Academic Skills Practice: Writing a Self-Reflection and Note Taking Methods

This article discusses academic skills and reflective writing through self-reflection and note-taking methods. It covers the importance of academic integrity and different note-taking methods such as the outline method and Cornell method. The article also includes a summary of the knowledge gained during the week using either the Cornell method or Mind-mapping method.

BUS3003: Academic Skills
Practice
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PART 4: Academic and Reflective Writing
Writing a self-reflection
Refer to Session 1 of Skills Audit: Write a self-reflection on the academic skills you✏️
developed during the study of this module.
The reflective writing should include the points mentioned below:
1. Identify your academic skills that you have attained by studying this module.
This module helped me develop my knowledge about academic integrity and its
importance in our lives and academics (Nelms Edwards, Mintz‐Binder and Jones, 2019).
Further this module enabled me to enhance my writing skills. In addition, my communication
skills and intellectual knowledge enhanced too. Now I am able to communicate effectively
with my other classmates.
2. What has gone well, and why?
My organisational and time management skills supported me to cover the assigned
projects within the time given (Ilcewicz, Poirier and Pailden, 2018). These skills are very
important for the completion of tasks in an effective and efficient manner.
3. What did not go so well, and why?
The only problem faced by me during the module was that there were times when I
had to take quick decisions and as I already mentioned, my decision making skills are not
good enough.
4. State, from your experience, the lessons leant by you by studying the module of
Academic Skills Practice.
I am able to communicate effectively. The most benefit to me was that I am able to
ask and solve my doubts regarding projects which help me give better results and
presentations.
5. If there was an option, which action will you like to take ahead to Year 1?
I would like to take paraphrasing to the following year. It is an important topic to
cover and helps to do the projects in a better manner without any plagiarism. Credibility to
the author must be given.
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Taking of notes and academic writing
Usage of different paragraphs should be taken for the purpose of writing about the✏️
following points:
1. What do you mean by note taking? Discuss the benefits that students have by
adopting the method of note taking.
Note-Taking means an activity of writing down information, related to the topic,
taught in the classes (Vo, 2019). These notes help the students to understand the
chapter easily (Vekaria and Peverly, 2018). Further, these notes help to revise the
chapters during examination.
2. State two methods of note taking along with their pros and cons.
Outline Method – This method is used by students to organize their notes in the
form of an outline with the help of bullet points.
Advantages
 Save a lot of time spend by students on further review and editing.
 Give notes a proper and more clear structure.
Disadvantages
 Chemistry, Maths, Physics are not suitable subjects for this method.
 Do not applicable when the chapter is not studied in the prescribed form.
The Cornell method – It is a unique method used by students where the page is divided into
three or four sections. Keywords, main notes and summary of the two are written in these
sections.
Advantages
 Help in extracting main ideas.
 Saves time used for reviewing.
Disadvantages
 The layout is required to be made before starting of the lecture.
 Takes time for revising key concepts.
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Assemble all your notes, written down by you during the classes you attended this week✏️
and of the study you did independently.
Summarize the knowledge you gained this week with the application of either the Cornell✏️
method or Mind-mapping method.
Academic
integrity meaning
and importance
 Academic integrity refer to the ethical policies to be followed by
everyone in academic community.
 It is important to follow these policies for enhancement of skills
and better results.
 It helps to work with more efficiency and fulfil the expectations
of academic community.
Academic integrity are ethical policies followed by students for enhancing their skills and
work effectively for better results.
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REFERENCES
Ilcewicz, H. N., Poirier, T. I. and Pailden, J., 2018. Use of mixed-methods approach to assess
the impact of a pre-professional health humanities honors course on developing
interpersonal skills. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning. 10(11). pp.1456-
1465.
Nelms Edwards, C., Mintz‐Binder, R. and Jones, M. M., 2019, July. When a clinical crisis
strikes: Lessons learned from the reflective writings of nursing students. In Nursing
Forum (Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 345-351).
Vekaria, P. C. and Peverly, S. T., 2018. Lecture note-taking in postsecondary students with
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Reading and Writing. 31(7). pp.1551-1573.
Vo, S., 2019. Use of lexical features in non-native academic writing. Journal of Second
Language Writing. 44. pp.1-12.
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