than a single downloadable document, because it’s more practical at this point. The knowledge modelling book covers a lot of topics, and even the current partial draft would be a very large document, with a lot of illustrations.

We’ll update this draft fairly frequently, via further blog articles. Some of those articles will be case studies showing how concepts from the book can be applied to real examples. Other articles will be about the broader and deeper context of the book; in particular, the introductory sections and the discussion sections for the main sections. At some point, we’ll put a more reader-friendly version onto the Hyde & Rugg website, which we’re currently updating.

We welcome constructive feedback and suggestions.

Life at Uni: Exams

By Gordon Rugg

How do you get good marks in an exam, with the minimum of stress and the minimum of wasted effort?

You probably already know the basics, such as reading each question carefully, planning your answers, budgeting your time, writing at least something for each question, etc, so I won’t go into those. Instead, I’ll focus in this article on points that many students don’t know, and which can make a significant difference for comparatively little effort.