1. Golden rules for academic success for postgraduate taught students Rachel Benedyk

2. The Golden Rules Thinking about reading Structuring your writing Avoiding plagiarism Sorting ethics and risk

3. Thinking about reading

4. Why should you read for your postgraduate studies?

5. Styles of Reading Skimming Rapid Detailed –replication, attack, development –purpose for your goals Think of a study situation when you would apply each of these types of reading

6. Reading resources Library and digital library Read what? –Journals –Conferences –Directed reading –Suggested reading –What do your lecturers/colleagues read?

7. Reading resources Read the internet? Think of one study example where the internet would be a good source of reading material, and one where it would be a bad source.

8. Managing your reading 47 hours a week Always be reading something Ask questions: –“Is it worth reading?” –“Does this make sense?” –“Would I have done that?”

9. Structuring your writing

10. Academic writing What are you trying to say? Who are your audience? What is an appropriate style?

11. Writing is hard Factual stuff is easy –this academic stuff is hard! Where to begin? –What are you trying to say? –Who are you telling?

12. All Writing has a Story Myth – scientific writing is objective All writing has a subjective filter Decide your story Never deviate from the story Don’t include stuff irrelevant to the story Remember the order of information the reader will need

13. Beginning writing Lots of ways –Learning outcomes –Group and order everything you know –What are the issues the readers want to hear? Throw away and start again

14. Writing in Science Forces commitment Allows concrete feedback Allows for sophisticated dialogue

15. Writing for university assessment Coursework Exams MSc Project Report Try to think of at least one unique characteristic of the writing you will need for each of these types of assessment

16. Practise! You have to practise Write often Get feedback often Read and criticise often

17. Student writing style should be clear and simple! Consider: Don’t leave yourself open to accusations of having a tendency of building redundancy into your written work. You would probably be well advised to take extreme care not to use many more words than are strictly necessary; that kind of writing behaviour is of no use to anybody and, because it is highly superfluous, will not encourage the people who read your words to be overly impressed.

18. 28 Golden Rules for Writing English Correctly [ANON.] 1. Don't abbrev. 2. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. 3. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct. 4. About sentence fragments. 5. When dangling, don't use participles. 6. Don't use no double negatives.

19. 7. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent. 8. Just between you and I, case is important. 9. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should. 10. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary. 11. Its important to use apostrophe's right. 12. It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.

20. 13. Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object. 14. Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized. also a sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop 15. Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase. 16. In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas to keep a string of items apart.

21. 17. Watch out for irregular verbs that have creeped into our language. 18.Verbs has to agree with their subjects. 19. Avoid unnecessary redundancy. 20. A writer mustn't shift your point of view. 21. Don't write a run-on sentence you've got to punctuate it. 22. A preposition isn't a good thing to end a sentence with.

22. 23. Avoid cliché like the plague. 24. Correct speling is essential. 25. Contractions aren’t necessary. 26. 1 final thing is to never start a sentence with a number. 27. Always check your work for accuracy and completeness. If you have any trouble understanding any of these points and why they are funny, then you need to improve your ability to write English.

23. Useful Books and Links M. Cutts, “Plain English Guide” - £5 Strunk & White, “The Elements of Style” - £5 A dictionary On-Line English Grammar http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/index.cfm Advice on academic writing http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice

24. Frequently found faults in students’ written work - an interactive illustrative site from another university: http://www.staffs.ac.uk/schools/business/bsadmin/ staff/s3/fff.htm Critical reading towards critical writing http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/reading-and- researching/critical-reading Take a look at this site, and I recommend you download the “marked assignment.doc” from the Assessment Material section http://www.staffs.ac.uk/schools/business/bsadmin/ staff/s3/jamr.htm#Reading%20techniques

25. Avoiding plagiarism

26. Breaches of exam regulations …. Or what most of us call “cheating”!

27. Plagiarism What is it? the passing off of another person's work as if it were your own How can it happen? most frequently occurs as the copying, word for word, of parts of a published work without any form of acknowledgement copying another student’s work recycling your own work from a previous assignment employing a ghostwriter to produce work for you using someone else's ideas without citing them It is still plagiarism even if…. the work copied has not been published you’ve altered the odd word here or there

28. Collusion What is it? if two (or more) students hand in the same (or very similar) piece of coursework What about group assignments? you must produce your own, independent write-up if you use the same data set, then each student must conduct their own analysis and draw their own conclusions from the shared data if in doubt, ask for clarification before doing any work

29. Will you get caught? It’s REALLY easy to spot it!! –Your lecturers have read the books you are likely to be reading (and the work of your fellow students!) and will recognise copied passages –Changes in style of writing (from your words to those of another author) are easy to spot –Anything you find on the web will pop up if we type it into google!! –The College now uses a sophisticated detection system (Turnitin®) to scan work for evidence of plagiarism; this system has access to billions of sources worldwide (websites, journals etc.) as well as work previously submitted to departments throughout the college.

30. What are the consequences? If plagiarism is detected –you may have to explain yourself to a faculty panel –the piece of work will normally be given 0% –the matter will be noted on your student file. If two students submit work that appears very similar (i.e. collusion is suspected) then both students will incur the above penalty, and no claim will be entertained as to who is the first author.

31. What are the consequences? Major plagiarism must be reported directly to the Registrar and the UCL Examinations Irregularities Panel. Major plagiarism may result in a student being excluded from any further examinations at UCL. This means you would be expelled from UCL. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/registry/ucl-staff/regulations/

32. Good work practices DO NOT be careless with your work –do not leave it on the printer DO NOT leave things to the last minute –pressure will tempt you to skip corners –start writing as soon as possible –make sure you understand the assignment DO NOT lend anyone your work DO learn how to cite and quote work correctly

33. Paraphrasing What is it? taking information and rewriting it in a new form eg Previous research has consistently demonstrated that interacting with a mobile telephone while driving can adversely affect drivers’ ability to maintain a central lane position, to maintain a stable lateral (side-to-side) velocity, and to brake for sudden emergency situations (Alm & Nilsson, 1994; Salvucci, 2001, 2005). Similar effects have been found with interactions with other common in-vehicle devices, such as radios (Sodhi, Reimer, & Llamazares, 2002), satellite navigation systems (Tijerina, Johnston, Parmer, & Winterbottom, 2000), and portable music players (Salvucci, Markley, Zuber, & Brumby, 2007). Learn what a primary and a secondary source is you should be using PRIMARY sources at this level

34. Quoting Direct quotes should be used sparingly one or two at most use only because the original is so exquisitely beautiful too often suggests you do not understand the material Direct quotes should be wrapped in quotation marks, followed by citation and page numbers, eg: As Young states, the assumption “reflects real cross relationships between the judgments about choices made by a person, and cannot be avoided … the reality is that people are often forced to make rapid and radical revisions of their estimates of the correctness of particular options as they work their way through [the options available]” (Young, 1998, p. 474).

35. The Reference Section Referencing is a common source of error in student work make sure you get it right sloppiness gives the impression you do not care learn how to reference properly Referencing is different for different sources learn the difference between: a journal article, a conference proceeding article, a chapter from an edited book, a book, a technical report, a dissertation, and information available online http://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html covers everything including books, journal articles, websites, interviews etchttp://www.apastyle.org/faqs.html

36. Learn how to reference journal article Alm, H., & Nilsson, L. (1995). The effects of a mobile telephone task on driver behavior in a car following situation. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 27, 707– 715. conference proceedings article Salvucci, D.D., Markley, D., Zuber, M., & Brumby, D.P. (2007). iPod distraction: Effects of portable music- player use on driver performance. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, San Jose, CA, 28 April – 3 May 2007 (p. 243-250). New York, NY: ACM Press. chapter from an edited book Young, R.M. (1998). Rational analysis of exploratory choice. In M. Oaksford & N. Chater (Eds.). Rational Models of Cognition (p.469-500). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

37. Learn how to reference book Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H. (2007). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. technical report Tijerina, L., Johnston, S., Parmer, E., & Winterbottom, M.D. (2000). Driver distraction with route guidance systems (Technical Report DOT HS 809-069). East Liberty, OH: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. student dissertation Atkinson, E. (2007). Web analytics and think aloud studies in web evaluation: Understanding user experience. Masters dissertation, UCL Interaction Centre, University College London, London, UK.

38. Learn how to reference online article or news report “UCL Procedure in Respect of a Breach of Examination Regulations” available at http:// www.ucl.ac.uk/registry/uclstaff/regulations/Regs BoardExaminersSec2.pdf Accessed 24 th January 2011

39. Any questions? Any suggestions from your own experience?

40. Sorting ethics and risk