School of Digital & Business Induction
Topic outline
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At the start of your course you are required to complete a project which is driven by the question; what are the key knowledge, skills and behaviours you need to work in/be a …(your vocational area/career goal)…? with an end product that encompasses; how to get dream jobs in….(your vocational area/chosen career)?
A large part of how you approach the project will be down to you, and to a certain extent the vocation that you are studying, but you will be required to reflect on various milestones set out over this course, work collaboratively and produce, or at least contribute to, a ‘public product’ at the end.Some part of your project may relate directly to the assessment of the main qualification you are studying, other elements will complement it.
Success in your main qualification is very important as this will help you to develop knowledge, skills and understanding of the area that you are considering your career in. However, whilst employers will value your qualification, they also value, just a much and sometimes more, a range of skills (including English and Maths) that enable people to function effectively in the workplace.
Employers are even more likely to be interested in you if, through practical work experience, you have had a chance to practice and develop these skills in a real working environment. A big part of this project is aimed at helping you prepare for these experiences and to develop skills that will make you more successful in your studies.
In summary your Induction Project:
1. Is organised around an open-ended driving question or challenge - what are the key knowledge, skills and behaviours you need to work in/be a …(insert vocational area/career goal)…?
2. Creates a need for you to know essential content and skills.
3. Requires your own inquiry to learn and/or create something new
4. Requires critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication - often known as 21st Century skills
5. Allows you some degree of student voice and choice.
6. Incorporates self-reflection, peer feedback and improvement.
7. Results in a publicly presented product or performance - how to get dream jobs in….(your vocational area/chosen career)?
Working your way systematically through the sections of this Moodle course will help you to develop the skills you need not only for your project, but to be successful on your course, and beyond it. We call these 'Skills for Success' and you can read more about these in the document at the bottom of this page. The Skills are also mapped against each section of this course.
You might not use all the resources on this Moodle course as your teachers may suggest alternatives that are more suited to you personally and/or your vocational area. However, you MUST check the introductory areas of each section as these outline the skills you need to develop and reflect on. Work with your Course Team Leader (CTL) to ensure you've covered everything you need to for your particular project.
At the end of each week ALL students are required to complete an evaluative journal entry in their ILP ‘My Learning Diary’ on Pro-Monitor.
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Each week you are required to reflect on the knowledge and skills you have developed during this project and write this up in your ‘My Learning Diary’ on Pro-Monitor.
Reflection draws on 2 key employability skills - analysis and evaluation. These are sometimes referred to as 'deeper thinking' or 'critical thinking' skills, and typically involve asking the questions how and why?
As part of your induction project we want you to think about the knowledge, skills and behaviours that you are developing through your research and the activities you've taken part in. Think about these in relation to your personal goals and ambitions AND the goals of the project.
The key is to not just describe - for example 'this week I did A & B', but think about what did you learn from A & B? How will this help you with your goals? How well did A & B go, and why? What could you do better in relation to A & B and why? How can you take A & B forward, what do you need to do now/next?
You may wish to refer to the Short Guide to Reflective Writing on this page.
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Complete or pass the activity
Level 2 - How to self-assess.
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Complete or pass the activity
Level 3 - Short guide to reflective writing.
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Complete or pass the activity
Level 2 - Introduction to job research and career paths.
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Complete or pass the activity
Level 3 - Progression routes within employment sectors.
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Skills focus - Planning and researching
By the end of this section you should have:
Completed activities around:
- Time management (MS8)
- Creating collections (DS4)
- Note taking (MS2)
- Following experts (MS4)
- Referencing (MS9)
- Copyright (DS5)
- Boolean (DS6)
- Met with your project team to review progress and discuss how these activities can help you with your project (GF7-8)
- Reflected on all of the above, in relation to the project's driving question, in an evaluative journal entry your ‘My Learning Diary’ on Pro-Monitor (MF2)
The resources and activities in this section will help you complete the points above
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Planning your Time:
Successfully planning your time to achieve your goals is a key skill in effectively managing your studies and other areas of life. To start thinking about this, here are some questions about what you currently do.
This activity should take 5-10 minutes.
When you have completed the questions, please share your answer to Question 8 in the forum below.
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Research task:
There are lots of different planning systems that have been developed to help prioritise or coordinate activities and allocate time successfully. These can be both online and paper based methods.
Search the internet for information on the following ideas and systems. Try to find videos, articles or examples for each of the following approaches.
Rock , Pebbles, Sand
4Ds
Kanban
Bullet Journals
(suggested research time 30-40 minutes)
How to capture your research:
Sign up to Wakelet https://wakelet.com/ and create a collection for your research topic.
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Try it out :
Using your research, choose one of the methods you have found and apply it with your current goals. You could use your induction project for this, and add in other parts of your assignments and commitments.
Which method did you find most useful or best to use? Post your findings in the poll and forum below.
Don't forget to keep reviewing your chosen method, or if you need to, try an alternative. Planning and prioritising can also be a really good way of showing you how you are making progress when you are reviewing, or can help you if you feel you are stuck on a project or task.
Remember you have your ILP, the Onenote App on your Ms365 account and MyDay to help as well.
(Suggested activity time 30mins)
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Put your choice here:
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The Royal Literary Fund have produced this Essay Writing tool to break down the steps needed to successfully , plan, research, write and submit essays. This could also be used for other types of assignment. Try Tasks1-4 for help with understanding what you are being asked to do, and planning your research. This tool is also available to download as an App for mobile devices.
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Understanding assignment questions and planning research
When you receive an assignment, you need to spend time understanding what you have been asked to do, and also Planning what you need to find out, and how to structure your response.
When you are given an assignment question, there are clues included into how your teachers want you to approach it. Decoding these will focus your research when you are at the planning stage and save you time in structuring your answers
Here are some websites which give most of the definitions and what is intended, by the instruction words and phrases:
Lexico: How to understand an essay question
University of Hull: Library Guides: Essay Writing: Analysing Questions
University of Leicester: Essay terms explained
See which terms appear in your assignment question; a good technique is to underline both the instruction words and topic words to help break down what you have been asked to do. Try applying this with your current assignments.
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These words are used in questions to guide you to how to answer; they are taken from the websites listed previously - which have other useful hints and tips as well.
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Try this crossword to test your knowledge
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There is a slight difference between taking notes and making notes:
Note Taking is writing down the information we hear or read for the first time in the form of rough notes that we can use later.
Note Making is what we do when we go back to those notes to turn them into more detailed notes. We do this by considering what is important and how things link together. This may include, for example, annotating the original notes, reviewing and summarising them.
Go to the Introduction to Note taking module below to find out more. -
Complete or pass the activity
This interactive module covers note-taking and note making, the purposes of making notes, and note taking from lectures, written material and speech. Complete the module and the activities in it. You must complete the whole module for the task to be marked as complete.
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Strategies for Effective Note Taking
There are many different ways to take notes, some students like to write notes in a linear format, some others write notes in columns, and some prefer to use mind-maps. The different techniques are classified in linear and non-linear.
Linear note-taking involves writing down information in the order in which you receive it.
Non-linear note-taking involves organising information by meaning, similarity or hierarchies of importance or association.
The following are some strategies for both types that can make your note taking more effective.
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Complete the activity
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This Note-taking interactive module covers some of the most common note-taking methods. Complete the module and the activities in it. You must complete the whole module for the task to be marked as complete.
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The Cornell Method is considered one of the most popular and effective note taking methods.
Watch the following videos that explain how the Cornell Method works and complete the activity below.
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Watch the following video about Mind Mapping and use what you've learnt to complete the activity that follows afterwards.
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Once you finished your Mind Map, save it as a picture or save a screengrab (press "Win+Shift+S" keys together) and post it in the Padlet below.
Take a look at the Mind Maps created by your fellow students and post a comment under one you like explaining why you liked it.
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Watch the following video and think about the note-taking strategies they are suggesting.
Do you think they will be useful to you and why?.
Write your answers in the Padlet below.
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Monash University has created a set of interactive activities to test the different strategies that you can use. Click on the link above and test how good are your effective reading skills!
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Click to go to Linoit and share the link to the ThingLink you created.
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Drag and drop the habits into the columns you think apply to you
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List 3 things you will do to help you relax during revision breaks.
Click HERE to add your answers
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Complete or pass the activity
Level 2 - you should now be able to start reflecting on your development of these skills.
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Level 3
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Level 3
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Level 3
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Level 3
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Drag and Drop each item into the right column, depending on whether you consider it to be a primary source or a secondary source. When you finish you can check you answers by clicking on the 'check' icon at the bottom
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Complete or pass the activity
Complete this module and the activities in it. You must complete the whole module for the task to be marked as complete.
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Watch the following video about Boolean operators. Think about how they work, which one would you use to get a wider range or results? and which one will reduce the number of unrelated results?
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The Open University has created a set of criteria to help students evaluate the validity of a source, which they call PROMPT. Click the link below to got to the Open University's PROMPT activity page.
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Why do you have to reference?
- At college you need to read and understand the ideas of other people. Referencing is a way of proving you have done this. It will make your work look scholarly.
- Referencing enables you and your readers to trace useful material again.
- Providing full references helps you avoid accusations of plagiarism. If you
do not reference ideas which are not your own you are committing an
academic offence.
Learning Outcome
By working through the activities on the course you will be able to:
· Use citing and referencing correctly in your assignments
· Avoid committing plagiarism in your work
· Use your own words to write about what a particular author has said.
· Paraphrased in your own words what a particular author has said.
· Use quotations to say what another author has said word-for-word (quote them).
· Analyse your own referencing style and identify 2 ways to improve.
· Determine how to improve your referencing from feedback.
How to reference – Harvard Style Referencing Guide :
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Activity 1. Practise the following referencing skills quiz to identify referencing style and get you focussed.
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Activity 1b. Practise the following referencing skills quiz to identify referencing style and get you focussed.
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Activity 2 Try out this Goblin slaying game from Lycoming College, to test your knowledge of referencing and avoiding plagiarism
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Watch these videos relating to referencing a good academic essay.
Activity 4: List 3 ways to reference a good academic essay.
A guide to Harvard Referencing:
Citation for beginners:
Citations and Referencing using MS Word:
Short Guide to Harvard Referencing:
How to avoid plagiarism:
How to paraphrase in Research papers:
Paraphrasing ideas in your writing:
Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting: A Guide to doing it Right:
Quoting, Paraphrasing and Summarizing: https://youtu.be/pGQPYJUyWj4
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Activity 5
How can plagiarism be avoided?
This Grammarly Blog summarises the main ways you can avoid plagiarism in your written work:
Harvard Reference would be: Calonia, J. (2019). 5 most effective methods for avoiding plagiarism. Grammarly blog.https://www.grammarly.com/blog/5-most-effective-methods-for-avoiding-plagiarism/ [Accessed October 11, 2019]
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Activity 6: This presentation shows how images, and videos can be referenced using Harvard.
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Complete or pass the activity
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Complete or pass the activity
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Click on the link to the quiz to test your knowledge on plagiarism
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Summarising a text
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Paraphrasing a single sentence
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Summarising a text
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Copyright: The Cambridge Dictionary defines Copyright as :
"The legal right to control the production and selling of a book, play, film, photograph, or piece of music:"
The right usually belongs to the person who has originated the work, unless it has been assigned to someone else, such as an employer.
There are certain rights to use such information for Educational purposes, without having to be licenced to do so. Have a look at these cards from the Copyright Users Group, which explain what the rules are against some common misconceptions.
There is also a section of FAQ's from the site which you may find helpful:
In general: You have the right to copy up to one chapter of a book (or 20% if no chapters). If you are using E-books purchased by the college, software will only allow you to download or copy one chapter.
If using an image, the safest option is to look for ones that are copyright free or have been made available with Creative Commons. You are expected to credit the actual originator if you use this route.
Here are a list of "exceptions", to the general copyright rules, they show how limited use can be made of copyright works without having to get permission.
The IPO or Intellectual Property Office, controls Copyright in the UK. Click on the link to IP in Education, to find IP Tutor, which gives advice tailored to different job sectors. To do the course you will need to set up a free account with the IPO. They estimate completion in around 40 minutes.
Works you use for your course, should mainly be covered by the exceptions for Education. However be aware that if you then use the same information for purposes outside your course, this protection will not apply.
