Studying at Level 5

How good are your research skills?

Reflect on how good you think you are at researching topics. You don’t need to share your responses - this is just for you to think about how well you can use the tools available to you to find information which is relevant and credible to help you in your studies and will highlight areas you need to find out more about. As you go through the course, come back to this self-assessment to see how your skills are developing.

For each question below, rate yourself on a scale from:

1. (I need to practice this) → 10 (I’m pretty good at this)

Developing your research skills is going to be an important part of your success in this course. Research skills include knowing where to look to find information, knowing the difference between useful and not useful information, and knowing how to use the information in your own words. Complete the quiz below and indicate if you think the choice statements would or would not pass assessments. If you think the statement indicates a choice which would contribute to an assessment pass choose “TRUE”, but if you think the statement would contribute to an assessment not pass choose “FALSE”.

How did you go?

How did you go in your research choice statement quiz? Expand the headings below for more information about the statements and best practice for researching and referencing for level 5 assessments at NZMA.

Watch these YouTube resources showing you some good practice aspects related to creating an academic document for Level 5 assessments:

Watch

How to paraphrase (in 5 simple steps)

Paraphrasing is a key skill in presenting research you have found and wish to use in your assessment. This video shows what it is and how to use it.

Expected Duration: 6:09 minutes

Questions

Pre Watch Question: What do you think paraphrasing means and why do you think it is important?

Post Watch Task: Practice paraphrasing a short online article to build your skills. You can see an entire playlist of useful tutorials in the complete Essay Writing Course, which you should bookmark and refer to as and when you need to.

APA Referencing

Watch

Formatting in APA Style 7th Edition Playlist Introduction | Scribbr

Scribbr is one of many online tools you can use to create APA 7 references. This video introduces how to use it. Links to other tools are listed below.

Expected Duration: 1:02 minutes

Questions

Pre Watch Question: Have you used referencing in any of your work before studying at Level 5?

Post Watch Task: Practice using Scribbr (or another reference generator) to reference some online sources. Try out referencing text sources, image sources and video sources.

Some other online reference generators can be found linked below:

• Mybib
• Citethisforme
• Citefast

Download and read the provided document “Report Writing.pdf” and look at the sample layout for a written assessment: “Report Layout 01A2.pdf”. Note the suggested word count for each task: your report writing should explain your research and analysis clearly. Do not be tempted to write many more words than required (you will get no extra marks for this!) and remember to always keep your responses aligned to the question asked.

When writing your report you can easily see the word count at the bottom of your Word document screen.

The total word count for the document is always displayed, but if you highlight a section by clicking your mouse at the beginning of a section and dragging the mouse to the end the word count for just that section will be displayed.

A note about word count

Word count is important but is only a guide. If you find you are writing far too many words you need to check that you are staying on topic and are not straying into unrelated subjects. You may need to revise the amount of detail you have included. On the other hand, if you are way too short it may mean that you have not fully answered the question or completed all the sub-sections asked for. It may also mean that you have not gone deeply enough into the topic and need to do some more research. Note that total word count applies to the body of your report or essay only and does not include titles, introduction, references etc.

Reports and essays should be written in a professional and clear to read font. Recommended fonts to use are Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman. Text should be size 12 point with headings and subheadings larger and/or bold, so they stand out.

Your reports and essays need to be easy for your tutor (or anyone else) to read. Structuring your work into logical paragraphs containing a few linked sentences is a good way to do this. Be sure to break up large paragraphs into shorter sentences, each containing only one key point or idea. If you allow your sentences to run on too long they become very difficult to read and it becomes difficult to understand your ideas.

Your computer will probably contain thousands of files, some stored on the hard drive and others stored in the cloud. Being able to find the file you need quickly is not only going to be much more efficient, but also much less stressful when submission deadline is looming. Having a folder organisation and file naming convention will help you enormously in keeping your important files easily found.

File naming

Every file stored on a computer (or in the cloud) must have a unique name. The file name should make sense to you to help identify it easily and can be almost anything you like (though some special characters such as “\” and “?” are not allowed in a file name). All NZMA assessments contain detailed information on the course, module and task, and these details should be used in naming your files. As an example, the first report you will be submitting is for Course 1, assessment 01A2. One way to name your Word document would be to include this detail, plus the version of the document. The version number becomes relevant if you need to resubmit – you are allowed up to two resubmissions to bring your work up to the achievement standard. Therefore you could name your initial submission document “01A2-v1” to indicate the first version of your file. If your grade requires you to resubmit after making some changes you could then save your changes into a document named “01A2-v2”. You would then have two (or three) files on your computer, and it would be very clear which version is the latest and is to be submitted.

File Organisation

As well as the actual name of your files, knowing where to find them on your computer is also important. Logical organisation of your computer files into folders makes locating the right file easy and leaves you with an uncluttered desktop.

In this example, a folder named “NZMA ECE Level 5” was created in the Documents folder to hold all of the files relating to the entire course. This is a good start, as it clearly separates anything to do with this course from all of the other documents stored on the computer. As you go through the four modules of the course, having just the one folder will start to be insufficient to organise all of the files you will have created. You can actually create any number of sub-folders to be better and better organised and know exactly where to look for your files:

And within each folder you can save your logically-named documents, including any resources you might have gathered, links to online material, class handouts, photos and videos, presentation work etc.

As you can see, having all your files in the right folder and named logically makes it easy to find what you need, even after you have created a lot of documents.

Having a second (or even third) copy of your most important files can be a life-saver should your computer fail. Even if you store all of your documents in the cloud it is wise to have a simple backup strategy to ensure your work is safe.

If you store your documents on your computer’s hard drive a wise backup strategy would include copying your NZMA folder to a cloud storage app (Microsoft OneDrive comes with your NZMA enrolment free of charge). There are many other cloud storage solutions, including Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox etc. most of which also offer limited free storage. One big advantage of storing documents in the cloud is that you have access to them from any device at any time.

Another good option is to copy all of your NZMA folder to an external hard drive or to a USB flash drive every day. Options are very inexpensive now, so whichever backup option you choose, the key is to actually use it frequently!

Once you have watched the tutorials on how to plan your report/essay, how to paraphrase and how to reference you can get started on researching your key topics for the first report.

It is vital to read the instructions in the assessment paper very carefully. You must respond to ALL the questions and topics the assessment is asking of you and must give the required amount of detail and examples. Remember, referencing will be a compulsory part of this report, so any source of information you find which is useful must be noted somewhere. There are many ways to do this, but creating a separate file on your computer may be the most convenient. In the example screenshot above a file named “01A2-Saved references and links” was created to copy/paste any webpage addresses (URLs) which need to be saved for referencing purposes. To use this file, simply highlight the URL of the relevant webpage in your browser, right-click and choose “Copy”, then right-click and choose “Paste” into your reference links document. It is also useful to add a brief description of what the URL is linking to, e.g. “article on te Whāriki strands”.

Copy/Paste Keyboard Shortcuts

Using keyboard shortcuts for commands instead of navigating menus and right-clicking with your mouse can really speed up your work. There are dozens of keyboard shortcuts for the apps you will use, and it is a good idea to find out what they are. The most useful shortcuts to start with are the commands for “Copy” and “Paste”.

When you have got all of your links saved it is a straight forward task to load each one into your online citation generator and create both a full APA reference and an associated intext reference to add to your report.

You are provided with detailed instruction on submitting written assessments in the Assessments section of each module. For most written assessments you are required to download a Word copy of the assessment. These assessment papers are only editable in the spaces provided for you to add content. Make sure you complete all the assessment tasks you are required to submit, and make sure you submit by the due date for the assessment.

You should have enough information to get yourself organised and ready to start the process of researching and writing assessment material. On completing this topic you should be able to:

• Understand the research skills and disciplines required for this course.
• Understand the importance of authentic writing, based on research of reputable expert sources.
• Understand the requirements for referencing your research.
• Be able to name your files and to create a logical file organisation so you can find your important documents quickly.
• Back up your important documents regularly.
• Submit your assessments to your tutor for grading and feedback.

When you feel confident in these aspects you are ready to start your research adventures for Task 1.

Practice Activity

This activity will allow you to practice summarising and paraphrasing information from an online source. Watch the video “Tales from the mythologies of Creation: Maui and Aoraki” linked here

1. Make your own notes from watching the video and write a summary in your own words of the story of the creation of North Island and of South Island.
2. Create a folder for this course and a sub-folder for Class Exercises
3. Create a new Word document with a name which makes sense (e.g. “Course1-Ex1”)
4. Create an APA reference and intext reference, using Scribbr or similar reference generator
5. Add the intext reference to the bottom of your paraphrased summary of the two creation stories then add a heading “REFERENCES” at the end of your document. Paste the full APA reference under this heading and save your work.
6. Create a backup of your NZMA folder (in the cloud, on a hard drive, on a USB stick) or email a copy of your Ex1 document to yourself (this is another form of backup as your email provider will host the document for a period of time).
7. Follow your tutor’s instructions to submit this exercise – either through Teams or email.