Who to ask for help?

Melanie RimmerLeave a comment
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Generally speaking, your Open University tutor can help you with:

  1. Understanding the module content, explaining tricky concepts etc.
  2. The TMA questions, explaining what the question means, answering questions about the TMA (but not reading drafts), giving extensions
  3. Advice about study skills e.g. catching up if you fall behind with the reading (realistically, that’s WHEN you fall behind – practically everyone does, sooner or later), note taking, referencing, academic writing skills etc.

You can also talk to your tutor about how disability, chronic illness, or life circumstances are affecting your studies, and they’ll make reasonable adjustments and give you advice and understanding in how you can study on a more level playing field with other students who aren’t facing the same challenges you are.

The SST (student support team) can help you with everything else, such as:

  1. Technical problems. Tutors are not employed for their IT know-how, and anyway the way the online systems look to tutors are often different than how they look to students. So even questions like “How do I join the tutorial”? can be tricky because I know how I do it as a tutor, but that’s probably not the same as how you would do it.
  2. Qualifications and module selection. Tutors probably just don’t have that knowledge. Students are always saying to me things like “I’ve studied E197 and H1230. I’m thinking of taking KHT1087 next – what do you recommend?” and I simply haven’t heard of any of those and don’t have a clue what they are.
  3. Fees
  4. Transferring, withdrawing, deferring etc.
  5. Delivery of module materials, textbooks, booklets etc. – Tutors simply don’t have access to any of the systems that control all those things, but the SST does.

You’ll find the contact information for the SST on your StudentHome page.

I don’t mind students asking me questions outside my expertise. I understand that I’m the friendly face of the OU for my students and part of my job is to signpost students to the right place when they don’t know who to ask. I also know that for some students, eg. students with anxiety, it might be much easier to ask their tutor who they know than to send an email to a stranger or anonymous email address. So you can keep emailing me and I won’t be mad about it. But if you are able to go direct to the people who can help you, that will save you some time.

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Quick Answers: Why did my tutor make a comment on my essay but not my friend’s, when they did the exact same thing?

Melanie RimmerLeave a comment

Tutors don’t point out every single mistake, or weakness, or area for improvement in your essay, because we don’t want you to feel overwhelmed and discouraged. We pick out two or three things you can work on for next time. These might be the most important things, or they might be the easiest to fix. Your feedback is tailored to you. That’s why it’s different than your friend’s feedback.

How to layout an Open University TMA – free download

Melanie RimmerLeave a comment
Hand-drawn sketches of layouts for perhaps a webpage, infographic, or something like that
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I have created a TMA (tutor-marked assignment) template you can download for free and use for your own TMAs. It should be useful for Open University social science students. It may also be useful for other subjects and universities, but you should check with your own tutor or lecturer how they expect you to layout your assignments.

Using this template isn’t plagiarism because there is no content here; no answers to essay questions or text that would be marked. You’ll replace all the text in it with your name, module number, essay question, essay, and so on. It’s just to remove some of the guesswork about how to layout your assignment.

If you have already submitted assignments with different layouts than this, they’re not necessarily wrong and it doesn’t mean you’ve lost marks. Certainly the nitty gritty details don’t matter e.g. whether to bold or centre justify the essay title, whether or not to put the word count in brackets, etc. The most important points are to make it clear what question you are answering, where your answer begins and ends, dividing essays into paragraphs properly, and including a References section where appropriate.

tma-layout-templateDownload

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Leave out unnecessary information

Melanie RimmerLeave a comment
Here you can see the crispy, wonderful smelling Franziskaner-loaf and rye whole-grain tin loaf all baked by Franziskaner bakery in Bozen (Italy)
Photo by Wesual Click on Unsplash

My sister tells stories like this: I’ll ask her “Why is your leg in a cast? How did you break it?” and she’ll say “Well, I was in Asda and I needed some bread. But they didn’t have the bread I usually get, Hovis Tasty Wholemeal, so I got some Allinson’s granary bread instead. And then I remembered my husband doesn’t like granary bread because the bits get stuck in his fillings….”. The story goes on for hours and eventually I find out she was rear-ended by a bin wagon driving back home, and all the information about Asda and bread and my brother-in-law’s fillings was completely irrelevant to why her leg is in a cast. Drives me mad. I love her, though.

When you are writing essays, only include the information you need to answer the question. Just because the question was about attachment, that doesn’t mean it’s always appropriate to describe Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Test protocol in great detail. Not every question about Piaget requires you to list all his developmental stages. Ask yourself “Would my essay make just as much sense if I left this part out? Would it still answer the question?”

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Don’t use ‘scare quotes’

Melanie RimmerLeave a comment
Closeup of a plaque on a park bench which reads In loving memory of Jen and Ted South. Two of life's "nice" people
From https://old.reddit.com/r/suspiciousquotes/comments/cyqi4b/a_loving_tribute/

If you are quoting someone else in your essay you must enclose the quotation in quotation marks (although it’s often much better to remove the quotation and express the idea in your own words). And in my opinion that is the only proper use of quotation marks in essays.

Sometimes people put quotation marks around a word or a phrase to distance themselves from it, e.g.:

Michael Moore, the so-called “journalist”…

This implies that some people call Moore a journalist, but the writer wants the reader to know that she wouldn’t call him a journalist herself. It’s a rather snide construction and in my opinion it has no place in academic writing. If you don’t agree with a phrase either don’t use it at all, or state your opinion clearly and justify it. e.g.:

In my opinion, Michael Moore’s work does not match the definition of journalism because ….

Or if your tutor doesn’t allow first-person writing:

Michael Moore’s work does not match the definition of journalism because ….

Another way people sometimes use quotation marks is for emphasis. Sometimes a pub will advertise something like:

Traditional Sunday roast “beef” lunch served here

Which always makes me think they’re using scare quotes and they’re trying to say:

Some people might call it “beef”, but I wouldn’t call it that myself.

Language is always changing and although using quotation marks for emphasis is considered incorrect now, it may become normal and acceptable in future. But you just don’t need to use typography to emphasise anything in academic writing. Don’t use bold or italics or underlining or all capitals and certainly don’t use quotation marks for emphasis.

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Tease Apart a Quotation Free Download

Should you include your opinions in an essay?

Melanie RimmerLeave a comment
A heavily graffitied wall. A partly-torn sticker in the centre of the image contains a speech bubble and the words "BLAW BLAW BLAW"
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In general, you are expected to answer essay questions using the information in the module material, explained in your own words. You are not expected to include your own thoughts and opinions about the topics. For example, this would be inappropriate in an essay:

“I think that criminals should be dealt with severely. What gives them the right to break the rules that everyone else has to follow? If I work hard and buy nice things with the money I’ve earned, I shouldn’t have to worry about some juvenile delinquent robbing my house and getting away with a slapped wrist, community service or something like that. If it was up to me, I’d bring back flogging….”

It would be just as inappropriate to express your opinion that criminals are victims of a broken society and should be treated with compassion. You’re not supposed to include your opinions in essays, regardless of whether you suspect your tutor shares those opinions. But that doesn’t mean that you have to just parrot what it says in the module. You are supposed to read the module materials critically. That means you don’t just believe anything you read, but always ask questions about it e.g. “Does that sound convincing to me? What is the evidence to support this? Are these arguments logically watertight? What biases and assumptions might be influencing these ideas”? So for example, this would be appropriate:

“In the textbook it says that people have a right to rise up when their leaders are behaving unjustly. In a democracy, power comes from the people, so what the people do must be democratic. But I don’t agree with that. I agree with Edmund Burke who thought that social order was precious and took ages to build, and it’s really dangerous if a criminal mob can just tear down thousands of years of progress“.

That’s based on the ideas in the book, but the student doesn’t just believe what they’re told: they’ve noticed that two opposing views of the same topic are presented in the book, they’ve thought about both of them, and they’ve decided which one they find more persuasive, and why. It could be made even better by being written in a more academic form, with just a few changes:

“The radical view of rioting argues that people have a right to rise up when their leaders are behaving unjustly (Andrews, 2022 p.331). In a democracy, power comes from the people, so what the people do must be democratic. This contrasts with the conservative view of rioting that social order is precious and takes many generations to build, and it’s dangerous if a criminal mob can just tear down thousands of years of progress (Burke 2003 cited in Andews 2022, p. 334)“.

The student hasn’t said which of these views they agree with, but there’s a hint that they might agree with the view they put second. The rest of the essay, especially the conclusion, should make it clear.

References

Andrews, G. (2022) ‘Riots and disorder on the street’, in Clarke, J., Doye, Z., Hassan, I. and Woodward, K. (eds) Understanding social lives, part 2. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 313–354.

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Active reading for social scientists

Melanie RimmerLeave a comment
A young women wearing a black hat sits crosslegged on a leather sofa reading a book.
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Guest blog by Dr Alan Sennett, Open University arts and social science tutor.

How many of us have had the experience of reading module materials without really taking anything in?  After a while you become conscious that you are just sitting there staring blankly at the text.  Nothing is sticking.  Or perhaps you are taking notes from the materials but realise you are just rewriting them.  But to what purpose?  You may end up with pages of detailed notes but only a vague notion of their significance for your studies.  Or maybe your study technique is to use coloured highlighters.  You find that you are marking almost everything as relevant.  The short explanation for this is that you have not planned how you are going to read.  You do not have a strategy for actively reading and critically processing text.

Active reading

It is evident that reading for academic purposes is quite different from reading for enjoyment where there are no stakes.  Students need to understand, extract, and evaluate information and arguments for quite specific purposes.  At some point we are going to use some of this material in written assignments.  To read efficiently and effectively, we must first have some sense of what we want to get out of the text.  We must also have techniques for engaging critically with the materials.  Here is one tried and tested method you might find helpful.

When faced with new materials to comprehend, one active reading method is the following:

  1. Skim read the text to get a general sense of the nature of the material.  Possibly read the introduction and conclusion and skim through the unit, chapter, article, or webpage.  But don’t take notes yet.
  2. If you are reading towards an assignment, ask in what ways this text might help.  This means already having a sense of what the assignment is asking you to do. There may be guidance notes. Use them.  Sketch out some questions to ask of the text that relate directly to the one you have been asked.
  3. Now read the text in a more intensive way.  Perhaps in bursts of 15 minutes (set a timer and take breaks).  Don’t take detailed notes yet but you might annotate the text.  I use pencil to make marginal notes on key thinkers, concepts, and theories that relate to the question.  Also mark out some key sections that may be crucial.
  4. Now close the text and write down what you recall, especially the aspects that relate to your purpose (the assignment question).  One variation here is to do this after each 15-minute burst.
  5. Finally, review the text in more detail.  You will probably now see what is most relevant for your purposes.  You may not need to read it all now, just sections.  But what you do read will mean more to you and you can now take more effective notes.  Aim for brevity in note-taking.

After working on ways to read more actively and, hence, effectively, you might want to reflect upon how you can engage more critically with the texts.  The following resources include thoughts on both active and critical reading that you may find helpful.

Some online resources

Critical reading techniques: Active reading | Help Centre | The Open University

https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/undergraduates/resources/resource-library/active-reading-strategies

What Is Critical Reading? A Definition For Learning

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe-writing-centre/critical-reading-and-writing

Don’t start sentences with an “-ing” word

Melanie RimmerLeave a comment
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Sentence fragments are incomplete sentences, like these:

  • And a cup of coffee.
  • A long time ago.
  • Showing that teenagers have undeveloped prefrontal cortexes.

You can make these into complete sentences by adding in the missing part:

  • I’d like an all-day breakfast, please, and a cup of coffee.
  • A long time ago, there was an old woodcutter.
  • Jay Giedd conducted a study showing that teenagers have undeveloped prefrontal cortexes.

The last example is a very common type of sentence fragment seen in essays. Starting a complete grammatical sentence with an -ing word is possible, but it’s more often a red flag that a sentence fragment is coming. If you find yourself starting a sentence with an “-ing” word, ask yourself whether it’s a sentence fragment, and how to turn it into a complete sentence.

There’s a more detailed explanation of what makes something a complete grammatical sentence, what makes a sentence fragment, and how to fix them here: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/sentence-fragment/

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