Stepping up to Honours

School of History, Classics and Archaeology

Institute for Academic Development

Stepping Up to Honours

School of History, Classics and Archeology

& the Institute for Academic Development

November 2018

Stepping up to honours: 5 key

elements

My new

Honours

course

‘stuff’

1. Understanding the

new Honours learning

and teaching

environment

3. Reviewing my

approaches to study

management

4. Planning my own

personal development

2. Reflecting on my

current scholarship

skills

5. Building new peer

networks

Stepping up to Honours

Workshop Format

Part one. Review and reflect on your Honours

experience so far (questions/issues/worries?)

Part two. Level 8 – level 10: what does this

mean in practice?

Part three. Developing your current

scholarship skills

Part four: Reviewing your approaches to study

management

Part five: Your own personal development plan

Part one: your experience so

far

In pairs, discuss:

• How has your 3rd/4th year been so far? Is it different

to what you had been expecting?

• Are you finding anything difficult?

• What would you like to get out of this workshop?

• Is there anything you would like to ask us/tell us

(either HCA or IAD)

Answers on post it notes to share with the group.

Part two: level 8 – level 10

Level 8- 10

What does this mean in practice?

SCQF Level 8 – 10

In five areas (characteristics):

1. Knowledge and understanding

2. Practice: applied knowledge, skills and

understanding

3. Generic cognitive skills

4. Communication, ICT and numeracy skills

5. Autonomy, accountability and working with others

The shift up: from “common understanding

to complex problems”

Level 8 Level 10 3.Undertake critical analysis and evaluation

within the common understandings in your

subject

3. Critically identify, define, conceptualise and analyse complex/problems and issues and offer professional insights, interpretations and solutions

4. Use and evaluate numerical and graphical

data to measure progress and achieve

targets

4. Interpret, use and evaluate a wide range of numerical and graphical data to set and achieve goals/targets

5. Work under guidance with others to

acquire an understanding of current practice

in your area

5. Work with others to bring about change/development/ new ways of thinking

Honours in HCA

Marking descriptors per Subject Area:

https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-

archaeology/information-current-

undergraduates/your-studies/assessment-

and-feedback/school-s-regulations/grade-

descriptors

Check these for your courses

Part Three: developing your current

scholarship skills

Question to get you thinking . . .

Statement: The more information I remember, the

better my grades will be in my assignments

Discuss with your neighbour

Scaling the pyramid of learning

Remembering and understanding is an important first step in learning but it does not guarantee the level of learning and higher processing that you need to demonstrate as an Honours student student

BLOOM B, S. (ed.) (1956)

Creating

Evaluating

Analysing

Applying

Understanding

Remembering

“the practice of []… does not consist simply of learning ‘facts’. It

involves manipulating idea and interpretations, testing

hypotheses, acquiring skill” (Mabbett, 2016 p.2)

Scholarship skills

When we mark an essay, we look for four things

above all:

• factual knowledge of the subject;

• an understanding of those facts;

• the ability to develop a coherent and well-argued

case on the basis of that understanding;

• the ability to communicate those ideas in clear,

well-organised prose.

(Classics Honours Handbook)

Scholarship skills

Include:

• Critical thinking

• Active reading

• Developing an academic voice

• 6 critical thinking skills? (Facione, 1990 on next slide)

Interpretation

Analysis

Evaluation

Inference

Explanation

Self-regulation

CategorisationClarifying meaning

Examining ideasIdentifying and analysing arguments

Assessing claims and arguments

Querying evidenceConjecturing alternatives

Drawing conclusions

Justifying proceduresPresenting argument

Self examination, self correction (reflection)

The relationship between active

reading and academic writing

Active reading helps you to:

• Consolidate your knowledge

• Develop your own written answer to the

assignment question as you read

Active reading helps you not to simply tell your

reader what other people have said, but to

communicate your own critical evaluation of this

Active reading

All the time you read you must be constantly thinking

about and refining the questions to which you want

the answers. Your studying is an active process.

Remember the paragraphs you read were not

designed at every point to answer the question you

are asking. Therefore, you will need to probe and

assess, picking out what you need and rejecting the

rest”. (Mabbett, 2016 p. 27)

Active reading

Think about the verbs that assignment questions

often contain . . .

analyse argue

differentiate discuss

classify

evaluate

explain identify outline produce

examine

demonstrate

Gimenez, (2011) p. 7.

Active reading: reading summary

sheet example

Creation of an academic

product: what does an academic

voice sound like

• formal

• objective

• balanced

• evidenced/ verifiable

• tentative

• concise

• well reasoned

• logical

• scholarly

Best way to practice scholarship

skills?

• Reading academic literature in your area

• Regularly writing in an academic voice little and

often (especially summarising)

• Practice critical thinking

• Act on feedback

• Check your stance is justifiable and reasoned

• IAD workshops and online resources

3. Reviewing my approaches to study

management

A few questions to start us thinking

about approaches to studying and

learning

Statement: the longer you study the better your

results

Discuss with your neighbour

Learning: what the research shows

The longer you study the better your results:

Not necessarily

Effective learning depends on how you study not

how long you study for

You do need to put time into your studies, and

new students often underestimate the time needed

for assignments, but length of time alone does not

guarantee results

Chew, S. L. (2010)

Effective studying, what works?

Effective studying at Honours level requires ‘high

quality learning’.

High quality learning includes: systematic, well-

organised, self-regulated studying.McCune and Hounsell (2005) p. 257

But, what does high-quality learning look like in

practice? First of all, we need to ask . . .

Learning . . .

We spend hours on end doing it, but do we actually

know what it is?

What is learning? How do you know it is happening/

has happened? Has happened well?

Learning: a four stage process

Thinking of the stages of learning helps us to map

effective study stages to each stage:

• Encoding

• Consolidation

• Retrieval

• Generation

Doyle, T. & Zakrajsek (2013)

What does this mean for me as a

student?

• Stage 1 to stage 2 takes time: allow for this in your

studying practice and planning

• Stage 2 to stage 3 requires motivation and goals

(develop intrinsic motivation goals)

• Practice generating your own stage 4

• If you only focus on stage 1 and imposed stage 4

(i.e. exams) your learning is unlikely to be deep,

long term and meaningful

High quality learning (HQL):

practical examples

moving from passive active learning, e.g.

Ineffective Effective

Reading without making notes Reading and summarising and/or

relating this new information to

someone else

Highlighting text without writing key

points in your own words

Highlighting and evaluating the

strengths and weakness of the text in

your own words

Looking over lecture notes Synthesising material into a conceptual

mindmap and practicing self-testing

Passive style of learning (taking in

knowledge and reproducing it without

adding your own analysis)

Demonstrating a higher level of

criticality by testing concepts and

connecting new knowledge to prior

learning

HQL

HQL strategies support long term memory formation,

boost critical thinking skills and help to prevent the

fluency illusion:

“students who study by rereading their texts can

mistake their fluency of a text with possession of

accessible knowledge of the subject and

consequently overestimate how well they will do on a

test”

(Brown et al., 2014, p.117)

Learning: what the research tell

us

“Several studies have shown a deep approach to

relates to a high quality of learning outcomes and a

surface approach to qualitatively inferior results”(Nieminen et al., 2004, p. 392)

Component Reproducing orientation Meaning orientation

Approach to learning Surface approach Deep approach

Conception of learning Intake of knowledge Construction of knowledge

Conceptions of knowledge Dualism Relativism

Regulations of learning External regulation or lack

of regulation

Self-regulation

Learning: Question

Statement: good students don’t find their studies

difficult

Discuss with your neighbour

Learning: what the research tells us

“When students think about why something is wrong, new synaptic connections are sparked that cause the brain to grow. . . [this] suggests that [we] should value mistakesand move from viewing them as learning failures”

Mistakes have the potential to be turned into learning achievements

Boaler, J. (2013)

‘Neurons’ by Mike Seyfang (2008, Flickr

Creative Commons )

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeblogs

/3101400087/

Watch out for

Procrastination Perfectionism

Image by Seaternity, CC by 2.0

https://flic.kr/p/oPm9cq

Image by Valerie Falling Leaf CC by 2.0

https://flic.kr/p/ptvo19

Some final words of advice

Expect to put in more hours and . . . and use the time wisely*

I think the biggest thing for me is just having confidence that you can do it

because if you don’t think you can and you’re sort of knocked by past

experiences like bad exam results in the past, I just think that affects you

massively if you do have that mindset

Yes. I guess the thing is the attitude should be willingness to learn . . . at

the beginning I didn’t understand very well but then I was willing to learn

more and I paid more attention to the course. So a willingness to learn and

not be afraid about things being difficult

Dissertations: “it is not like jogging along a track; it is more like finding

one’s way across unknown terrain with minimum navigational aids:

historical orienteering” (Mabbett, 2016 p. 27)

* quotes from interviews with fourth year

students of mathematics at the University of

Edinburgh (Shovlin and Docherty, 2017)

4. My own personal development

plan

My own personal development

plan

Guiding principles: the 4 Ps

• Practice, patience and persistence : you are not

expected to be good at everything/understand

everything immediately

• Perspective: key for critical thinking and balance. A

balanced perspective can keep both perfectionism

and procrastination in check.

Developing: it’s an ongoing process

KNOWING

Do I have realistic expectations? Do I know what

is expected of me

LEARNING

How am I learning? Is it helping me to do well and be

well?

REFLECTING

What can I learn by looking back at my experiences and

evaluating them?

DEVELOPING (1)

What are my strengths?Which other strengths would I

like to develop?

DEVELOPING (2)

What key changes do I want to make? How can I make plans

to achieve this change?

Doing

well at

Honours

Activity: most important

messages for me?

Time: 5 minutes, write your answers on post it notes to share

with the group

Part four: my own personal

development plan

References (1)Boaler, J. (2013) ‘Ability and Mathematics: the mindset revolution that is reshaping

education’, Forum, 55 (1). Available at: http://www.youcubed.org/wp-

content/uploads/14_Boaler_FORUM_55_1_web.pdf (Accessed 18th August 2015)

Bloom, B.S. (ed.) (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, the classification of

educational goals – Handbook I: Cognitive Domain New York: McKay

Brown, P.C., Roediger, H.L. and McDaniel, M.A., (2014) Make it stick. Harvard University

Press.

Chew, S. L. (2010). ‘Improving classroom performance by challenging student

misconceptions about learning’. APS Observer, 23(4), 51-54. Available at:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2010/april-

10/improving-classroom-performance-by-challenging-student-misconceptions-about-

learning.html (Accessed 18th August 2015)

Cottrell, S. (2014) Dissertations and Project Reports: a step by step guide. Palgrave

Macmillan

References (2)

Doyle, T. & Zakrajsek, T. (2013) The new science of learning: How to learn in harmony

with your brain. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Facione, P. (1990) Critical thinking: A statement of expert consensus for purposes of

educational assessment and instruction (The Delphi Report). Available at:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242279575

McCune, V. and Hounsell, D. (2005) ‘The Development of Students' Ways of Thinking

and Practising in Three Final-Year Biology Courses’ Higher Education, 49 (3) pp. 255-

289

Mabbett, I. (2016) Writing History Essays. A Student’s Guide. Palgrave Macmillan:

London

Nieminen, J., Linblom-Yanne, S., Lonka, K. (2004) ‘The development of study

orientations and study success in students of pharmacy’. Instructional Science (32) pp.

387- 417

References (3)

Schweinsberg, S. and McManus, P. (2005) ‘Exploring the Transition Coursework to

Research-Based Study in the Geography Honours Year’ Geographical Research March

2006 44(1):52–62

Scottish Credit Qualifications Framework (SCQF), available at:

http://scqf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/SCQF-Revised-Level-Descriptors-Aug-

2012-FINAL-web-version1.pdf

[Accessed 3rd October 2016]

Shovlin, A. and Docherty, P., (2017). ‘This is Not Something You Solve in Week One of

Third Year’: Applying a Transitions Perspective to Honours Learning and Teaching in an

Undergraduate Degree Programme. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic

Practice, 5(3).