Task: Action Plan
The action plan will draw on your learning diary to outline what you have learned about your own strengths and weaknesses, and the benefits and shortcomings of the ways that you have approached learning and assessment in the past. You will outline two or three specific learning needs to improve and maximise your future outcomes. You will then write an action plan that outlines what you will do in order to meet these learning needs. This will total around 2000 (+/- 200 words) words.
Advice and guidance on how to approach assessment task -
The key thing during the teaching term is to keep your learning diary up to speed. Aim to write about 200 words in your learning diary every week and you will have the raw material for the Action Plan. Make sure that you use your learning diary and the academic literature contained in the lectures as resources. Do also use the assessment criteria at the end of this document. Finally, do make sure that your summative assessment includes academic references and a bibliography (if you are aiming for the upper grades).
There are three elements to the action plan:
In Section one, you will reflect on your development of academic confidence. This will help you to identify if there are specific areas that you would like to work on;
In Section two, you will work through the activities that you have done this semester both within the module (i.e., lectures, learning diary, workshops and worksheets), and also in your other modules (lectures, seminars, reading and assessments). You will identify the learning strategies that you have used across the semester and evaluate the extent to which they are working for you. This will include drawing on the academic literature.
In section three, you will identify three areas that you would like to improve, and set out plans to achieve these in the Spring Semester.
Section one: reflect on academic confidence
Return to the academic confidence questionnaire that you completed in the week three workshop (a blank version of this is in appendix 2). Fill out this questionnaire again and compare your two sets of answers.
How have you developed between then and now? What are the areas where you are feeling most confident? What are the areas where you are feeling least confident?
Drawing on the lectures and workshops (e.g., navigating the system), who or what could help support you to develop more confidence in this areas?
Section two: reflect on practice and strategy
Within the Becoming a Social Scientist module, you have compiled lecture notes, worksheets, notes from your learning diary and notes from your reading. You have also attended lectures and seminars on other modules, completed the associated reading and assessments, and compiled notes from these different learning activities. Pull these different materials together (including from other modules) to evaluate your learning development and progress so far. We have broken this down into sections below.
The first block of lectures and workshops provided an orientation to the basic skills that you needed in the first few weeks at Uni.
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Relevant lectures
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Relevant workshops
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What is a lecture and a seminar, and how do I get the most out of these learning experiences?
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Understanding and accessing Social Science
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Finding what you need for your reading list
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Active learning: getting the most out of HE
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Making the transition into HE
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Making the transition into HE
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Read back through the materials from these sessions and your learning diary. Take a look at the notes that you have made in lectures, seminars, and readings more generally (i.e., in your other modules). Take a look at the feedback that you have had in assessments (formative and summative). What are the strengths and weaknesses of your current practices? What are you doing well and what needs more work? What is the theory and evidence that we have covered in the module that gives you insight into your current approaches, and potential future strategies?
Questions to consider might include (note that you don't have to answer all of these, just the ones that seem most relevant or useful to you)...
- What do you need to do to get the most out of your seminars and lectures? How frequently are you actually doing these things? Have you established good habits?
- Are you being an active learner in lectures and seminars? What proportion of your classes have you attended?
- Do you know what to read and where to find it? Do you know how to search out literature beyond your reading lists (e.g., LibrarySearch, databases and Google Scholar)?
- Are you doing sufficient reading? Are you reading at the level that is expected?
- Do you understand the different resources that are available (e.g., textbooks, edited books, journal articles), and how you should be using them in your assessments?
- Do you know what you need to do as an active learner in reading and then remembering core material? Are you actually using these strategies in practice?
The second block of lectures and workshops were about some more general practices to support your learning.
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Relevant lectures
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Relevant workshops
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Once the honeymoon is over: staying resilient
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Navigating the system
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Mapping out your semester
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The dog ate it: using university IT to keep your work safe
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Managing your time
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As above, use materials from both this module and other modules (including feedback) to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your current practices.
Questions to consider might include (note that you don't have to answer all of these, just the ones that seem most relevant or useful to you)...
- How has your health changed over the semester? What are you doing to support your health and wellbeing while at Uni? Are you making good use of the resources that are available to you (both inside and outside the university)?
- Have you experienced anxiety or stress in relation to your learning and/ or assessments? Are there ways of thinking that you might be able to change and consequently reduce your anxiety or stress? What other resources can you use for this very common problem?
- Do you know who to speak to with academic questions? Personal questions? Organisational questions? Do you know understand 'extenuating circumstances'?
- Do you have a strategy for saving and backing up your academic work so that you can find it easily? How safe is your work in the event of the unexpected?
- Do you have a strategy for organising your time to juggle your academic work with other commitments (e.g., caring responsibilities and/or paid work)? Do you have strategies to avoid procrastination?
In the third block of lectures and workshops we looked at some specific skills with an emphasis on assessment.
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Relevant lectures
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Relevant workshops
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Referencing and how to avoid getting into trouble with plagiarism
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Referencing for your assessments
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Critical thinking and understanding arguments
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Critically analysing academic writing
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Writing well
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Writing well, writing better
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Numeracy and statistics
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Numeracy and statistics
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Oral presentations and posters
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Oral presentations and posters
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Wrapping up and moving forwards: maximising your outcomes
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Maximising your outcomes
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Again, use your materials to identify strengths and weaknesses in your current practices.
Questions to consider might include (note that you don't have to answer all of these, just the ones that seem most relevant or useful to you)...
- Are you satisfied that you understand why referencing is core to academic practice?
- Have you made use of the resources available so that you know how to do it both within the context of an answer, and in a reference list?
- Are you confident that you understand what constitutes 'unfair' practice and how to get a turnitin report? Are you confident that you understand what constitutes 'unfair' practice and how to get a turnitin report? Do you understand the difference between poor referencing and plagiarism?
- Are you making mistakes in your grammar and spelling? Do you know the resources that you can use to address this?
- Do you know what constitutes an 'argument' or 'structure' in an essay? Do you know how to stay 'on topic'? Do you know how to do 'analytical' writing (i.e., going beyond 'descriptive')? Are you spending sufficient time editing your written work?
- Are you confident that you can begin to apply 'critical thinking' to your academic work? Do you know what this means in the context of your assessments?
- Have you been making sufficient use of feedback on your written work? Do you know what you can do to improve your grades in future work?
Section three: setting out your action plan
This is the most important part of the exercise for your own development and progress. The exercises above should have helped you to identify your strengths and weaknesses, and got you thinking about what you could address for your future personal and academic development. It is probably not possible to address everything immediately, so think about the three areas of development that are most important for you. These could be personal or academic, short term or long term, and for any (or all) of your modules.
For each area that you would like to develop, think about what you could do in terms of positive action. Go back through what your lectures and workshops to identify strategies, resources, people or services that you could use, and add them to the table. Finally, set yourself a deadline so that you make a commitment to do this by a particular date.
Attachment:- Assignment File.rar