What’s so great about live lectures anyway?

By Gordon Rugg

So what’s so great about live lectures anyway, and why do people get so worked up about whether to put lectures online?

Live lectures have some significant advantages over other media; however, these advantages can be difficult to put into words unless you’ve encountered the relevant bodies of research and practice. This can be very frustrating if your employer wants to put everything online for whatever reason, and if they think that anyone who disagrees is simply a lazy Luddite unwilling and unable to change with the times.

There are very real reasons for including face to face lectures, tutorials etc in education and training. However, some important reasons aren’t as widely known as they should be. In this article, I’ll look at these reasons, and then consider the implications for choice of delivery methods in education.

Reflective reports 101

By Gordon Rugg

 

There’s a widespread belief in education that getting students to reflect on their learning is a Good Thing. Whether this is actually true or not is another question, for another time. The key point is that if you’re a student, you might well end up having to write a reflective report.

This experience can be challenging, especially if you’re in a discipline like computing, where you might not have expected anything quite so introspective. It’s particularly challenging if the reflection is about a piece of groupwork, as numerous memes about “What I learned from groupwork” will testify.

Many students under-perform when doing a reflective report. However, if you follow a couple of simple principles, then writing the reflective report becomes a lot easier. As an added bonus, there’s a good chance that you’ll get better marks, and even learn something genuinely useful from the experience.

So, what are these principles, and how do you apply them? They involve systematically describing choices. Here, by way of moral support, is a picture of someone making a choice. You may be reassured to know that the choices you’ll be working with are a lot more encouraging…

By Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov – The knight at the crossroads

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=800287

Presentations 101

By Gordon Rugg

Sooner or later, most students end up having to give a presentation. Most students hate giving presentations, with good reason.

The usual process goes something like this. Well before the date for the presentations, there is a lecture on how to do presentations. This lecture is usually worthy and well meaning, and consists largely of things that you knew already, plus advice like Make the presentation interesting, without telling you just how to do that. The lecture is usually accompanied by links to some of the many resources for doing presentations.

A lot of those resources are excellent in what they cover. However, they’re usually not so great in terms of what they don’t cover, whether because of space and time, or because they assume you already know it, or whatever.

In this article, I’m going to look at those absences. I’ll start with the big picture, then look at how to handle structure and content, and end with the practical stuff that makes the difference between doing it well and doing it not so well. Before I do that, here’s a picture of some hats.

Academic writing versus magazine writing

By Gordon Rugg

Academic writing is very different from most other types of writing. There are sensible reasons for this.

Unfortunately, not many students have been taught about those reasons. The result, predictably and understandably, is that most students, and most members of the general public, think that academic writing is dull and heavy because academics either don’t know how to write in an interesting, accessible way, or because they don’t care.

So, why is academic writing deliberately dull and heavy, and what are the implications, and how can you use academic writing style to your advantage? That’s what this article is about.

Poster design 101

By Gordon Rugg

Every year, students in assorted non-artistic disciplines have to produce a poster. Every year, students who don’t view themselves as artistic complain bitterly about having to do this.

In this article, I’ll look at some of the issues involved in practical poster design at taught degree level, and at how they can be tackled systematically, without needing any artistic skills. The results aren’t likely to win any design prizes, but they should look competent enough to be presentable, and should save non-artistic students from a lot of grief.

In case you’re wondering why I’ve specified taught degrees, the answer is that in research degrees, students often have to produce posters for conferences. The guidelines for these are very different from those for taught course posters, and from publicity posters in the commercial world. This article is just about taught degree posters, and even for those, it comes with the disclaimer that your department may have very different ideas about how to do things, in which case, go with what they want, since they’ll be doing the marking…

I’ll also look at some broader issues in user-centred design, such as the concept of functional distance, which takes us into the origins of the classic command: “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes”.

What academic writing looks like

By Gordon Rugg

Students often ask what good academic writing looks like. It’s an important, simple, question. Answering it in words is tricky. However, answering it with words plus highlighter makes answering easier. The answer is that good academic writing features mainly highlighter 2, with some highlighter 1 at the beginnings or ends of paragraphs, and as little grey as possible.

What does that actually look like? I’ll use a worked example to illustrate it, on the topic of the growth of the Internet. This is a difficult topic, because the key points are well known to the general public, so there’s a real risk that your opening text will look like something that a twelve year old without Internet access has hacked together at the last minute for an overdue essay.

Referencing

By Gordon Rugg

So what is referencing anyway, and why should anyone care about it? What’s the difference between the Harvard system and the Vancouver system and the assorted other systems? How do you choose references that send out the right signal about you?

The answers to these and numerous other questions are in the article below. Short spoiler: If you do your referencing right, it gets you better marks, and you come across as an honest, capable individual who is highly employable and promotable. Why does it do this? Find out below…

Ways of stating the obvious

By Gordon Rugg

Stating the obvious is an activity unlikely to win you many friends, or to influence many people in a direction that you would like. However, sometimes you have to do it.

So, why do you sometimes have to state the obvious, and how can you turn this problem to advantage? That’s the topic of this post. I’ll use the worked example of risks, both obvious and less obvious. (Reassuring note: I don’t go into scary details…)

Sending the right signals at interview

By Gordon Rugg

On the surface, a lot of the advice that you’ll see about sending the right signals at job interviews is either pretty obvious (e.g. “dress smartly”) or subjective (e.g. “dress smartly”) or social convention with no relation to what you’ll actually be doing in the job (e.g. “dress smartly”).

Below the surface, however, there are regularities that make a lot more sense of what’s going on. Once you know what those regularities are, you’re in a better position to send out the signals that you want, with the minimum of wasted effort and of misunderstanding on both sides.

So, what are those regularities, and where do they come from? The answer takes us into the reasons for Irish elk having huge antlers, and peacocks having huge tails, and monarchs having huge crowns.

Images from Wikipedia; credits at the end of this article

Life at Uni: Some tips on exam technique

By Gordon Rugg

Standard disclaimer: This article is as usual written in my personal capacity, not in my Keele University capacity.

Sometimes, the acronyms that fit best are not the ones that produce the most encouraging words. That’s what happened when I tried to create an acronym to help with exam technique. It ended up as “FEAR FEAR”. This was not the most encouraging start. So, I’ll move swiftly on from the acronym itself to what it stands for, which is more encouraging, and should be more helpful.

A lot of people find exams mentally overwhelming. This often leads to answers that aren’t as good as they could be. When you’re in that situation, it’s useful to have a short, simple mental checklist that helps you focus on the key points that you want to get across. That’s where the acronym comes in.

F is for Facts, and F is for Frameworks

E is for Examples, and E is for Excellence

A is for Advanced, and A is for Application

R is for Reading, and R is for Relevance

In the rest of this article, I’ll work through each of the items, unpacking what they’re about, and how to handle them efficiently.