Discussions on the history and historiography of Australia's New England

Wednesday, October 02, 2019

Managing the pressures of the long distance student


This post began as a draft response to a plea for help on the History at UNE Facebook page. It became so long that I decided that I should run it as a full post here and then cross-reference it on the FB page.

Under pressure because of family and job circumstances, Jennifer G asked for hints about study techniques that might help her manage more effectively. It was interesting to see how many of her experiences were shared by others, nice that people were so supportive. I thought that I should add my tuppence worth.

Learning and working styles vary greatly. For example, I am a very fast reader and have been trained through work to absorb stuff quickly, so my hints mat not be suitable for all.

My first hint may raise eyebrows, may be seen as unsuitable in a university environment. I will still make it: use Wikipedia and other on-line sources. Yes, I know Wikipedia is full of errors and is not normally suitable for referencing, but it is still valuable in two primary ways.

One of the challenges faced by all students is to get a feel for the scope of their course. Yes, the course material does aim to do that, but Wikipedia can still be valuable. For my part, I use it to give me a quick overview of the area in question, a starting framework. Say I want to find out about the early days of the Muslim faith. A friend was doing this as a course and I wanted to help. So I went through the Wikipedia pages, following the links. In an hour, I had a rough historical structure to work from that at least allowed me to talk sensibly..

 I also use it to clarify names, words and concepts. In reading academic writing I am constantly struck by names that I do not know, words and concepts that I do not understand. I immediately follow through using on-line search and especially Wikipedia.

These types of searches can often be fitted into time gaps.

My second hint: create a schedule of key dates early in the piece. Dates are pegs. You hang things from them, they help you think about the patterns involved.  They can also stop you making gross errors. There is nothing more mortifying, as I know full well, in realizing that an entire carefully developed argument has to be discarded because certain pesky dates don’t fit! It also saves time because you can refer to your schedule in finding dates rather than searching again. In some cases, it may help to add a glossary of terms plus a list of characters.

Hint three: each time you read a new article or book record the details properly. This has two advantages. It saves time later when it comes to that horrid task of creating footnotes and bibliography for your assignment. Mind you, while I still hate creating bibliographies and, in my case, resource lists, I now use footnotes as a tool, even weapon, to support my argument. Properly documenting references in the first place means that when you take notes you can use short form – author and date plus page number – since you already have the full details recorded.

Hint four: keep your notes short. You are recording ideas, facts, quotes for later use. Don’t be like the early me and feel that you must record everything. So much time I wasted. You can always go back if you must. This approach also reduces the risk of the dreaded plagiarism.

There are different ways of taking notes. One old fashioned way that still works is to put them on index cards that you can reshuffle as required. Consider keeping a writer’s diary in which you jot down thoughts, ideas and key facts. This can be a small notebook that you can store in handbag or brief case. This should be page numbered and have an index space (blank numbered pages) at the front where you can cross-reference later thoughts.

Hint five: with books don’t just start reading. Take the time to look at the table of contents (this tells you the structure), read any introduction or preface (this tells what the author thinks the book is about) and browse the index for any topics, people etc that seem relevant. Then flick browse through the book. This gives you a feel for the book and its flow, helping you focus on what seems important. You can then read as required.

Hint six: try to use your otherwise dead time effectively. I used to work in Parramatta, taking around two and a half hours travel time in all. I came to call this my train reading time. Once your mind and ideas are engaged you will find it easier to use little bits of time effectively, thinking while ironing or walking.

Hint seven and I know this one is hard. Try not to get too hung up on assignments or essays. They are important because they are measures that the university uses to assess your progress. They are also problematic sometimes because of variations in marking and in perceptions (staff and students) of the results. In all, they are a major cause of angst.

We live in a measurement world where we all must jump through hoops. That won’t go away. We just have to manage. Here I want to make a few points that may sound heretical or just hard to do.

 Change the way that you look at essays or assignments. Forget the question of how well you do or might do. Don’t worry about the question of pass or failure. Yes, I know that’s hard.

I remember my father then Professor of Economics at UNE and a member of the NSW Board of Examiners for the old NSW Leaving Certificate. A friend’s daughter was struggling with an economics essay and Prof (we all called him Prof) gave her some help. She failed badly. A week later her teacher, an economics student, came round to the house for a group economics tutorial from Dad. Dad did not say a word; just let the matter pass to the keeper.

My point is that any essay or assignment is just a point in the process. Markers are human and struggle with the technical process of marking. I know from my own experience that this can be quite hard when you have a lot of papers. You have to grade them against each other and against your own perception of standards.

If we now turn all this on its head and look at it from a different viewpoint: to the university, the essay or assignment is a progress measurement, a measure of pass or failure. But is it?

In our measurement obsessed world, it would seem so. But, in fact, essays and assignments and indeed exams are part of the process by which you are learning your historical craft, as well as writing skills. As an historian, you need to be able to express your arguments clearly History is not just “facts”. You have to learn to express an argument from introduction to conclusion using clear English in a logical flow, marshalling your arguments supported by evidence. This just doesn’t come. It has to be practiced. The skills you learn will carry you through well beyond history.

 I know that some of the most turgid, tendentious English that you can find comes out of our universities. That does not matter. Well, it does, just not for our present purposes. You need to think of your essays and assignments as part of your learning process. If you fail, find out why and move on, even when you disagree.

I will finish this post with a few general observations

External study can be a lonely business when you are trying to balance work, study and family commitments and have no one to talk too on either method or topic. Use the Moodle or the History at UNE FB page to reach out, to engage, as Jennifer did. Look for fellow students who share your interests and experiences. If you are in trouble reach out early.

In all this, remember that you are acquiring interests and learning skills that will carry you forward in directions that you cannot yet see.  Sorry, I have dropped from helpful to lecturing mode!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi JDB
I heartily agree with most of what you say. Many years ago, I too, was an external student, as you may remember. Back in the pre-computer olden days, there were these things called compulsory residential schools. I even remember them in Theatre Studies into the 1990s, when all us 'real' students used to whinge and whine, because all the conshie blow ins attacked the library. Do they still exist in this electronic world? Real or electronic contact with esp your tutor, is invaluable (unless he/she is a moronic twit who makes you feel inadequate, in which case aforesaid tutor should not even begin to contemplate teaching). Most of the academics I've had contact with, either as student or uni administrator, are real softy pussycats, and will go out of their way to advise/help etc. Just don't wait until after the deadline to ask for an extension. Hmmmmm; Wikipedia. I think you give it too much value. Useful for names/dates and a quick, 'oh, hang on, who did write The Grapes of Wrath?' But I would not even check alleged sources unless knew they were rock solid. The dreaded Bibliography. I am so computer illiterate, that I can't use endnote, and stuff, and I have been severely bitten by a computer disaster. I write my notes longhand, as I do with draft chapters/essays, so that what finally hits the typing stageis really a 4th or 5th draft, and do a lot of printing from journals. I maintain a hard copy bibliography -alphabetical by author - and then annotate whether it's 'mine' ie I own the book, article, or 'theirs' eg I have notes but the source belongs to a library somewhere. Finally,make sure you have a trusted and unbiased reader/editor, who will not fob you off with platitudes. Oh and really, finally, enjoy the study.

Hels said...

My advice is similar. Read academic journals, not books. If a historian cannot analyse an event in 2000 words, you don't want to be reading 30,000 words in his book

Jim Belshaw said...

Hi both. They still have some schools, kate, but they now tend to be just in specific courses where the residential is key to the the teaching, shortening the course. They really were valuable to the students and were not limited to Armidale.

I stand by my remarks on Wikipedia!

I take the force of your comments on articles, Hels. However, books are still good to my mind. You don't have to read them all unless you really want. They tend to cover more ground; articles deal with very specific points. Horses for courses, I guess

Anonymous said...

Journal articles very often predate the books, especially if the volume is a collection, rather than a monograph. Also, from the point of view of distance education, electronic access to articles is immediate, and then you can decide to keep/delete/print - whatever. Some (all?) -I can only speak for ANU - uni libraries are now buying electronic books, and you can read and then download whatever you need, which is great, unlike buying your own ebooks, from which you still have to make notes. Getting printed books from a remote library is fraught with difficulties. Buying 'because it may come in handy' is dangerous and compulsive, and in the case of certain persons of my acquaintance, may lead to installing bookshelves throughout the house, extending same to accommodate expanding bookshelves, or even building a multi-story purpose built library in the backyard.

Jim Belshaw said...

You have just reminded me Kate that I need to buy a new bookcase! Talking to Bill Oates who is trying to work through JR's collection, the sheer scale is daunting. John has some 20,000 Norse related books, a magnificent special collection, but with uni libraries downsizing on the book side placement is an issue.

A long time ago I wrote on the lag process from thesis to journal to book. That's three decision points: what topic to write about; from that what might get into a journal; from there to the book. This has become a somewhat broken process. At the thesis level, the focus now tends to be on PhDs whereas so much of the material I use is in lower level theses which are rarely digitised and therefore less accessible. Journal publication has been twisted by the current measurement focus. This affects both what the student/scholar might seek to publish and selection by the journals. And then books are largely determined by popular fashion.

This feeds back into unis where courses have to be based on what is available and this increasingly means electronic. There is also a belief in the new. One difficulty in the humanities is that some of the best stuff is not new. Fashion has always been a factor, but in reading some of the older histories, for example, you find that they actually challenge, force you to reconsider some of the current nostrums. As they age, they become historical artefacts in their own right!

Too a degree, relevance and approach is determined by context. I wrote the piece from the viewpoint of uni history students who deal with set reading lists.

It's horses for courses from a student's viewpoint. Articles may be "better", but if the lecturer or course coordinator has set a text that they consider to be important you had better at least skim it.

I don't totally agree with you on note taking. Having electronic access and the capacity to download stuff can leads to students downloading so much that it becomes unusable. It is good to download, especially where it is an important piece that you know you will come back too, but in the end you still have to select what is important.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely, and that is yet another reason for an immediate, easily accesssible, easily understandable bibliography, so that you can always go back if you choose to delete. As you are well aware, I am at best a very amateur historian, but much of my stuff does involve looking at theatre/performance/ including TV/ history, and much of it is ephemeral to say the least. Thank goodness for newspaper archives. I also take your point about required readings; if that's what you have to read, that's what you have to read.
WE DO NOT NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING HERE ABOUT THE JS ARCHIVE. This house has been extended twice, partly to house the books, and partly to accommodate the dining table. There is no room in the backyard for anything, although I confess I have thought about a yurt at various moments.

Jim Belshaw said...

Point noted about the archive. Ah, bibliography. This is an example of physician heal thyself! I can advise, but I am not so good at delivering. I know that I must, but don't always spare the time. Then I have to check again! I get a reasonably steady stream of requests for info that then force me to go back. Memo to self - improve!

Your point on ephemeral material is well taken. This deserves a post in it's own right. There are multiple sets of problems.

The first relates to constant changes in the search algorithms. You cannot rely on search engines to help you find a link to a story that you have known in the past. You must record it.

Even if you do, however, you cannot rely on its continued survival. Sites just vanish. This is a huge problem for Government records where constant institutional change leads to web changes causing pages to vanish. I wrote extensively on the Intervention at the time it occurred, painstakingly checking and linking to each Government statement. Those are now all dead links, causing a huge problem for me when I wanted to do a retrospective review. I might with patience have been able to trace them again, but could not find the time.

Trove is good, but that links to another problem. The various sites such as Picture Australia merged into Trove were very good in their own right, but the material on those sites has actually vanished since Trove was completed. Part of this is, I think, connected to increased copyright and/or ownership concerns. Google image search has steadily declined in value, clogged by an increasing quantity of crap while images that could once been found there have vanished. This is made more frustrating because progressive computer problems over the last fifteen years mean that I have lost stored images.

To work around all this I now download or copy an increasing volume of material where I feel that I may not be able to get it again. I just wish that I had begun this earlier!