Academic Skills for Cream 02/2004

Academic Skills Presentation

Introduction

  • Welcome to Cream 02/2004, Order, Disorder, Crime, and Deviance.
  • Dr. Kate Hall from Academic Skills will provide advice on essay writing.
  • The goal is to develop skills applicable to various academic pursuits.

Academic Skills Services

  • Academic Skills assists with reading, writing, referencing, and research.
  • Services are available for all students, from first years to graduate researchers, across all faculties.
  • Online Modules:
    • Comprehensive resources available on the website.
    • Examples:
      • Literature review guidance.
      • Referencing assistance.
      • Information on Generative AI (GenAI).
  • GenAI Policies:
    • Familiarize yourself with university policies on GenAI use.
    • Important to seek permission and declare the use of large language models.
  • Workshops:
    • Held throughout the semester in the Baillieu Library.
    • Small group settings for enhancing research and writing skills.
  • One-on-One Sessions:
    • Bookable for personalized assignment assistance.
    • Focus is on critical analysis and structure, not proofreading.
    • Four sessions available per semester.
  • Writing Advice Service:
    • Email-based service starting in week four.
    • Writing mentors provide feedback within fifteen minutes per submission.
    • Suitable for clarity checks and addressing essay topics.

Reflexive Writing

  • Thinking objectively about your writing process.
  • Aiming for more analytical writing.
  • Learning the distinction between description and analysis.
  • Developing critical thinking skills for effective communication in writing.
  • Producing effective synthesis and analysis of research.
  • Creating clear contentions and supporting arguments.
  • Ensuring overall clarity and cohesion in writing.
  • Remembering real-world context and anchor points.
  • Referencing appropriately.
  • Supporting claims with evidence to strengthen arguments.

Qualities of Good Assignments

  • Most Important: Addressing the question.
  • Using up-to-date sources (discipline-specific).
  • Considering the currency of references (e.g., five years).
  • Discipline-specific considerations:
    • History may draw on older sources.
    • Media studies may require very current sources.

Description vs. Analysis

  • Description: A passive approach that replicates existing information without transformation.
  • Analysis: An active construction of meaning.
Description
  • Describes something by replicating existing information.
  • Surface-level technique lacking critical depth.
  • Not always bad; necessary to set up context or briefly explain theories.
  • Must prepare the reader for analysis to come.
  • Amount depends on essay length, context needed, and assumed knowledge.
Image Description
  • Example: Two dogs on a floating mattress in the middle of a lake.
Description & Essay Topics
  • Considering the essay topic changes the way the image is interpreted, moving towards analysis.
  • Example 1: Animal Welfare
    • Questions to ask:
      • Who put the dogs there?
      • Are they enjoying themselves, or were they coerced?
  • Example 2: Behavioral Characteristics of Huskies
    • Questions to ask:
      • Are huskies typically keen on water?
Description & Objectivity
  • Description can be influenced by personal perspectives.
  • Example: A vegan may view the image differently, focusing on animal welfare.

Analysis

  • Demonstrates knowledge about a subject.
  • Moves from description to evaluation to construction of meaning.
  • Cohen, Mannion, and Morrison: "Analysis is actually a construction of meaning rather than a complete reflection of reality."
What Analysis Does
  • Active and constructive.
  • Involves deep diving, interrogation, and understanding.
  • Frames cases based on the chosen theory.
  • Attends to theoretical and real-world contexts.
  • Good analysis connects theory with real-world cases.

Critical Thinking

  • Critical thinking involves various elements, including developing arguments.
Key Aspects
  • Clear Contention:
    • Thesis statement or main argument at the beginning of the assignment.
    • Guides the reader and ensures alignment with the essay topic.
  • Understanding, Summarizing, and Analyzing Ideas:
    • Synthesizing information to bring together different ideas.
  • Judgment:
    • Avoid broad conclusions until sufficient reading is done.
    • Stop reading and start writing at some point due to deadlines.
  • Interpreting Information and Data:
    • Develop skills through practice and peer-reviewed articles.
    • Analyze academic language, structure, and arguments in papers.
  • Revising Ideas:
    • Accept challenges to arguments and feedback for learning.
  • Making Connections:
    • Link different theorists or scholars and research.
  • Challenging Arguments:
    • Address potential arguments against your writing explicitly.

Critical Reading

  • Approach reading with specific questions.
Critical Reading Questions
  • Why am I reading it?
    • May be compulsory or recommended reading.
  • What is the author's position, and why is it important?
    • Helps to understand the lens through which they view the phenomenon.
    • Knowing the author's position helps you understand their take on a particular thing.
  • Evidence:
    • Look for positions to support what you want to say.
    • Use evidence to support arguments.
  • Convincing Claims:
    • What makes the claim made by the author convincing?
  • Use of Claims:
    • Where to put the argument in the essay.

Critical Reading: Personal Response

  • Critical reading involves your own response.
  • Consider your own views, biases, political affiliations, and ontological assumptions.
  • Determine where you can begin to make a contribution.
Critical Writing
  • Analytical category versus descriptive category.
  • Cannot identify whether something is appropriate or not without noting what method was used to analyze said thing.
  • Description is necessary to move to the analytical stage.
Descriptive Writing: How To Improve?
  • Instead of just stating what happened, move it to the next bit.
  • Ask "Why is this important?"
    The dogs were on the lilo because their owner put them there to take an Instagram photo: Expand upon statements.

Resources / The Manchester Phrase Bank

  • Website with phrases to help at every stage of writing, particularly for criticality and analysis.
  • Contains phrases for giving examples and comparing and contrasting things.

Emphasis on Language

  • Use language that signals analysis and critical thought.
  • Slides contain phrases that might be useful.
The Writing Process
  • Writing is a process that includes research.
  • Analysis performed at pretty much every stage.
  • First analysis is of the topic.
  • Taking a position is a form of analysis.
  • Committing to a position is a form of critical writing and critical thinking.
  • Drafting, redrafting, and editing ensure analysis is strong.

Referencing

  • Use other people's ideas ideas, attribute them, and cite them.
What to Cite:
  • Ideas of others.
  • Paraphrasing.
  • Summarizing.
  • Word-for-word quotes.
Rule of Thumb:
  • If in doubt, cite it.
  • Seek help from Academic Skills or a librarian.
How Have These Sources Been Incorporated?
  • One is a paraphrase, one is a summary, and one includes part of a direct quote.
Incorporating Resources
  • Direct Quote: A.
  • Summary: B.
  • Paraphrase: C.
Advice:

  • Guessing criminology uses a mixture of paraphrase and direct quotation.

  • A summary usually will be more than one sentence.

  • If it's within one paragraph, it's like three sentences to summarize your kind's ideas on social cohesion, for example.

  • Be diligent.

  • Don't want to plagiarize.

  • Summary of discipline conventions:

    • Literary studies use mostly direct quotation and hardly any summary.
    • Direct quotation and hardly any summary is what literary studies uses mostly.
Incorporating Resources: Discipline Conventions (Continued)
  • Crispy, short sentences in criminology.
  • Succinct and persuasive.

Editing

  • Editing as a creative process.
  • Looking for ways to expand and explain ideas.
  • Avoid leaving ideas at the descriptive level.
  • Time for editing: Fresh eyes.

Referencing: Author or Idea

  • Important concept is recognizing whether you want to emphasize the ideas that influenced you or give more importance to the name of the authors.
  • First emphasizes the author.
  • The emphasis on the author does something really different to what's going on in the second example.
Reasons for Emphasizing the Author:
  • Contrasting opinions
  • Avoiding Repetition of Names:
    • If you've already cited the author, use the idea and their names in the citation.

*It is good when you emphasize the idea and then authors come at the second and usually it's good when you to demonstrate that your graph of literature if you have not just one reference but for example two references so after these semicolon and another authors who have the same idea because usually as I said in centuries of academic thinking and writing many people came up with very similar ideas.

  • So you can have two authors and then you can use them interchangeably.
  • So you don't have one essay based on three sources and you reference the same authors on and on and on, then it kind of showed that you haven't done proper research.
    *So it's better is to use this one and then in to ten minutes later you use others but again it's about academic integrity so for example if Zakhanini and Varenchina cited somebody and you don't have time to read them please don't put in another sentence that reference that was already used by them so called second reference because it's academic dishonesty. And what happens is especially if I or your tutors know that source and you misrepresent it, it's pretty much a breach of academic integrity.
  • So Mentioned: Secondary sources. If you haven't read that source don't quote it, don't mention it.
  • You can mention it saying like, for example, Smith in the Canadian Varenchik in 2022. So you acknowledge that you haven't read Smith Which was referenced by the Canadian and Varentina by saying that Smith two thousand and five in the Canadian and Veremtina 02/2013. That's proper academic citation and you adhere to all the academic integrity policies and standards. Yeah.
  • But try to not to rely on the same authors throughout the entire essay. Even if it's on Marxism, don't quote only Marx and Emirates.

Academic Skills: Editing & Provising

  • Editing is a creative way.
  • Expand, explain.
  • Do not simply leave ideas at the descriptive level.
  • Give time left, then go back to it with fresh eyes.

Academic Skills: Website

  • Resources for various assignments.
  • Use the QR code to visit and bookmark the website.
Academic Skills: Generative AI
  • New resources for using GenAI appropriately.
  • Become familiar with university policy and check with coordinator/tutor.
  • In your subject you cannot use IA in exams.