The Tao of Reflection

If you're going to learn properly you have to go beyond what the module teaches you. You have to do stuff beyond the letter of the learning outcomes. Reflective work is an area where this is very often the case. To learn properly, you need to go back over what you have learned. You need to give it time to germinate. You need to sketch in mentally where connections are beginning to occur. Many modules do not build this in specifically, but you need to make it part of your habits of learning.

Time is always a problem. No sooner have you finished this chapter than the module calendar is beckoning you to the next. You can still build in some time for reflection, and it will repay you many times over. Often when you start out doing things like this, you wonder where the time is going to come from. When you have made it a habit, you wonder how you ever did without it.

Reflection may be just a fancy word for what you do already. You may sit and work over notes you have made. You might move bits of paper around on a table. You might be staring out of a train window pondering the connection between Plato and the Dalai Lama. A study session might turn into a prolonged pause as you consider how the subject matter is changing the way you think. Allowing those moments is important. It is also important to structure some time in so that turning over and piecing together what you have done becomes habitual.

You can structure your reflection according to the study material. Most of our modules deliver their content in books, and books have chapters. Different modules organise their material differently, so you can take a cue from what the module does.

For instance, on AA100 there are four books each with a number of chapters. Each chapter has aims at the beginning. I advise my students to spend some time with the aims before embarking on reading the chapter. Then, when they have finished reading, I advise going back to the aims and spending half an hour working on whether and how far the aims have been fulfilled. I advise keeping a journal and making some notes in the journal at the end of each chapter.

On DD102 the chapters do not have aims, and the introductions are not very useful for the purpose of planning the reading. But the chapters are divided into sections and each section has an excellent summary at the end. So I advise my students to read the book backwards – to start by reading the summary at the end of each section, and then read the section. When they get to the summary again, I advise a pause for thought as to whether the section does what the summary says, and again make some journal notes. Whichever module you are on, look at the structure of the books and figure out the best way to read them intelligently, and where the natural pauses for reflection are.

The journal is important as a way of collecting and structuring your thinking. There is endless advice as to how to structure the journal itself. I do mine in a web page that I keep on my computer. That does not require any great technical skill – in fact, you'd be surprised how simple it is. It has the virtue of being able to use links to connect pieces of the journal, and also of being infinitely expandable, so I can go back and make more notes on any particular topic. If you prefer hand writing, then I suggest a loose leaf folder, and write your journal on one side only of the paper. You can then use the other side for jottings, tags, connections that you make later, additions, doodles and so on.

And on occasion you can take a spare hour or half hour and look back over your reflections, and be amazed at how far you have come. You will also see pieces of the jigsaw beginning to relate to each other, and you will see insights that have been on the edge of your vision come into focus.

Occasionally we actually teach reflection. On AA100, for instance, we have two assignments which could be called reflective. But students often just treat them as hoops to jump through. That's fair enough, because, to be honest, we present them as hoops to jump through. I have taught quite a few modules for the OU now, and only one has systematically got students to do reflective work. But if you only do what the modules tell you, you are selling yourself short. The essence of being a student is that you decide what you are learning and how. And in particular we revisit things:

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives." (Henry David Thoreau, in Walking .)

G K Chesterton wrote a rhyme:

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

The Roman road is the module materials. They take you straight as an arrow towards the goal of fulfilling all the learning outcomes, boxes neatly ticked, goals achieved. The English road is the one the student takes. It gets pulled back to the Roman road sometimes, usually by assignments, but in between times the module unleashes the student to do what they will with the material on offer.

This is not only OK, it is actually the way things should happen. Teaching should never corrall you onto a straight and narrow path: that way you never get to see the lush vegetation on either side. Reflection is one of the ways in which you see all that is going on around, and you begin to transcend the learning outcomes. You take direction from the module materials, but you should never be limited by it. At some point you *must* leave the module material behind if the learning is to be your own. It is not the OU's knowledge and ideas you want in your head, it is your own. Reflection is the key that turns knowledge acquisition into deep learning when you understand differently and make new realities with your new knowledge. Dewey says, “We state emphatically that, upon its intellectual side education consist in the formation of wide-awake, careful, thorough habits of thinking. Of course intellectual learning includes the amassing and retention of information. But information is an undigested burden unless it is understood. It is knowledge only as its material is comprehended. And understanding, comprehension, means that the various parts of the information acquired are grasped in their relations to one another – a result that is attained only when acquisition is accompanied by constant reflection upon the meaning of what is studied.” (Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, pp78-9)

Nietzsche puts it more poetically. “No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!” (See “Nietzsche on How to Find Yourselfand the True Value of Education”.) He is referring to life in general, but it describes perfectly the act of learning – it is your road, yours alone, and the act of reflection helps you to find it.

You should take the initiative, and build reflective time habitually into your study routine. 

The Tao of the Midnight Assignment

Time pressure has always been a problem for OU students (Who am I kidding? All students.) Perhaps it is becoming more prevalent as students try to maximise their investment, juggling work, family and one or more modules. I have known students work full time and do two modules, which is effectively full time study. “Foolhardy” is a word that springs to mind, but they do seem to survive, and even prosper. Inevitably there are times when there is no time, when a book has to be read, a forum digested, an online session devoured, and an assignment produced in the space of three days, or less. So this post is about the best way of approaching an assignment when you have limited time.

Using your time 
When you have time available, concentrate. Richard Nixon, famous for Watergate, did have some good qualities. One of them was an ability to focus. Like all managers he rarely got more than a few minutes for any one decision, but he had an immense ability to concentrate. He would be given a problem and he would focus fully on it for the few minutes he had, till he reached a decision. Then he would put that one out of his mind, and focus fully on the next one. This is an admirable trait for an OU student to copy. If you have only half an hour now, don't try to pack too much in to that half hour. Decide what you can do properly in that time, then focus fully on it. You may not cover as much ground, but what you do you will do well.

- go fast and slow. Something being urgent doesn't mean it has to be done as fast as possible. That may sound paradoxical, but let me explain. Some points in the genesis of an assignment are pivotal.

Reading the question

Planning the reading

Planning the assignment

Writing it

Submitting it

Each of these needs your concentration when you get to it, and you need to think about the thing you are doing rather than thinking about the time you don't have available.

Reading the question
Let's say you have an assignment due in four weeks time, and little study time available. At the beginning of the sequence of work, read the question that you will be answering in four weeks time. Do spend some time with it. Make sure you understand what the question wants. If it is short enough, print it out in very big type and stick it where you can easily see it. For OU students, read the guidance or student notes that come with the question. They usually point you to key parts of the module material. Then you know what you need to read. Don't start reading till you are sure you have grasped what the question is about.


Planning the reading
It still amazes me how many university students fail to read intelligently. They start at page 1 and work their way to the end of the chapter, then go on to the next chapter.....  If you're in time trouble you need to decide what to read - the stuff that you need for the assignment. So do some planning. Be realistic about the amount of time you will have available to read, and list the chapters and sections you need in order: essential, important, desirable. Before you start reading the essential stuff, look at the context. Take note of the chapter introduction, and its structure. This is important for understanding, and it will dictate how you read. It is different in different books. One module I teach on has aims at the start of each chapter, so I tell my students to spend some time with the aims so that they are clear about what they will be reading. Then when they have finished the chapter, they go back to the aims and determine how far the aims have been achieved. I recommend writing a reflective paragraph or two about that. On another module the chapters do not have an aims section at the beginning, but each section has an excellent summary at the end. So I recommend reading the book backwards. Read the section summary first, so that you know what the section is about, then read the section, then compare what you have read with what the summary says. Whatever the structure of the chapters is, there will be some natural method of appraising it, then reading it, then reflecting on it.

The point about doing this in a hurry is that you can't hurry learning too much. It is very important not to compromise this process - appraise, read, reflect - just because you have limited time. You will do better to read one section thoroughly and use it well in your assignment, than to read two sections hurriedly and make only shallow use of them. So that is the business about going fast and slow. You have a limited amount of time, so you will feel rushed. But do not rush. Whatever the time is that you have available, slow down when you reach it so that you make best use of it.


Planning the assignment
You have done the reading. You still need to plan the assignment. All the advice about planning still holds. Collect together your theories and your evidence. Figure out what the answer to the question is going to be, and then figure out how your argument gets you there. Like the other parts of the process, this needs time. You may have only half an hour for it, but you should still do it. And in that half hour you should focus utterly on what the question is and how the evidence bears on it. Let it take you off the topic if it will: that way learning occurs which will emerge in the assignment, even if you don't see it there.


Writing it
Everyone is different. Everyone has their own writing method. Some methods work better than others under time pressure. For what it's worth, if you have been staring at a blank sheet for five minutes, and can only think about the time ticking away, I suggest employing the fifteen minute method. You have done the plan, so you know what you're writing about. If you have a timer, set it for fifteen minutes. Start writing. It doesn't matter if it is not grammatical, logical or even coherent, just write. When the buzzer buzzes, stop writing, and set the timer again for ten minutes. Spend ten minutes editing what you have written.

If you are then part way through the assignment, give yourself a break then do more fifteen minute writing sessions and ten minute edits, until you finish or until you run out of time.


Submitting it
The submission process has its own importance. Submission includes things like spell check, proof read, add the references (in the correct format). Read through the question and make sure you have answered all the bits. On one module I teach, the students have to write around 50 words of reflection on two questions they are given with each assignment. They do not get marks for the quality of the reflection, but they lose five marks if the reflection is not there. It takes two minutes to write 50 words, but so many students forget to do it, and lose five marks. It is not that they don't want to, they do just forget. So, even when you're in a hurry - in fact especially when you're in a hurry - take a few minutes to read right through the question, every paragraph, every word of it, and make sure you have done everything you are required to do, before you press the submit button.

Other people's ideas:

How to write a paper at the last minute (And still pass!)

How to Write an Assignment in a Hurry

The Tao of Wikipedia

Strange things sometimes happen to some tutors. They turn into large toothy dragons (think Game of Thrones but bigger, scalier and hotter), their scales glow molten red, and they unleash gobbets of green fire from their nostrils which incinerate any poor student standing in front of them, leaving only enough ash to be put into a small cup and made into Greek coffee to be served to their unsuspecting relatives. What did you do to deserve this? You uttered one small word: “Wikipedia”.

So what are the problems with Wikipedia? And is it ever permissible to use it in an assignment?

Wikipedia is a wonderful tool. If I want to know about a topic, I generally start with Wikipedia. If I want to know more, I follow the links from the Wikipedia article (and often there is more than one article), or I google. But quite often Wikipedia is enough. I have what I want to do. And it is nearly always accurate. Probably as often as academically authoritative publications - though that is subject to much dispute and febrile deployment of numbers. The problem for students using Wikipedia to rely on in academic assignments is the problem of authority. So the issue is what does authority mean and what counts as authoritative.

Authority is what an expert has - someone who has studied the field for many years and produced research and material that is valued by their peers. Authority is socially constructed - there is no absolute definition, no set of criteria by which we can all be impartially measured. That is one of the reasons why theories and ideas come and go. That is also why the pinnacle of academic achievement is not writing books as you might think. It is having articles published in peer reviewed journals. You write an article; it is vetted by other experts in the field and if, in their view, it passes muster, it gets published.

When we look at material in a book or an article, we want to know how reliable it is. We can do this by examining the text in itself. We ask for instance whether what is said is coherent - do all the bits fall into a structure that makes sense. We ask if it is comprehensive - do the statements or suggestions offered cover all of the examples in the field or just some of them. We ask if it is consistent - does it work the same way in different circumstances; are the conclusions followed through properly. That is the kind of thinking that you as students are supposed to be practising. We talk a lot about active reading, and you may have been listening when we talked about it. Active reading is always asking this kind of question of the text.

Authorship also matters, though. Not just what is said, but who said it. Authorship is a proxy for reliability in the text. If this text was written by an expert acknowledged by their peers, then we can assume reasonably safely that what is said on the page is reliable. We can use it to back up our ideas in the reasonable certainty that no horrible accidents will occur.

If we had the time, we would read every paragraph of every page with proper, active thinking attention. We would examine every word, every nuance. We would test everything. We do not have that amount of time. Also, very often, we do not have the necessary level of skill or knowledge to be able to test the material rigorously. So we rely on proxies. We assume that what is in an OU textbook or web page is authoritative. We assume that what has been said by an acknowledged expert, or what has been published in a reputable journal, is reliable. We can still disagree with it. I give a hearty inward - and sometimes outward - cheer when a student for the first time disagrees with something they have read in an OU text (and gives reasons). It shows they are thinking independently.

But here is the problem with Wikipedia. We can test the words on the page in the same way as we test the words on the page of a book. But we struggle when it comes to authorship. We can examine the history of the Wikipedia page, and we can see exactly who has written what. But that does not necessarily leave us any the wiser, as we have no idea who Chris Bloggs is or what their record of achievement in the field is. Most Wikipedia pages are in fact, I would argue, authoritative, certainly reliable enough for all normal purposes. For instance, much medical information is now available via Wikipedia that would not normally reach the general public, and is put there by people who know what they're talking about. (See “Wikipedia: Meet the men and women who write the articles”) But to use it as a source for an academic argument, you would need to test both the text and its author in a way which you will not usually have the time or the tools for.

The overall temperature of academic debate about Wikipedia is changing. Here is a list of articles about various aspects.  I think the academic world is gradually getting used to the idea that they cannot control knowledge, and certainly cannot control students. But the deal is that students need to learn, from day one, that they must use their judgement on everything they meet, not just on the web but everywhere. You should read Wikipedia critically: you should read everything else just as critically.

Much of the learning students do never gets into their assignments. That is a good thing; I would hate us to kill our students with test fatigue. In my view much vital learning is interstitial: it happens in the spaces between assignments, when learners are using their own resources and their own roadmap to direct their studies. But testing, particularly via assignments, is also a valuable learning tool - it provides for different kinds of learning, the kind where distillation, selection and the making of arguments come to the fore. For the purposes of in between learning, Wikipedia is brilliant, provided you treat it in the way you should treat everything you read, keeping your wits about you when you use it. For the purposes of assignment learning, it is best left behind, underneath the text you write, unless you are confident you can defend the reliability of the evidence you use from it. That would also be a kindness: it will prevent some of my colleagues from imploding.

The Tao of spelling

Conclusive proof that spelling matters arrives in the form of an analysis done by Charles Dunscombe and highlighted by the BBC. He says that spelling mistakes cost companies business on the net. For instance, the specific impact on one company was that sales doubled after a spelling mistake on the sales page was corrected.  If it has such an effect on internet sales, we can extrapolate the effect on job applications, for instance, or reports.

I am forever telling my students to check their spelling. I don't expect people to actually be able to spell nowadays (more's the pity) but I do expect them to take a tiny (I emphasise the word "tiny") amount of trouble to use their spell check and to take a little more trouble to get used to things like apostrophes - check whether they're using "it's" meaning "it is" or "its" meaning "of it". I even give them a very limited set of handy hints (behind the OU firewall). I am usually talking to a brick wall - I make the same corrections at the end of a course as I do at the beginning. I need different strategies.

I am thinking of rules:

1) If I find mistakes a spell check would have picked up, you will lose marks
2) If I tell you a rule, like how to distinguish "it's" and "its", you will lose more marks.

But basically the  skills for students are simple:
a) if it doesn't matter to you, make it matter, because it does
b) use the spell check before submitting the assignment
c) make a note of mistakes you make regularly and keep it pinned by your monitor
d) get to know my wiki, or another site like the University of Bristol's Improve Your Writing and make continuous use of it.

Meanwhile I can link to another story here, the one about the Swiss political party that has been set up with only one policy objective, to ban PowerPoint. Read the article here, and check the first line of the story.*

....

....

*If you don't see it, check the spelling of "soul".

The Tao of “incredibly”

I have only recently begun to pay proper attention to the conventions of academic writing. It's not something that I have covered systematically with my students. I tend to take my cue in this regard from the material in the courses I am teaching. But recently I have begun to realise how important it is. Academic writing has its own conventions and its own style. It is important for students to develop their own academic voice as they progress through their studies. I do believe, firmly, that it should be their “own” voice, not just one in which they have taken on the jargon of whichever academy they're in, made completely impersonal. There's a debate about whether academic writing should be impersonal. I tend towards the view that it should be formal but not necessarily impersonal. I know many will disagree with me, but the search for impersonality eventually removes the soul. In my opinion. It's very important, I think, for academics, among whom I include students, to speak in their own voice, although with the register of the academy.

The key characteristics of academic writing are that it is:
- formal. It uses proper sentence and paragraph construction and relatively formal language – not colloquialisms etc
- precise – where description is concerned it must be accurate
- tentative – when conclusions are being drawn, they should not be too definite – in academic study all conclusions are hypotheses, there to be tested, ready to be disproved. Thus we say, for instance, “This suggests that...” rather than “This demonstrates that...”

The reason that I have been thinking about this just lately is that I have noticed more of my students using the adverb “incredibly” in their assignments. I have begun to score it through and write “No, it is not” beside it. This word alone has finally made me decide to pursue the issue of academic voice properly.

Note to students. If you have used “incredibly” in one of your assignments, you have used it in a place where it cannot possibly mean what it says. For instance, “The Benin bronzes are incredibly beautiful”. The bronzes are there in front of you, they are beautiful. Their beauty is, self evidently, credible, otherwise they would not be there. The word “incredibly” is not just loose, it is actually self contradictory, and completely useless in this context.

The reason students use it is that, of course, it is popular in common parlance. I don't mind that. Ordinary language uses words loosely, metaphorically, poetically, and develops with them all the time. What it gains in mood, spontaneity and timeliness it loses in precision. You do need to lose some of the spontaneity in order to gain precision. But if you gain precision, your vocabulary expands, because the riches of the English language lie within your reach. Think of the words you could use to describe the beauty of the Benin bronzes:

amazingly, astonishingly, especially, fabulously, strangely, uncommonly, abundantly, conspicuously, eminently, emphatically, exceedingly, exceptionally, extremely, highly, immeasurably, immensely, incalculably, incomparably, inimitably, intensely, notably, powerfully, remarkably, strikingly, superlatively, supremely, surpassingly, tremendously, extraordinarily, greatly, highly, noticeably, particularly, profoundly, superlatively, surprisingly, truly, unusually, wonderfully....

You could even use “very”.

But do not use “incredibly” in an assignment. Ever.

The Tao of referencing

I get concerned that we don't teach students enough about the reasons why referencing is necessary, apart from the fact that we din in their ear about plagiarism all the time. I also get concerned about the fact that we teach students rules of referencing that are not strictly logical, but we still get finicky about the students doing them "just so". I think we're in danger of teaching students to obey rules without thinking about the reason for the rules existing. I think our students deserve better than that; we should always be teaching them to look behind things, and to understand the reason for things - to be active in their learning. So here is my view of why we reference, with a note at the end about the game we play.

I think there are four reasons for referencing.

First and foremost is courtesy. You are a member of an academic community. If you use the work of a fellow member of that community, you owe it to them, and to yourself, to say thank you. As a member of this community you should take pride in observing the practice of courtesy.

Second is to enable your reader (me, in this case) to find the material you have used. I may wish to find out more about it. I may wish to check that the way you have used it is what the author intended.

Third, in assignments, it enables me, your tutor, to teach you better, because I can identify more clearly what is your own work and where you have used somebody else's. That means that I get to know your thought processes more accurately, and I can tailor my feedback better to your work. That means you learn more effectively.

Fourthly, and in my opinion least, it's to avoid any issues about plagiarism. Plagiarism is not an issue for most students. It's a big issue for universities because of the rotten few, and because universities are rightly concerned about protecting the quality of the qualifications they offer.

So that's why, as a student, you should reference your assignments. And be proud of doing so.

There is an unfortunate element of game playing to a degree, which is to do with getting the formatting of referencing precisely right, because there are markers who will condemn you to the outer reaches of hell if you get them wrong, even though it makes no difference to your reader's understanding. For instance, the general idea is that when you use somebody's work you put a brief reference to it in the text, and then a full reference in your list at the end of the assignment. In the Harvard system the text reference is supposed to take the form of (name, date)n e.g. (Smith, 2010). Then the end note reads Smith, J (2010) How To Keep Everyone Happy With Your Referencing, Unimportant Press: Nowheresville.

Now if you only refer to one Smith, it's obvious which end reference it applies to. but you still have to put the date. I know this from my own bitter experience (as a student on an OU course):

Tutor: "You must put the date in all text references."
Me: "But if I only have one text by Mr X, it doesn't need the date because it's obvious which reference it refers to."
Tutor: "But if you don't put the date, how do I know which one it refers to."
Me:  (goes and finds a nice comfy wall to bang my head against)

It happens. Sometimes you just have to play the game. Get over it. To know how it's "supposed" to be done in the OU, read the guide at http://library.open.ac.uk/documents/Harvard_citation_hlp.doc (It's a Word document for download.)

 Now go back to the beginning and remind yourself what the real reasons for referencing are.

The Tao of word count

Students often take word counts far too seriously, and at the same time not seriously enough. The instant you see the phrase "word count" in the assignment book you start to worry about entirely the wrong things. You focus on the minutiae - does the title count, do the section headings count, does the bibliography count, the references in the text, are you sure?? are dates one word or three, what about hyphenated words, do footnotes count, do quotes count, if you put somebody's initials in do they count, what about appendices, how much can you go over without being penalised, how much can you go under without being penalised, what about words in diagrams, what about words in tables, and so on and on and on and on and on.

Instead of writing the assignment, you're worrying about the word count all the way through. I can tell this because often the first question that is asked is "How far can we go over without being penalised?" The answer is usually 10%. Then you set out to write to the word count + 10%, which is entirely the wrong way to do things. If I give you a 1000 word essay to write, I'm interested in you writing 1000 words, not 1100. The extra 100 is for you to stop dinning in my ear about diagrams, references, dates and hyphenations, because you have a whole hundred word buffer to deal with that stuff.

Assignments are exercises in conciseness. That's what we aim to teach all the time. The reason why is that conciseness aids learning. If you can explain something concisely, that means you've learned it well, and you can explain it well. If you can't explain something concisely, that means, nearly always, that you haven't yet learned it well enough, so you need to revisit it - or you need to revisit the way you've explained it.

So when you've written your 1000 word assignment, and it comes to 1105 words, you look at what you've written. And the question in your mind should not be "Is that part of the word count?", it should be "Which bits can I write more concisely?"

However, boundaries do need to be reasonably clear, so here is a handy and short three part guide to what to look for and what to do. I should note, by the way, that my students will get more detailed guidance than this before their first assignment.

1) Check up on, be familiar with, any guidance given for this course and this assignment in the course companion and the assignment book. Make sure that you're aware of them.

2) After that, when it comes to small things - the dates, the section headings, initials and so on - aim at the word count, and let the buffer (10% or whatever is stipulated) take care of the rest.

3) For the big things - quotes, tables, footnotes, diagrams - go on the following principle. What you've written is either there to gain you marks, or it isn't. If it's there to gain marks, then you should regard it as part of the word count. If, as some students have tried to argue from time to time, it's not, then what the heck is it doing there?????

Follow those basic principles and you won't need to worry about word count any more, so you can concentrate on writing the best assignment you can.

Simples.