Tomorrow is World Compliment Day!

As tomorrow is World Compliment Day, we wanted to take a moment to tell you all that you are looking particularly well  today!



Happy weekend...

Writing reports

Do you need to write a report this semester?  Before you start, you should know about the structure and format of an academic report.  They tend to require a structured and formal approach.  Objective and impersonal language is used, and it is important to include the appropriate terminology.

Here are 7 tips for successful report writing:

1 – Know the reason for the report
Before you do anything else, clearly define what your report should accomplish. Are you writing this report to persuade or inform? Will you be writing about possible future events or reviewing events that have already happened?

2 – Think about your reader
In order to communicate effectively, we must both consider both what we are saying and what our audience is hearing.  What is your reader's experience?  Will they understand jargon or will you need to explain some of the more technical terms you used?  Keep your audience in mind as you write.

3 – Have a structure
Most academic reports require a particular structure.  Your lecturer will usually give you a style guide outlining exactly how to structure your report (see here for other examples).  It's important to follow this closely.

4 – Length matters
Your lecturer will probably give you a word count.  Word counts help us to refine our writing and edit out the unnecessary bits.  Stick to the word count!

5 – Think about the story
It is important that the content of your report flows.  It must start with an introduction so that the reader knows what to expect and end with a conclusion that summarizes the main points of your argument.  Within the body, it is important that the content flows easily from point-to-point. Your reader needs to follow a logical progression that will help them to understand your arguments.

6 – Appearance matters
Using headings, subheadings, summaries, graphs, tables etc. can help your reader to absorb the information more easily (although check the style guide to ensure you can include these elements). Allow your reader to understand the kind of information in your report by scanning it.

7 – Review and revise
Proof-reading is a very important part of your writing.  After you have finished your draft, leave it aside and re-read it later with fresh eyes.  Read it through to ensure the argument is logical and that you haven't left out any references.  Re-read it to check your spelling and grammar.  Then, if possible, ask someone else to read it to try to catch any mistakes you might have missed!

Do you find some of your texts difficult to read?

Most students find some of their college reading difficult to understand.  This isn't too surprising as students deal with new ideas and theories all the time!  However, reading difficult texts is a part of college life so it is important to learn to 'take in' the information that you read.  Here are some steps you can follow...

1. Pre-read
2. Look for a summary
3. Read the entire text once
4. Look up the words you don't understand
5. Try to understand as you read
6. Take notes
7. Persevere!

Read more about these steps here: http://moodle.itb.ie/mod/scorm/view.php?id=54841 

Assignment Week: Day 5 More RefWorks

This week the blog is looking at how to find and reference information for your assignments and projects.  Having introduced RefWorks yesterday, today we will be looking at it in more detail.

This final blog looks at RefWorks a little more.  It outlines the details for creating records for some of the following formats (depending on your department):

• Books
• Edited books
• Chapters in an edited book
• Print journal articles
• Online journal articles
• Magazine or newspaper articles
• Conference papers
• Reports
• Theses
• Videos or DVDs
• Websites

To learn more:

• Business students - click here
• Engineering students - click here (for IEEE) or here (for Harvard)
• Horticulture students - click here
• Humanities students - click here
• Informatics students - click here

Assignment Week: Day 4 Introducing RefWorks

This week the blog is looking at how to find and reference information for your assignments and projects.  During the week we have looked at plagiarism, One Search and referencing.

Yesterday we had an introduction to what referencing is and how we reference our sources.  Today we are going to look at RefWorks, an online tool that helps you to gather your references in one place and to generate reference lists for your assignment.

 

At the end of the tutorial, you should be able to:

• Organise your references into folders, according to assignment or topic
• Import references from the library catalogue and databases
• Edit imported references
• Create new references
• Create a bibliography or reference list

 

 

To learn more:

• Business students - click here
• Engineering students - click here (for IEEE) or here (for Harvard)
• Horticulture students - click here
• Humanities students - click here
• Informatics students - click here

Assignment Week: Day 3 Referencing

This week the blog is looking at how to find and reference information for your assignments and projects.  On Monday we looked at plagiarism and yesterday we looked at One Search.

Today we are going to look at referencing.  In order to avoid plagiarism in our assignments, we must reference information taken from other sources.  Before we write our assignments, we research the topic that we are writing about.  We might find information in two books, a journal article and a website.  When we include information from these sources in our assignment, we include a reference to say where the information came from.  Have a look at one of these short tutorials to learn more:

• Business students - click here
• Engineering students - click here (for IEEE) or here (for Harvard)
• Horticulture students - click here
• Humanities students - click here
• Informatics students - click here

Assignment Week: Day 2 One Search

This week the blog is looking at how to find and reference information for your assignments and projects.  Yesterday, we looked at plagiarism. 

Today, we are looking at how to search the library databases or One Search.  One Search is a powerful search engine that searches all of the library databases, and the library catalogue, simultaneously.  The library databases contain journal articles, conference papers, magazine articles etc.  They are full of the type of scholarly information that your lecturers want you to use in your assignments and projects!

Have a look at this short tutorial on how to use One Search.  At the end, you should be able to:

• access One Search
• construct a basic search
• refine your search results to find the most relevant articles
• recognise how to find the article PDF in any database
• import article references into RefWorks

Assignments Week: Day 1 Plagiarism

It's Semester 2 - that usually means more original research and projects!  Instead of getting book-lists from your lecturer, you might have been asked to research a topic...  

This week, the blog is looking at how to find and reference information for your assignments and projects. 

We will start off by looking at plagiarism.  Learning to recognise and avoid plagiarism is important for all students.  Before you can avoid plagiarism, you will need to know exactly what it is!  Have a look at this short tutorial.  At the end, you will know:

• how to define plagiarism
• why understanding plagiarism is an important part of college life
• the type of information that can be plagiarised

Happy birthday to the Hub!

Happy birthday to the ITB Student Hub - it's 1 today!

 

Over the past year, there have been almost 8,000 unique visitors (or unique devices!) with over 33,000 page views.  So, do you have questions about any of the following...

Read more here: ITB Student Hub

Doing a research project this semester?

Do you have an important project to complete this semester?  Are you starting to do original research?  Compile a literature review?  Conduct interviews?  Learn about quantitative and qualitative research methods?

If so, there are lots of books in the library that can help you.  As research is such a broad topic, these books are shelved in various places.  Have a look at some of the examples below or search the library catalogue.

General research

A gentle guide to research methods

Internet research skills: how to do your literature search and find research information online

Doing a literature review in health and social care: a practical guide

Conducting literature reviews: from the internet to paper

Research methods

Approaches to quantitative research: a guide for dissertation students

Qualitative research: the essential guide to theory and practice

Doing narrative research

Survey research

Case study research: principles and practices

Writing up your research

Writing research critically: developing the power to make a difference

Doing and writing qualitative research

Writing an assignment: how to improve your research and presentation skills

Researching and writing in the sciences and technology

Business

Research methods for business: a skill-building approach

Research methods for business students

Business research methods

Engineering

Research on PBL practice in engineering education

Ethics in engineering practice and research

Social care

Doing your early years research project: a step by step guide

Research methods in early childhood: an introductory guide

Doing research with children

Sports management

Research methods in physical activity

Research methods for sports performance analysis

Research methods in sports management

Engineers Week 2014

It's Engineers Week!  Best of luck to anyone involved in any of the events for Engineers Week 2014.   If you haven't gotten involved yet, here are some of your choices...

(1) Fail Better at the Science Gallery
The goal of Fail Better is to open up a public conversation about failure, particularly the instructive role of failure, as it relates to very different areas of human endeavour. Rather than simply celebrating failure, which can come at great human, environmental and economic cost, we want to open up a debate on the role of failure in stimulating creativity: in learning, in science, engineering and design.

(2) TOG. Engineers Week: an Evening of Inspiring Ideas
 - Chemical Engineering: Science, Art and TV / Greg Foley
 - Wind Energy – Irelands Oil / Ciaran Donnelly
 - Engineering Change / Elaine Doyle
 - Intro to simulation: particles and clothes / Eoin McLoughlin
 - Connecting the continents / Liam O'Tailliuir
 - How Robots should look like and how they should behave / Conor McGuin

(3) Zoom! An Exploration of Size, Scale and Structure in Engineering
Dr Ian Johnston is fascinated by the links which exist between engineering at different scales, and “Zoom” is a fast-paced mixture of lecture, demonstration, experiment and audience participation, exploring the challenges and opportunities for engineers along a journey from the unimaginably tiny to the incomprehensibly large.  Ian is a Lecturer in Engineering at the Open University and has worked as academic consultant for TV programmes including “Battle of the Geeks”, “Electric Dreams” and seven series (so far) of “Bang Goes the Theory”. He achieved worldwide fame (or notoriety) as the man who crushed LEGO bricks to measure their strength...

Read more here: http://www.engineersweek.ie/

Increased Library access for ITB students

Did you know you can now visit any DIT campus Library or ITT Dublin's Library (IT Tallaght) with your ITB student card? On production of your ITB student card, you may visit any of these libraries and use their print materials for reference purposes. No letter of introduction is required. While you're there, you may also access ITB Library's online databases using Eduroam on your own mobile device, laptop, mobile phone etc.

Some terms and conditions apply! Books may not be borrowed and the Library may refuse admission during busy times, for example during exams.

Take a break!

Do you have 10 minutes between lecturers?  Or need a break from working on your assignments?  Don't forget the library gets four daily newspapers, and four newspapers each weekend!

 

 

Each day you can read:

• The Irish Times
• The Irish Independent
• The Financial Times
• The Guardian

We also receive the Sunday Business Post and the Sunday Independent, as well as the Saturday editions of the Irish Times & the Irish Independent

The library also holds three months of back issues for all of the above titles

You are free to read the newspaper in the library at any time. You dont need to borrow it to your account (just make sure you don't take it with you when you leave!!)

 

(Image: "Reading A Newspaper By A Wall" by Garry Knight via Flickr)