Digital Media Cultures - Study Skill

In today's lecture we looked at study skills and analytical writing. The main topic was the work of Stella Cottrell and her book 'The Study Skills Handbook'. The 7 points she speaks of in her book that you should follow when writing an essay or dissertation are:

1. Clarify the task
2. Collate and record information
3. Organise and plan
4. Evaluation and Reflection
5. Refine plan and first draft
6. Draft development
7. Final Draft

Discussing these points I realised that I need to plan my essays more and give myself a timetalbe to work in. This would make me more organised and I would then have more time to work on an essay rather than last minute checks and drafts.

A few more points that I picked up from this lecture:

• Avoid conversational language
• Do not use abbreviations
• Be objective not subjective
• Find a strategy to retain information (Breaks, rewards, timed chunks)
• Always use research that is relevant to the task

After the main bulk of the lecture and slide show; we were put in to our groups for the next assignment. Me, Josie, Gemma and Amy are working as a team on the subject of social networking.

At the end of the lecture we stayed behind for 5 minutes just to discuss the first steps we should take with getting started. We decided that we would focus on globalisation as a feature of social networking. We will use Facebook, Twitter and MySpace for examples and we could refer to Marshall McLuhans research. For next week we are all going to bring in 3 articles relating to the subject we have chosen; we are to read and explain them to the others. After this we are going to narrow it down to 5 articles that we will focus on for the assignment. 

Speak Soon!