4.6 Not knowing what to say It's perfectly possible to learn from what other people say without contributing anything yourself. After all, at a face-to-face tutorial some people won't say anything, perhaps because they feel shy. Working online means you can't see other people smiling in encouragement, so it can be hard to take the plunge and join in. One good thing about online discussions is that they generally happen over a longer period. This gives you plenty of time to think about what you want to say, and eve
Make your conference work You can make a big difference to the effectiveness of any conference, and to your tutor group conference in particular. We are going to discuss in turn the four main ways that you can help a conference work well: get involved; help people to get to know you; construct clear messages; take some responsibility. To get the most out of conferencing on your course, get involved
2.4 See what you can do on the web The web is immense, made up of information held on computers across the world. You can find out things about any subject or topic you care to name, however obscure it might be. The section entitled Searching later in this unit provides advice and tips on searching the web and finding what you want.
3.2 Using diagrams of your own choice and design This option is the most challenging and most rewarding, as it clearly shows that you have explored and analysed the source material and reworked it for yourself. In many cases, the source material may not contain any diagrams, simply text or numbers, perhaps expressed as a table. Alternatively, you may have had to make some specific observations or undertake an experiment to produce your own data. In this case, you may be expected to produce a diagram to enhance or improve your assignment. If
1.1 Communicating information With a heading like this one, you may be wondering if this unit has suddenly turned into a travel brochure. If it had, would you carry on reading if there were no pictures of the places you could visit? I certainly wouldn't. I hesitate to use the old saying about ‘one picture saves a thousand words’, but if I didn't mention it you would be thinking it. Pictures or diagrams can be very evocative and thought-provoking, but they can also communicate a lot of information very quickly.
1.3.7 Summary We can learn to use writing of all sorts as evidence by practising how to interpret it and by becoming aware of the conventions attached to its primary purpose for example as personal testimony, journalism, commercially produced material, such as market research and academic writing as well as material produced specifically through research such as interview data. When approaching a piece of writing: Â
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1.3.5 Stage 3: Details Now examine the piece in more detail. Read it again slowly making sure that you are able to follow its logic from sentence to sentence. Are there any obvious gaps in the argument or any unsubstantiated statements or assertions? Do you agree with its argument or are you attracted by its message? Is its appeal principally emotional or analytical, or both? Analyse the piece in terms of what it doesn't say as well as what it does, and look for its hidden message. What is the scope of the sample o
8.4 Referencing quotes Quoted material can add to a discussion significantly. It can offer a summary of points that you have explored, or provide an example or even enable you to contrast two different definitions. However, quotes should not be seen as a substitute for your own words. They should be used sparingly. Moreover, quoting material involves the development of particular skills, those of referencing, integrating and selecting. As with ideas, you need to reference the source of the quote that you use as fol
6 Extracting a summary In developing short notes you are already beginning to extract key ideas from the text. To assist you further in this you might also find it helpful to bring the points you have highlighted and/or made short notes about together. This involves the use of link sentences and words, perhaps even the addition of short quotes taken from the text directly, and examples or additional words of explanation. In this way your notes build up into a summary which you can use more easily. 2.3 Reading techniques: focused reading Have a go at reading The Scotsman article again, this time in a more focused way. Think about each section of the text, breaking off at regular intervals in order to identify and extract the main points or examples, a Introduction This unit is about the very basic study skills of reading and taking notes. You will be asked to think about how you currently read and then be introduced to a some techniques that may help you to alter the way you read according to the material you are studying. In the second section you will be asked to look at some useful techniques for note taking and how you may apply them to the notes you make. This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Introducing the soc 3.4 The ‘flanker’ effect A potential problem for the feature integration theory is the fact that the time taken to understand the meaning of a printed word can be influenced by other, nearby words. Of itself, this is not surprising, because it is well known that one word can prime (i.e. speed decisions to) another related word; the example nurse – doctor was given in Secti 2.6 Summary of Section 2 The results of the visual attention experiments we have considered can be interpreted as follows. Attention can be directed selectively towards different areas of the visual field, without the need to re-focus. The inability to report much detail from brief, masked visual displays appears to be linked to the need to assemble the various information components. The visual information is captured in parallel, but assemb 2.5 Masking and attention Before I summarise the material in this section, and we move on to consider attentional processes with clearly-seen displays, it would be appropriate to consider the relevance of the masking studies to the issue of attention. We began the whole subject by enquiring about the fate of material which was, in principle, available for processing, but happened not to be at the focus of attention. Somehow we have moved into a different enquiry, concerning the fate of material that a participant was 2.3 Towards a theory of parallel processing When people are asked to guess about masked material, they are commonly able to provide some information, but it often lacks detail. For example, if participants in a Sperling-type experiment have recalled three letters, but are pressed for more, then they can often provide one or two. However, they generally do not know information such as whereabouts in the display the letters occurred, or what colour they were. These, of course, are exactly the kinds of detail that can be used to select it 3.1.1 Treatment or management? In the preceding paragraph you will notice that we talked generally about the treatment of conditions, but referred to ‘managing’ dyslexia. Why did we do this? It relates to the following important general issues:
Is treatment (i.e. intervention) warranted? We mentioned this issue when we were discussing sociocultural or personal distress based definitions of abnormality. Intervention is not always desi 1.8 Reflecting on definitions of ‘abnormality’ The main thing to remember is that the way that ‘abnormality’ is defined will have consequences for the method of identification. It will also impact on people's expectations of their future development. For example, we discussed the way that dyslexia is defined in relation to a person's IQ. Does that mean that if someone has a low IQ and an even lower reading age we should adjust our expectations of what that person can achieve with help, or let IQ influence how much help is offered? Sim 2.3.3 Material data A third kind of data is ‘material’ and provides more direct evidence from bodies and brains. This comes from biological psychology and includes biochemical analyses of hormones, cellular analyses, decoding of the human genome and neuropsychological technologies such as brain-imaging techniques. The data that can be collected from the various forms of brain imaging provide direct evidence about structures in the brain and brain functioning, enabling direct links to be made with behaviours 2.2 Researching ourselves Psychology aims to provide understandings of us, as humans. At a personal level this closeness to our private concerns draws us in and excites us. However, since psychologists are humans, and hence are researching issues just as relevant to themselves as to their research participants, they can be attracted towards researching certain topics and maybe away from others. This is perhaps more evident for psychological research that is most clearly of social relevance. At a societal level all kin 2 The what and how of monitoring Monitoring cannot happen without the honesty of staff, and the trust of governors. Gann (1998) Monitoring can take many forms. How the governing body undertakes this role is a matter for their own decision. What is important is that they work in partnership with the professionals and involve themselves in the process of ensuring that policies and plans are being implemented, and that these are
Activity 4
