Programme of Study Catalogue

Objectives:

On successful completion of the unit, students will be able to:
Prepare effective notes in the context of a specific assessment brief, synthesise these notes and evaluate additional source needs.
Select a range of appropriately challenging academic sources for any given assessment brief and evaluate critically those sources.
Incorporate tutor feedback comments through the process of academic writing.
Produce an extended piece of writing and an associated presentation through the application of reading, critical thinking and writing skills.
Use appropriate IT to produce and give a short oral presentation on their extended piece of writing.

Content:

This unit helps students to extend their academic skills and to understand their application to more challenging assessment briefs. Building on from Academic Skills 1, where students develop their note-taking skills, they will develop skills on how to synthesise and evaluate the sources and their ideas.

Academic writing skills will be developed so that students are able to produce extended pieces of work, which have structure, argument and appropriate conclusions.

Students will be given tools to help them understand how best to use and respond to tutor feedback in the course of drafting work and preparing for assessment submission.

The unit will work to ensure that students have a sound understanding of what constitutes plagiarism and what they need to do to avoid it.

Learning and Teaching Information:

The unit will be taught in a series of interactive workshops, providing a highly supportive environment through which students will develop their academic study skills.

Formative assessments and feedback will be provided to students during workshop sessions throughout the unit on the basis of home/classroom tasks (individual and group). Formative assessments will help students to prepare for summative assessment at the end of the unit.

Workshops
Hours: 48
Intended Group size: 15

Guided independent study
Hours: 36