Effective Note Taking - 3

 

Obviously taking notes is one of the most important things about college. During lectures if your like me you may be one of the "few" people who might wander off into their own little world, so you might miss a thing or two and thus suffer only getting half of what the lecturer is saying. What I do to tackle this is by making a mind map, which is a much easier way of taking notes in my view as it gives me a clearer picture of the topic at hand. A mind map is a much neater way of taking notes, rather than an endless amount of pages of information on something that can be easily view through a mind map.

 Mind Maps!!

Mind maps are great for brainstorming ideas or summarizing information on topics. I find that when I'm in a lecture, it can move very quickly so I can miss out on something and then I'm left with half of a page of information, or that I drift off a little. Mind maps are also great way to study your notes, instead of just going mad and studying loads and loads of pages. I use different colours as well when I do a mind map, I think this is the best way to do a mind map because it can help some of the important parts stand out for you!! A great website that help me with my note taking and with making a more informative mind map was Mind Tools

Harvard Reference - 2

Referencing is referring to the work or works of someone else in another source. Its giving credit where credit is due basically. It can be referred to as parenthetical referencing or it is mostly commonly known as Harvard referencing. In academic writing referencing is very important, there are many ways to go about referecing. You can either cite the author's name directly in the text, or paraphase the piece of work. The website http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm gives a great guide about how to go about referecning.

Referece List:

A reference list is composed list of the number of refereces made in someones work. A referece list is used so a person reading the work can trace the cited authors work easily. The reference list should be composed in an alphabetical order, by the author or authors. This list is only ever required of you though when you cite another author's work in your own piece.

In ITB, referencing is very important, there is also a very in dept policy on plagiarism in assignments and examinations. Failure to referees properly, or at all is considered plagiarism.

How To Avoid Plagiarism!

When I'm doing an assignment, I always have my referenecing  guide out so I can reference correctly. From doing this I know that I have to reference when I am using another author's ideas, opinions or their theories. When I first started using referenecing I was dumbstruck by it, it was a daunting task to think of!
I thought it was a very hard concept to grasp, but also something that had to be done all I could do was try my best to learn how to do it. An easier way I feel to reference is to just parahase the piece of work at hand, and this is basically just a short summary of the authors work; for example "From O'Mahony's report we know that....." I felt this was a much easier way to go about referencing, that is until I can get really a good idea of how to correctly reference!!