5. Plagiarism

This concept is so probably the one thing people in third level education hate the most, referencing and all that jazz.  For use out there that don't know what plagiarism is it is defined as "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work, as by not crediting the author" (dictionary.com).  Right there what I just done is called referencing.  If I did not reference that quote it would be classed as plagiarism. 


When I first came to ITB we were giving welcomes packs and handouts about the college.  One handout we were given was about plagiarism, they stressed this concept as a really big offence.  I was a little bit taken aback about this, I done a PLC last year and I knew the whole referencing thing and was okay with it, I didn't realise it was such a big thing in college though.


To make sure people don't plagiarise, your assignments go through an online thing called Turn it in.  This had me real nervous! I was like 'what if I don't reference it properly and they think I plagiarised it?', so it is a bit nerve wrecking but if you make a mistake you make a mistake.


So here is a link to give you a run down on plagiarism and how to avoid doing it by accident.  Hopefully use can understand it, took me a while to do so, but come on it's not rocket science people :)

4. Effective Revision

Effective revision, unfortunately consists of actual studying, yes the dreaded word.  Nobody likes studying but if you're going to do it why not do it right? I have come to the rescue with my effective revision 101 so here we go:

1. Never start studying for an exam without a study timetable worked out.  This is absolutely essential, hence why it is step one. 
2. When you actually begin to do your notes, make sure you take out the key points and examples to go with them.
3. You should go over past exam papers and see any patterns that develop over the different years.
4. Start answering the exam questions which you find relevant.  

These methods should form the basis for revision because rather than sitting reading a book or notes over and over your putting your knowledge to the test by answering exam questions.  This has proven to be extremely effective for myself, especially during my Leaving Certificate.  Now that I am in college this method is going to be saviour! Hopefully these tips help use all.

3. Time Managment

"By taking 1 hour per day for independent study, 7 hours per week, 365 hours in a year, one can learn at the rate of a full-time student. In 3-5 years, the average person can become an expert in the topic of their choice, by spending only one hour per day." (Wetmore.D, N.D) This is an example of how working your time around certain activities can benefit you extremely in the future.  Being a full-time student myself, I would find it hard to find an hour to sit down and study.  This is because working around college, assignments and other daily activities does not leave even an hour to spare.  This shows how time management can be crucial to our development educationally and personally.

I find it easy to manage my time if I plan out in my head all the things I need to get done in the day and I leave sufficient time to do these things.  Well, in an ideal world that is how it happens, but realistically distractions are a major part of bad time management.  Television, Facebook, family members, friends, partners all of these things distract us from the things we need to do daily.

My advice would be find what works for you, may it be writing down a schedule, an application on your phone or I have even seen people use post-its stuck around their house.  All these will help manage your time around your hectic lives.

2. Effective Presentations

We all know the feeling of dread we all get before being asked to stand up in a room full of strangers and talk about a topic most of the people in the room probably couldn't care less about.  Firstly, it is unbelievably nerve wrecking! Your voice begins to crack and you think in your head 'do they notice how nervous I am?'.  More than likely they do, but to do a presentation effectively, from my own experience you need certain elements in which to do so, such as :

• Make sure you know how long your presentation must be so you don't go off on a tangent.
• Use key-words and elaborate on the point so to keep people interested rather than you and them reading from the screen.
• Cue cards are now your best friend! To ensure your not glued to the screen and so you address your audience.  They also keep you on track of where you are.
•  Always relate the presentation back to your own experiences and use examples from your own life to help them understand better.
• The golden rule = do your presentation on something you find interesting! If your not interested your audience won't be either.

When I did my own presentation for class, despite my chilled out attitude I'm portraying in this blog, I was as nervous as anything.  Once I started the words kind of just flowed, it wasn't as bad as I thought.  So people, relax, speak slow and clear and trust me you will do great.

 

1. Effective Note Taking

Note taking is very important when it comes to school or college, some people find note taking extremely helpful.  While I'm in college I find if I don't take notes during lectures I forget what the subject was that we were just discussing.  I take notes in a format of I put my heading of what we are talking about and then have sub headings of the topics within the topic that we are talking about.

There are loads of different ways to take effective notes, a few of my friends notes are very structured and have to be colour coded and in a certain way.  This is the way which helps them, I try to stick to two basic colours so not to distract myself from the actual text.  Other peoples notes are all over the place, just random words on the page, but these obviously make sense to them.  Being honest, I would rather have my notes layed out in a way that anyone can understand them, this way there would be no confusion if I went back to read my notes three or four months later.

In communications we learnt different forms of note-taking, the way I take notes was not one of them, I find the forms we learnt too complicated when your in a hurry and trying to get down all the information. Note taking should be more about the content rather than the layout.  Once it makes sense and can be understood, it works for me.