Learning Resources

Following the initial plunge into the classroom setting, active observation of how pupils operate in their academic environment, and several sessions in which we both gave plenary presentations and provided direct instruction to breakout groups, we began creating learning resources. The resources were distributed with the intention to be use in conjunction with the techniques, tools and visual aids employed in the plenary presentations. 

Building upon the steps described in the Evi-Dance, we created a tool with which the students could record the results of their literature searches. The Notecard is a table which requires the student to provide the APA citation, perspective, main argument, wider context, relevance to their research, key quote and most important findings of their sources. Demonstrating to the students the value of well-structured and easily-accessible background research was a main take-away of this lesson. A further benefit of the notecards is that using them encourages the students to think critically about the information they come across before they start writing. The notecard necessitates that they begin linking individual pieces of information to other concepts or contexts before they even start the writing process. This proactive and analytical attitude is also one of the key competencies that the GP course itself aims to instil in the students. 

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The second and third powerpoint clickthroughs show plenary presentations given later on in the period. The first presentation demonstrates how students can use an infographic about their chosen topic as a springboard to more insightful and concrete research questions, and the second provides two strategies to help students look to the world around them when generating topic ideas for a group project.

The Evi-Dance is a tool students can turn to when beginning an academic literature search. It details the necessary steps in pruning potential sources, reviewing the summaries of possible papers, and refining their search terms in order to generate results better suited to the research question. The flowchart-inspired tool also details how to read an academic paper in a way that highlights the most important sections, and how to distil key information from such sections. The rationale behind this tool is that a successful literature search is a long and somewhat arduous process, so it is both anticipated and expected that students will need to adjust their search / source selection on more than one occasion. Acknowledging beforehand that it is no easy task to traverse several online databases allowed us to generate a resource that accounts for the nuances in each respective step of an academic literature search.

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The powerpoint clickthrough below shows the presentation we gave to introduce both the Evi-dance and notecard tool, the reasoning behind making these resources, and how they can be used.