Study skills are referred to as the various approaches or strategies that can be applied in the learning process. These are the array of various skills that can handle the different procedures of organizing as well as acquiring any information, retaining any important information, or tackling several assessments (Barrable et al. 2018). These skills are important techniques that can be learned over a short period and can be applied to most branches of study. This is a reflective essay where I would be discussing the different study skills that have learned by me in the coursework.
During this entire course, there had different learning experiences for me. I have acquired knowledge on a range of different aspects of study skills. The first thing that I would want to mention in this essay is the lesson I have learned related to “locating academic sources and information”. Whenever a person is supposed to complete an assignment, he needs to comprehend the information that is needed. There are different features of the information that a person should be aware of while searching for sources (Julien et al. 2018). These are timeliness, popular sources or scholarly sources, and primary or secondary sources. In this phase, I have learned the difference between a primary source and a secondary source of research. A primary source is a first-hand source and the secondary source is the existing literature sources related to the topic. While locating various research materials to complete the comparison essay, I have learned that there can be three types of research materials present as academic sources and these are periodicals, journals, and peer-reviewed publications. There can be books, journals, and websites present where related information can be located (Martin-Martin et al. 2017).
The next lesson I attained during this coursework is “Harvard referencing style”. Referencing an assignment is the most important step as this helps in making the assignment authentic. Different types of information are included while forming the comparison essay and it is important to cite every piece of information (Vlah and Vrbanec, 2021). I have learned that citing the information makes any article authentic and can attract the attention of different people. I have learned that there are two parts to this referencing style. There is a “citation in the text” which is also called an in-text citation and the other one is a “Reference list” also known as Referencing. In-text citation or citation in the text is the short indication of relevant sources within the text of the document written by me. The reference list is the complete list of the cited sources that are used by me while drafting the document. There was a separate week allotted in the coursework only to make us understand the Harvard referencing system. This is one of the most important lessons that I learned as well as revised while writing a comparison essay. It is learned by me that if any text from the source is a direct quotation, then it is mandatory to use the page number along with the name of the author along with the article’s publication date in the in-text citation. This helps to make the draft look even more authentic. When there is more than one author who has written the article, then it is needed to use “et al” in the italics form of the name of the first author followed by the year of publication (Ouma, 2019). This had been an important lesson attained to me during the coursework.
The third lesson that I have acquired from this coursework is “evaluating academic information and sources”. I have learned about the sources which can be trusted by me. Scholarly sources or academic sources are the best places to start while writing an assignment (Lewandowska and Kulczycki, 2022). The peer-reviewed articles are the ones that are written by experts in the specific field. When an article or a source is peer-reviewed, it is supposed to be considered to be a good source (Melkers et al. 2019). The Internet is the place where a person can find different sources of information and can also verify the sources as well as the information that is received. While writing the comparison essay, it was needed by me to explore several journal articles. I have learned that most of the recent research has been presented in journal articles. They are published in either print form or online form or both. The evaluation of the sources can be done using the P.A.R. method. The full form is the “Purpose”, “Authority”, and “Reliability” of a particular source. I have learned that evaluating the source is successful when the validity of information is possible.
The fourth lesson to be discussed here is “academic reading”. This is one of the lessons that have thoroughly acquired by me in the coursework and then applied while writing the comparison essay. I had to read through the articles to compare them. I have learned that the best strategies for reading include skimming, detailed reading, scanning, predicting, and searching reading. The most effective reading strategy that can be applied by me is the combination of information from different sources (Iruvuri, 2020). Note-taking is one of the methods that can make the process of reading effective. Note-taking can be done in the form of a list so that the important points can be understood. I have understood that it is easier to remember the content of the article if note-taking has collaborated with reading. Note-taking can also assist a person to write the entire summary of the content that is read by him (Joyce and Boyle, 2020). Effective summary writing is possible only when a range of information is accommodated in the summary. This is an important lesson that has been imbibed within me from the coursework.
Different types of lessons are usually acquired by students when they enroll in any coursework. I have always wanted to learn about the basics of writing an article or an essay. Academic writing needs a lot of technicalities to be understood. This coursework has helped me find authentic sources, followed by evaluating the sources and reading them. Harvard’s referencing system has made me understand the importance of providing citations in all the different essays and assignments to make them more authentic.
Barrable, A., Papadatou-Pastou, M. and Tzotzoli, P., 2018. Supporting mental health, wellbeing and study skills in Higher Education: an online intervention system. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 12(1), pp.1-9.
Iruvuri, S., 2020. Strategies: To Improve Effective Reading Skills. Language in India, 20(6), pp.1-6.
Joyce, R.L. and Boyle, J.R., 2020. Improving note-taking skills for students with disabilities through a smartpen intervention. Journal of Special Education Technology, 35(4), pp.225-235.
Julien, H., Gross, M. and Latham, D., 2018. Survey of information literacy instructional practices in US academic libraries. College & research libraries, 79(2), p.179.
Lewandowska, K. and Kulczycki, E., 2022. Academic research evaluation in artistic disciplines: the case of Poland. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 47(2), pp.284-296.
Martín-Martín, A., Orduña-Malea, E., Harzing, A.W. and López-Cózar, E.D., 2017. Can we use Google Scholar to identify highly-cited documents? Journal of Informetrics, 11(1), pp.152-163.
Melkers, J., Hicks, D., Isett, K.R., Kopycka-Kedzierawski, D.T., Gilbert, G.H., Rosenblum, S., Burton, V., Mungia, R., Melkers, M.J. and Ford, G., 2019. Preferences for peer-reviewed versus other publication sources: a survey of general dentists in the National Dental PBRN. Implementation Science, 14(1), pp.1-16.
Ouma, R., 2019. Transforming university learner support in open and distance education: Staff and students perceived challenges and prospects. Cogent Education, 6(1), p.1658934.
Vlah, V. and Vrbanec, T., 2021, November. REFERENCING IN CROATIAN SCIENCE AND HIGHER EDUCATION. In Proceedings of ICERI2021 Conference (Vol. 8, p. 9th).
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