Study Matters transcripts and resources

Transcript for episode 1

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome back to Study Matters, an academic and study skills podcast hosted by Keele University. This episode focuses on organisation and time management, why managing your workload matters for your studies, and some techniques you can use to organise your studies more effectively to help you achieve your academic goals. I'm your host, Aimee Merrydew, and joining us today to discuss this topic is Emma Baines. Emma is a fantastic Write Direction Academic Tutor at Keele University, where she provides one-to-one academic coaching to students at all levels of study. Alongside her academic coaching role, Emma is also undertaking a Professional Doctorate in Education at Keele. Thanks for joining us on the Study Matters Podcast today, Emma. Before we talk about organising our studies, please can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role?   
 
Emma Baines: Hi listeners! As you said, I am an Academic Tutor with Write Direction, so what I do mostly is see students one-to-one and help you guys if you struggling with any kind of academic skills. Sometimes it will be something that you're writing and you really need help structuring. Sometimes with academic reading practices and sometimes it is with time management, which is why I'm here to talk to you about that today. I also study a Doctorate within Education, so I'm really interested in anything to do with education, hence why I work in this field.  
 
Aimee: Brilliant. Thank you. That's a lot of experience you're drawing on and sharing with us today, so thank you again for joining us for this episode. Let's jump in then. What is time management? How would you define it for our listeners?  
 
Emma: For me, I see time management as the organisation of priorities and through being able to organise them properly you’re then able to work and study and live life in the most productive and efficient way.  
 
Aimee: Yeah, I think that's something that we have to work on. It's not something that always comes very easily for people, myself included. And you've already started to touch on this, but would you be able to let us know why you think time management really matters for our academic studies? Why do you think it's important?  
 
Emma: I'm a huge believer in a healthy work-life balance and I think time management is the key to achieving that. Sometimes there's a misconception out there that we should be working or we should be studying all the time. But actually the other areas of life, like seeing family and friends, socialising, having a bit of you time are also so important. And I think being able to manage your time in terms of the workload or the study load you've got, so that you are actually giving yourself gaps for the other kind of non-work related parts of life is just so key and it kind of leads to a much healthier lifestyle.   
  
Aimee: Definitely. I know if I've been working on a piece of work for too long and I've perhaps not been having those breaks that I know I should be taking, but I feel perhaps a little bit stressed, I always return to the work the next day feeling really quite exhausted and I feel like I'm not very productive on that piece of work, so factoring in some time to relax and unwind from that piece of work is really key. That point brings us to the next question. I want you to think about your experience of working with a wide range of students, but also your own experience of organising your time and your studies. As we mentioned, you're a Write Direction Academic Tutor, but you're also completing a Doctorate in Education. Why do you think it can be difficult to manage our time and our studies effectively? What common issues do you think that people might encounter?   
  
Emma: First of all, I'm quite lucky with the type of personality I've got. I tend to be quite an organised person. But, having said that, I still get times like you just mentioned, where you've been working on something and you just can't see the wood for the trees. Even as a very organised person, I still need some time to take a step back and remind myself that, yes, you need to have a break, have a day off, and have the evening off. Go and do something that's not related to the thing that's stressing you out. That's a common issue for me. Even though I am I think of myself as a very organised person, I have to remind myself that, yes, it is actually OK to take time out. 
 
Issues I've seen that are quite common to students… Before I worked for Keele, I used to work at a sixth form college, so I worked with lots of 18-year-olds then and something that I used to work with them on was the difference between motivation and self-discipline because frequently I'd have conversations and they just have so much work to do, so many kind of competing priorities and assignments that needed to be submitted. But actually they would just be saying, ‘Oh Emma, I've got no motivation. I can't kind of get myself up and going’. And what I'd say to them is motivation is great if you're really motivated that’s brilliant. But actually what better is to practise self-discipline and the difference for anyone that might be listening to me and thinking, I don't know what she's on about, it is that motivation is wanting to do something and really having that oomph, where you know you feel alive and you want to go do something. Self-discipline is choosing to go and do something and that might be despite you not wanting to or wanting to go and do something different. And you might be thinking, OK, well, how do I make myself go and do these things? Well, one little thing that I always do is always reward myself or have a little treat when I know I've gone and done something. For example, this week the weather's been so nice and all I've wanted to do is sit outside and sunbathe, but I've had to be writing and putting a paper together, so what I did was studied in the morning and then I thought, right, I've made really good progress, I'm just going to go and have an hour outside in the sun with a book and it was a novel, so it wasn't anything to do with what I was writing and that was like a real treat for me. I really felt like I deserved it and I earnt it, so I think when we get into these really kind of demotivated states. If you know yourself, you know what kind of treat you really like, then go to the shop and buy yourself a pack of chocolate fingers or whatever it is that you really like or go and plan a meal or something like that so that, you know, in choosing to do this thing that you might want to do at the end of it, you're going to get reward and get a good treat.  
  
Aimee: You've just reminded me of the many times when I woke up in the morning feeling very motivated to get lots of writing done and I'm feeling enthusiastic, and then as the day goes by, I've done everything but that writing that I felt very motivated to do. I will see the sun go down at the end of the day and my heart sinks with it because I realise that actually I've not done what I set out to achieve that day. I think, again, it comes back to what you've said about differentiating between motivation and self-discipline, which brings me to the next question. You've already given one really great tip about rewarding yourself for the work you do, but do you have any other techniques and strategies you feel would be useful for our listeners to try out when trying to organise their studies more effectively?  
 
Emma: Something that helps me feel very productive and then has a knock-on effect of making me feel motivated and me wanting to be disciplined is to create a list. I’m the type person where things just randomly fly into my head. And I'm like, oh right, yes, I need to do that. And so whilst I am studying or working, I'll just have a piece of paper next to me or a sticky note. Any time something popped into my head that I think, oh yes, I need to do that, just write it down, so you've taken out of your head and you've done something with it and you know it's there to come back to later, then what I tend to do is have more of an ongoing to do list. And I try and write over the week when I'm going to do each task. And when you've done it, make sure you cross it off because I think this is actually a process that our brains go through where we see a list of tasks that we need to do and through crossing it off helps us realise, OK, we don't need to worry about that anymore: it's done. It's only a small little thing you can do, but it does really help.  
 
Also, what I was I just going to say, then? Something else just popped into my head and it's just fallen out. This is what I mean. See things fly in and out ahead all the time. Yes, so make lists… Oh, that was it. At the end of the day, write down what you've done and that can sometimes help you feel much more productive because if you have a to do list that tells you everything you need to do and then something last minute happens and then you don't end up being able to do it, you can then feel like you've just said, Aimee, you feel kind of worried or a bit ashamed because you haven't been able to get things done. Instead, if you write down at the end of the day what you have done and even the little list of things, so even if you've gone and made dinner for your family or if you went out to the post office and posted a parcel, as well as if you've completed an assignment, all these little things, it helps you track actually, ‘wow, I've got so much out of this day’. And again, that goes back to training your mind to understand that you have being productive, despite the negative feelings you might feel about a certain piece of work. Look at everything else that you've achieved that day.  
 
Another tip which I think has kind of saved my life: when I was an undergraduate, I was getting really stressed about this particular module that I’d chosen and it was really difficult, so I went to see one of the lecturers and he said to me: ‘what you need to do, Emma, is treat your studies like a job, so if you're studying full time, you treat it like a nine to five job’. And what he said to me was: ‘therefore, during the week, Monday to Friday, nine to five, you're going to be involved in activities related to studying or related to your degree. Obviously, within that you’re going to have an hour lunch break, because that's what you’d have at work, and obviously within that you're going to have a mid-morning, mid-afternoon break because that's what you do if you were at work. But key to that is try and have things that repeat on the same day each week to help you get into a routine’. So, for example, I was really struggling with this module, so he said to me every single time, every single week at the same time do the work for that module. So, you know, Tuesday at 10:00 o'clock, that's where you spend two hours going over the textbook or doing the seminar activities or whatever it is you've got to do. So each week, that then becomes routine and then, you know, you've not got to worry about it for the rest of the week because it's coming up on that Tuesday morning. You're going to do it and then you get to tick it off. And it's done.  
 
From the very day that he told me that I have lived by that kind of nine to five schedule for work or study. And then that means you've got time in the evenings and weekends to see family, have some time for yourself, socialise. And I think it also really helps with that feeling of guilt, because I know lots of students used to say to me, ‘oh, I just feel so guilty when I have time off’. And I used to say to them, ‘do you know how important it is to actually have time off?’ I think applying that nine to five schedule for whether it's a study or work and then doing everything outside of it was just something that really helped me and I definitely recommend.  
 
But, on that note, I'll just add: do be flexible with it. Don't stick to it like it's gospel, because then that will add to your stress levels. Be flexible with it. In the era of when we're all working from home, it's so difficult to work solidly because there's always distractions, people popping in. And I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but I think like people think when you’re working from home, you're just at home so they can just, like, nip in and see you all the time. My grandparents seem to think that, which is lovely. I love that. But obviously, if you said you were going to do something at ten o'clock and then somebody turns up and has a coffee with you, then you know, you can't achieve that task, can you, at that time, because you can't be in two places at once. And that's and that's fine, so you do whatever the most pressing thing is best and then you have a look in your schedule and see where you can move that task to later on in the week. So yeah, flexibility is key.   
  
Aimee: I think there's so many great tips that you've shared there and what you were just saying then about making sure that you do the most pressing thing first, prioritising your tasks that you need to do. That's something that I've had to learn and put into practise while working four days a week alongside doing a PhD. What I have to do in the morning is I like to spend sort of half an hour to forty minutes just doing some writing on my dissertation before I start work for the day. And for me, that helps me to feel like I'm making progress on my work without needing hours upon hours, which brings me to one of the tips that sort of popped into my mind when you were talking is to try and keep that that focus and remove those distractions, chunking time into smaller amounts of time, so using things like the Pomodoro technique. I quite like using the Forest app. And what I'll do is every morning is I'll set my Forest App for 20 to 30 minutes, so not a huge amount of time. And within that time, I get to just write without stopping. I can close my door and then at the end of it I get a nice little tree that's grown. But that just popped into my mind when you were talking. It's about sort of trying to minimise those distractions where possible, whilst also maintaining flexibility because life happens, but ensuring that we're having those breaks and we're also rewarding ourselves for that hard work that we do, so thank you so much for sharing all those incredible and very helpful tips with us. Some of our listeners may be educators and involved in learning support, so what advice would you have for those people in terms of how they can support students in learning how to organise their studies? What can we as educators be aware of? And what can we develop and embed into our teaching our curriculum in order to support time management skills?  
  
Emma: I think anything we can talk about time management until the cows come home, if that’s the saying. But I think it’s best to get the students practising it and actually doing it. And so I think building modules and designing them and designing when assignments are going to be handed, factoring in that it will be really good to actually get the students to be managing that time by doing the different activities. If it is that they've got a weekly reading, make that really obvious from the beginning. You need to do this reading at a certain time each week to be prepared for the lecture. You need to do these questionnaires for the seminar. Having that conversation right from the very beginning of what the expectations are and giving them those tips, but then also the opportunity for them to go and actually use these techniques.  
 
I had a really brilliant module when I was an undergraduate. It was on American politics and every three weeks we had to write a seven hundred and fifty word paper (so it was very short) on the topic of the lecture was on and I thought that was brilliant because the lecturer divided students into a third, so one week one third would write the paper, then the next week the other third would, and then the next week the other third would. And then it would go back to the beginning. I hope that makes sense. And that was brilliant because you knew as a student that this week it's my priority to write this paper and I will be presenting this at the seminar to the other students, but then next week, it's going to be somebody else's turn. And you would really hope that the other person would be prepared because you are kind of learning from them, so you would also be prepared yourself when it was your turn because that's what you would want from them.  
 
I think the ways modules are organised can really be done in a way where they encourage time management and they encourage prioritisation. Of course, any module that’s got assessments does to a certain extent encourage time management. But I think it's good to have open dialogue right from the very beginning about the expectations and how to meet them. And I'm going to give you certain tasks that you need to fix into your weekly timetable.  
 
I also think as educators, it's very important for us to be aware of the students in the room. I know when there's an undergraduate module and there’s 200 students on it, that’s very difficult, but when you meet in small groups and you're in seminars or tutorials, you can get more of a feel of how the students are coping and be responsive to that. If you’re noticing that everybody looks absolutely knackered and has clearly been out or not sleeping, then it's about having those conversations. And the example I drew from earlier where my lecturer told me about this nine-to-five schedule, I was obviously pro-active in going and seeking help, but not everybody would feel able to. And, you know, when you come to university, it's a whole new environment. And even not just for first year students: second year, third year, each year is a new kind of level up. Likewise, when you enrol on postgraduate courses as well. Being aware that there are these new expectations on students and they might be very overwhelmed, and so, as educators, we need to be responsive to the way that they’re kind of feeling and get a feel for the room and get a feel for the pace that the students are working at and try and adapt it. If it's not possible for us to adapt because, for example, there's only so many weeks in the semester, then have a look at strategies and how we can talk to the students to help them better cope with the workload.  
  
Aimee: You've touched on a number of really important things are about getting to know the students that we're teaching. And one of the ways I've gone about doing that this year is by sharing an anonymous pre-module survey with students. Within the survey (it's very short), I ask them if there's anything that I would need to know in order to support them, any ways they find particularly useful to learn, any activities. It’s a chance for students to let me know without necessarily identifying themselves (unless they want to) anything they might need for me to support them to succeed within the module. And that includes things like managing their time so they can submit their assessments and all those things that come with learning throughout a module, so I think that's really key: getting to know people and what students needs and then we can provide that more tailored support.  
  
Emma: Just be mindful that students might not know themselves at the beginning. Often it's partway through a module or partway through their course that they might think, ‘oh, right, actually, this is what I'm struggling with’. Sometimes you don't know what you're struggling with. You don't know what you don't know at the end of the day. So sometimes it might be halfway through where they need to be given that chance to give you feedback. So, yeah, that's just another thing to be mindful of.  
 
Something else just popped into my head relating to the last question that I just wanted to say. When we were talking about being flexible and needing to exercise self-discipline, one of the things that I think you touched on when you mentioned about chunking up bits of work. If you are feeling demotivated and you're trying to exercise self-discipline, but perhaps it's not going so well, a way to kind of tackle that is to have some easy tasks that you can get done. As well as how urgent it is for something to be done, also have a think about how long things are going to take you. Are there things that you can tackle when you're perhaps feeling a little bit tired or less motivated? That might be more to do with planning or to do with what you like or don't like doing. Personally, when I'm feeling a bit knackered, I would rather do some kind of planning than sitting writing because that takes a lot more brain power for me. I suppose by getting to know yourself and getting to know what you find easier, when you are having those periods of being demotivated, just try and have a few easier tasks that you can tackle. And what you'll find is you'll kind of training your mind then to see that, ‘oh yeah, I can do this. I'm actually being productive now because I've got through these little tasks’ and then you might find it easy to get over the big hurdles.  
  
Aimee: Yeah, that's a really great piece of advice. It's about recognising our energy levels throughout the day, isn't it?  I know personally that if I want to get any writing done in the day, I need to set time aside in the morning to get that done because when it comes to lunch time, my energy just drops. I'm very capable of doing administrative work, emails, all those kinds of things within the afternoon. I can also read in the afternoon, as well. But when it comes to writing, I know for me personally, it's not going to happen. Whereas, on the flip side, I have a friend who is not a morning person in terms of their energy. They struggle with getting their writing done, but they're really productive with their writing in the afternoon, so they set aside time in the afternoon to get those kinds of tasks done. And I think that's something that teaching staff could have discussions with students about. And I think that's one thing that's really coming through our conversation is making sure there's dialogue about things like time management. And, you know, we can say to students, you might work differently from someone within the course, and that's fine: don't compare yourself. Find a time within the day where you can get your reading done for the seminar or the lecture, where you can start planning for your assignment, and have these tasks planned out in advance, mapped to your energy levels or your typical energy level throughout the day so that you know at 10:30 on a Thursday afternoon you're going to get stuck into that reading that you've got to do for the week. So, yeah, I think there's a few things that we can do as teaching staff to support students develop these skills. Before we move on to the final question, did you have anything else that you wanted to add to that?  
  
Emma: No, that was it. It just popped into my head when you were talking so I wanted to just give that tip.  
 
Aimee: Thank you. Let's finish up with a final question. What is your top tip for people when it comes to organising their time and their studies? What would be your number one takeaway that you want our listeners to remember?  
 
Emma: OK, so I think it's all very well having a plan for the week and knowing that on Tuesday morning you're going to tackle a certain task. But you need to already know what you're going to do when you going to tackle that task because, say if you've given yourself an hour to do something, and you sit down and the first half an hour of that is you figuring out exactly what you're supposed to be doing in this hour, you're then not going to be productive. So what I try to do myself and would advise others to do is maybe on a Sunday evening, Monday morning, or whenever you like to divide up the week, have a think of what the week ahead is going to look like and know what you're going to do when you get to each of these tasks that you need to do. It's just having a plan before you then go and tackle each thing to save you sit sitting there and perhaps procrastinating if you're not feeling totally motivated. If you know that on Tuesday morning is when you need to prepare for your seminar, you don't need to be logging on to the calendar, looking at your module guide, checking what the preparation is. Really, you should already know so you can just crack straight on and do it. And so that would be my kind of final top tip for you guys.  
  
Aimee: Definitely one I should stick up on my wall and adhere to. Well, thank you again for joining us on this episode. It has been incredibly insightful talking to you. I know I'm definitely going to be listening to this episode again and scribbling down some notes just as reminders to myself to put into practise some of the things that we've been speaking about today. Thank you also to our listeners for joining us for this episode.   
  
Emma: Thank you for having me.  
  
Aimee: Thanks again for joining us today for this episode on organising academic studies as part of the Study Matters Podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode via our web page, which we've linked in the show notes for this episode. We hope you'll join us again next month for the episode on academic reading with Angela Rhead. Angela is a Curriculum Developer and founder of the fantastic reading retreats and annual Becoming Well Read Symposium at Keele University. In the meantime, you can contact us by email at Academic.Skills@keele.ac.uk and we'll include this information in the show notes to this episode. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care. 

Resources for episode 1

Emma and Aimee spoke about The Pomodoro Technique as a tool to divide tasks into smaller actions to help make work manageable, minimise distractions, and maintain concentration. Find out more about the Pomodoro technique. 
  
The Academic and Digital Skills team at Keele University created study guide to help you to manage your time and studies effectively. 

Transcript for episode 2

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome back to Study Matters, an academic and study skills podcast hosted by Keele University. This episode focuses on academic reading, why it matters for your studies, and some techniques you can use to make your reading more effective to help you achieve your academic goals. I'm your host, Aimee Merrydew, and joining us to discuss this topic is Angela Rhead. Angela is a Senior Curriculum Developer at Keele University, where she supports students and teachers to develop their learning and teaching practices. Angela is especially passionate about academic reading, leading her to develop her popular reading retreats and the annual Becoming Well Read Symposium. Angela draws on this experience in our conversation today, creating an episode that’s packed with top tips for effective academic reading. We hope you enjoy listening to our conversation and find it useful. 
 
Before we chat about some techniques for academic reading, please could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your roles at Keele? 
 
Angela Rhead: I'm a Senior Curriculum Developer at Keele in KIITE (the Keele Institute of Innovation and Teaching Excellence). It’s a strange role because it’s a two part one. I'm half learning developer and half academic developer, which means I'm working with both students directly thinking about their academic practices and also academics thinking about how they support students in the curriculum with academic practices. And by academic practises, I'm talking about reading, research, writing, presenting ideas, all those things that underpin the studies that students are doing at university. 
 
Aimee: Wow, so that's a huge amount of experience you're going to be sharing with us today then, so thank you so much for making the time to come and chat with us on the show today. Let’s jump in. What is academic reading? How would you define it for our listeners? 
 
Angela: I think it has similarities with other reading, especially at the beginning. Academic reading has phases and stages, which sometimes we don't think about very clearly. The beginning of academic reading is reading for understanding, which we would consider chime with all of the reading and we're getting to grips with what the discipline already knows or understands or agrees upon. And we have to do that sort of reading for understanding. But when it comes to working on assignments and research, what lots of students are challenged by is a shift in the requirements of reading. And that becomes reading in order to not just understand ideas that already exist, but to come to new understandings. And so reading becomes a phase of analysis and thinking and creation of new ideas, perspectives, and it has to be approached in a different way and the different phases have to be approached differently. Simply continuing to read and read and read for understanding doesn't help us to read, for enquiry, for research, or to create new knowledge. So I think there's similarities, but there's something very different in the purpose of academic reading in order to support enquiry, research, and to explore and answer questions. 
 
Aimee: I know when I attended one of your reading retreats a few years ago, you completely transformed my understanding of what academic reading is. At this point, I was probably the first or second year into my postgraduate research programme so that surprised me a little bit that I'd realised that actually I'd been approaching my reading not in the most effective way in in the past, because I remember you saying to me, ‘don't read a journal article like you would a novel. You don't want to be stumbling to find the argument as you go through the reading, you want to know what that argument is, what the findings are, from the get-go by spending some time to focus on that abstract’. I don't want to jump too much into the future because we're going to be talking about this point in a moment, but I just wanted to share just how you transformed my understanding of academic reading through what you've just said then. 
 
Angela: I think it's really powerful that anecdote because the people who come on the reading retreats, academic reading retreats… which for any of the listeners, if they don't know they’re events that I try to hold events where undergraduates, postgraduates, and academics come together to think about academic reading. It’s really fascinating because it is something that opens up new understandings for people at all levels, so people, even people doing a doctoral programme, are still wrestling with how to read for enquiry and how to do that confidently and efficiently and even some of the professors who've come on the reading retreats. It's not that they've necessarily learnt how to read for academic purposes, but they've suddenly understood how they do it because it was tacit, so they often didn't understand why students were struggling with reading because they hadn't noticed how they read. And so that's really interesting that thinking about academic reading and why and how we do it can be really beneficial for people at every stage of their career. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, definitely. I know I could do the reading, but understanding how I was getting there and learning those techniques and understanding that actually, I'm reading for a specific purpose in mind (and as you said, that's for enquiry) really shifted my understanding of what academic reading is. That brings us to the next question I'd like to ask you. Why do you think academic reading matters for our studies? Why do you think it's important?  
 
Angela: I think one of the tales I like to tell and I say this to academics and to students in the one-to-one academic coaching appointments. Most of the time, most students come and talk about the fact that they're having a problem writing an essay or an assignment or a report, and they're signifying this problem with producing something. And most of the time when we actually unpack what's happening, they haven't been confident enough in the reading, in the thinking, in order to be able to write the piece. I think it comes as a surprise for most people that, especially at undergraduate level, that the quality of their writing is directly related to the quality of their reading. That they must read with breadth and depth in order to inform their conclusions and their thinking, but also that they have to make explicit the reading in their writing. One of the key myths for undergraduates is this idea that they have to be original and that originality means that they have to have all of their own ideas when actually what we're asking them to do is to situate their thinking in the ideas that already exist. You can't over reference and cite because by doing that, you're showing how you're engaging with the knowledge of the discipline, with the ideas that already exist. And one of my favourite sayings is ‘you are joining conversations that already exist’. And that's what we want to see in your work, not creating a new key theory because we don't expect that because you've only just started your journey. 
 
Aimee: Our listeners can't see, but I'm shaking my head a lot in agreement here because again that's something you taught me a few years ago now and it's something I have fed back to the students I work with: they're engaging in academic conversations through the reading they do. That's why it's important because they're showing they're contributing to these conversations. They're not necessarily reinventing the wheel, if that's the saying, which is something that I used to feel quite a lot of anxiety about myself as a student, so academic reading matters because it's a way to engage in those scholarly conversations within our subject areas and even outside of them as well. 
 
Angela: Yes, that reminds me. The other challenge is the word ‘critical’. That's again misunderstood because that idea that in order to be independent, people somehow need to prove that everyone else is wrong and their ideas are better is a misconception. ‘Critical’ has many meanings in different contexts. In a hospital, critical care suggests a sense of urgency and importance. And of course, being critical of someone can indicate that you're being negatively critical of them. But criticality in the academic sense is not that. Criticality is noticing important relationships, noticing where things do and don't chime and coincide and what the significance of those things are. And I think that word ‘critical’ is worthy of unpacking for students in order to move them away from that criticising notion of criticality, especially when they're reading, which I think is really important.  
 
And then one last thing I think again, going back to the phases of reading, of course we read to understand: we have to get to grips with the ideas that we are starting to engage with in the conversations we're joining. But then we must read again. There must be cycles of reading, sometimes the same materials. But what happens is as we start to read and analyse coincidentally, reading becomes part of analysis and thinking and creating, not the thing you just do beforehand. And I think that's a key to shifting your reading to effective academic reading. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, so seeing it as a cyclical process rather than a linear one. We return to key texts, we look at their references, explore the reading the authors are engaging in, and also through this reading our own ideas may shift, so we have to revisit it with that change in perspective in mind as well. It matters because academic reading helps us to expand our understanding of a topic, but it will also help us to develop our ideas through each reading. 
 
Angela: And to understand how we fit within those ideas, how what we are saying relates to what other people have said. And that's what it means to join a discipline, to be a scholar in a particular community, which is what the assignments generally are looking for. 
 
Aimee: We've started to already touch on this, but for the next question, I wanted to know if there was anything else you had to add about why you think some of the issues we've spoken about might be common for students when they come to do their academic reading? Why do you think these issues are common? Is there anything else you have to add to that? 
 
Angela: Yeah, quite a bit. I convene the Becoming Well Read conference symposium. There's been a couple of them now, which have been very popular and developed academic reading retreats and have a focus on academic reading because what I feel is that academic reading and reading is considered to be a given, and we become obsessed with the end product, which is the written assignment or the paper or the dissertation. And so we focus on how we can produce the end product and miss a focus on all the things we do in order to be able to create that end product. And because reading is something that's quite individual, it's very often private. We don't see people reading, we don't see professors reading, and how they read. All we see is the paper and the books that are published at the end. And so the whole community, both students and academics, have misaligned their focus and I'm attempting to bring academic reading back into focus to give it a primary position in students’ thinking about their studies and academics and teachers thinking about how they design their curriculum in their programmes in order to support students to understand what the thinking processes around studying, not merely the outcome. And that's been quite interesting. 
 
Some of the academics I've worked with have actually started to create assessments around reading, rather than the assessments around the end written products and embedding them into the actual learning itself, which has had really amazing results. And so yes, I think one of the common issues is we all think we can do it already. Those people who do it well often don't realise they're doing it and how they're doing it. And then by the time you get to year three in an undergraduate phase or post-graduate phase, it becomes something you are almost embarrassed to ask about., so everyone's just stumbling around. I often call it the dark arts of academic skills, the reading, because it's a thing that people do privately and struggle with and we don't actually focus on it and talk about it and therefore it is a real stumbling block. 
 
Aimee: When you've just been speaking then, you've reminded me of an activity that I've been doing with students is to use collaborative annotation software and tools. We've been using Talis Elevate at Keele University. And it's been a way for students to collaboratively read and analyse the texts we're studying together. I'll populate the text with some questions to help students engage in that reading for enquiry that you were speaking about. Just making visible the reading processes that, as you've said, are usually very private, which can create a sense of shame if people are struggling with it. That's been really a wonderful learning experience for both myself and the students I've been working with to read together and make it a communal activity, which is again something that I really think your work and your Becoming Well Read symposium is something that really promotes and something that's really shaped my approach to academic reading, so that brings us to the next question. I would like you to share two to three strategies you feel would help students to read effectively for academic purposes in order for them to achieve their academic goals. Why do you think these strategies are useful? And if you know if any resources that you think would be useful for our listeners to go and check out, then please do let us know and I’ll include them in the show notes.  
 
Angela: I think if we start at the beginning, the strategy is to think about the texts that you were reading. I suppose I'm thinking about undergraduates at the moment coming to study at this level and to think about sort of the levels of reading that they're doing, so to see textbooks and books are things that are setting out ideas that are already confirmed, accepted, and almost a given in that particular discipline and to think about the audience. A textbook is a book written for students, which is almost saying: ‘hey, look, this is what everybody else knows already’, so if you want to join this conversation in Biology, History, or Philosophy, you need to catch up with 200, 100, 500, 1000 years of thinking, so what we'll do is give you a good summary, a history, and an overview. I talk about landscapes a lot in reading and really, textbooks are your guidebooks, so if you were going to go to another country or another city, you might get guidebook that gave you a potted history: the best places to go, what it's most famous for, the landmarks, the best places to eat. And that's what a textbook is, so you need to read it like that. You're not going to find new, interesting ideas in a textbook. You're going to find what is the history of this knowledge in this discipline. And read it that way. You need to know it. It's that reading for understanding what we've always done, trying to get to grips with ideas.  
 
A book is written with more depth. And you're going to get to grips with ideas there. But you know, the books are only written when the ideas have become quite common and accepted and have been thrown around that community for a while. And then maybe a book will come out. So those ideas might be new to you, but they're not new to the discipline. And again, you have to get to grips with them. And once you've done that and you're starting to look at your assignment and you're starting to read in more depth about certain things, then you start to do the second phase and you start to plot the reading you're doing for more recent ideas or to answer a question for an essay, that reading against it. So I think, yeah, that first strategy is to think about who the audience of the text is for and how you were going to read it and why you were reading it. And those phases of, first of all I'm getting to grips with it and then I'm going to come back and read these things and read more recent works and to start to look at how those ideas link together, so that would be my first strategy… 
 
And I think one of the things you then think about is, have I read enough breadth to understand that scenery in the landscape? And then for this particular assignment, any assignment you’re given, will ask you to delve deeper into one thing, and that's when you start to do the reading and the critical reading around. OK, this one aspect to this question: What do people saying about it? Have people got different views about it? What's the most recent evidence here? How does that link? What is that saying about this question? And that's a different phase of reading. That's one of the strategies. It's sort of like an approach rather than a technique. 
 
Of course, another strategy, which you'll be familiar with from the Reading Retreats, is to notice the academic reading isn't a mystery. Academic writing presents the conclusion first and is a persuasive piece of writing, particularly journal articles, which is what we look at it in reading retreats when we're thinking about getting into the depths of a subject. And so what academic reading and writing will do is to give you the conclusion first with the main premises and then take you on a journey of the evidence to support that conclusion and then it will reiterate the conclusion again. I suggest to people that they read the abstract and the conclusion to get to grips with that and spend at least half an hour on it because all of the key points of any academic paper are in the abstract and conclusion. The rest is just an explanation of how they got there. So, as you say, Aimee, when you came on the reading retreats not to read like a novel. Lots of people skip the abstract, start at what they think is the beginning, and then try to figure out as they go along what this paper is saying. So, yeah, I would suggest stop doing that. Read the abstract and conclusion. Spend half an hour or even hour on the abstract and conclusion. In three hours, you could have done three papers and you'll know what the key points for each one of them were. If you look at the reference list, you’ll start to see the common texts they are using, so you can start to see who the Oscar winners of that particular subject are. It gives you an overview and then you can choose which ones you want to delve into more deeply.  
 
So that's primarily about journal articles. However, a good textbook, which has chapters in it, will also tell you what the chapter is about at the beginning and then summarise the key points of the chapter at the end, so even though that's a technique I've developed in terms of reading journal articles, which is specifically about academic reading, you can apply it to other books. It's very useful technique and it helps you to get to grips with what your reading is about before you actually read it, so I think that is a really useful strategy. Oh, and I’ll share the links with you for some of those materials on the abstract and the conclusion of writing. 
 
And the third one is when you've done the reading and you’re starting to focus in on a question. I found that the use of what scientists might call data extraction tables or we call synthesis matrices useful for bringing your reading together. It’s a grid with the texts in the first column and then all the other columns can be what you want them to be. If you're a scientist, you might put sample size, strategy, methods. If you are a sociologist, you might have been taking the themes that you're looking at for your essay, so you might have power, culture, whatever it is in your columns, and be noting what each of the texts has come up with under each theme. But for either this scientific approach or the humanities or the social sciences, it doesn't matter. The key thing is that you do that and you're bringing together your selected reading to look at how they relate to one another, so the most important column is the final column, which you should leave blank, which is where you note down similarities, differences, themes that are coming out of the grid that you are noticing. And that's the work of reading that starts to create new ideas and new knowledge and shows you why you think what you think, and therefore you can support your thinking when you come to write down these ideas in your grid and you know where your ideas have come from and how they relate to one another. It makes that reading and thinking in the later stages more manageable. 
 
Aimee: The table you just mentioned is something I've been applying to my own lot since I went to a reading retreat. And one thing I've also been doing alongside that is I like to leave another column for when I'm at the later stages of my reading, so I've done the legwork you mentioned. I'm understanding the foundations and the histories of the topic in the discipline. I have a greater sense of what it is I want to argue and focus on in my own work. I like to have a column where I summarise how it's relevant to my own research, so I can refer back to that reading and not have to re-read the whole source again. Of course, as you said, we do revisit the readings, but it just makes it a bit more manageable to be able to look over the data extraction table and see which sources are going to be most relevant for me to go back and read again, but then to do that extra bit where I think how is this relevant to my work? Does it challenge my thinking? Am I in agreement with it?  
 
And another thing I do, and I think this might be because I'm a humanities-based student, is keep an annotated bibliography as well. So, for our listeners, if you're not familiar with annotated bibliographies, that's where you write out the full reference, so similar to the table that Angela's mentioned, but I just do it on a Word document. You write out the full reference, then you summarise the topic, their main argument or finding, and then how it's relevant to your own work. It's similar to the data extraction table, but it's just a slightly different format. It depends how people prefer to work, really. You could also do in bullet points as well. 
 
Angela: Yeah, I would also recommend Alison Wray and Mike Wallace. They look at postgraduate reading and writing in particular, but I use their synthesis worksheet with my abstract-conclusion worksheet, which is very similar to that and says, right, what's this book or this article or this paper? What is it arguing? What's the evidence it's using? How convinced are you? Why am I reading this source? What's the purpose of it? And then how am I going to use it? And so that's that shift, again, as you're saying, isn't it from not what is this paper saying, but what is it saying about my enquiry and therefore how am I going to use it in my discussion? And I think that's a really important shift.  
 
Aimee: Let's move on to our next question. Some of our listeners may be educators or support student learning. How might they help students to read for their academic studies? How can they create opportunities for students to develop this academic skill for you that they're teaching in their curricula? 
 
Angela: I mentioned earlier that I’ve collaborated with some academic staff on changing the modules and the curriculum itself, and that's something eduactors could consider. They could work with academic developers and the Curriculum Development team to do that. That's a very focused job of changing the actual delivery, changing the assessment, which is a big commitment. And of course, I'd encourage all academics to consider that, but I think on a smaller scale, reading in front of students and reading with students is key. As you said, you've been doing this activity by annotating online, but I've also worked with an academic in Law who was quite excited about these ideas and spent time reading in tutorials with student groups. She was really excited about what happened there because what she had to make sure the reading was new for her, so she was genuinely reading and discovering things, and they'd have time where they all sat and read. She’d say, ‘Oh! Have you seen what this says here?’ Actually exposing students to their academic mentors or their professors reading practices and seeing them read can be really insightful and exciting and motivate students to read and showing students that you don't read easily. And that's the other thing I think is really important to say, is that academic reading doesn't get any easier. It is hard. It is time consuming. It is challenging. All people who come to the academic reading retreats, whether they're year three undergraduates, postgraduates, early career academics or professors, all still talk about the challenge of finding time to read and the challenge of finding time to read effectively, to the quality they'd like to. And that's because it isn't easy, so don't beat yourself up if you're finding academic reading hard. It's meant to be challenging because it's writing that's done for specialists, not for people starting. So the more you read, the more difficult the reading becomes in a way. But don't beat yourself up. It’s supposed to be challenging. It's not supposed to be easy. And that's why it's worth spending the time thinking about it. So educators, read in front of your students and with your students. 
 
Aimee: I really love that suggestion. It's almost like creating a little reading community or a book club. It comes back to making academic reading visible and I'm paraphrasing a quotation from your article on Becoming Well Read, which we'll link in the show notes if anyone's interested in reading it. It’s about making these reading processes visible both for students so they can see how reading can be done and realise they're not the only ones maybe struggling with it, but also for educators to be able to identify areas where their students are struggling so they can then put some support in place. I really love that idea of creating a reading community. I mean, it can make what a lot of us have come to see as a solitary activity become something that's very community-based, it's very conversational. Again, we're engaging in those conversations, so why not bring that into the actual reading experience? 
 
Angela: Yeah. It’s important to remember that, unless it's a textbook or a book where people are explaining ideas that have already been discussed, academic writing in journals (which is what we want lots of people to be reading) is a conversation with an academic audience, and it is also a persuasive performance. The academic papers you are reading are other academics trying to persuade you of a really great new idea. And again, that's how you should be reading it.  
 
Aimee: I think there's a huge amount of information we've discussed with one another and I think there's a lot of tips, techniques, and strategies on which I'll be making notes to remind myself of when I'm approaching my reading. But that brings us to our very final question. What is your top tip for people when it comes to reading for academic purposes? 
 
Angela: Oh, it's hard for me to pin it down because I think they're all important. But if I was thinking about the technique I advise people on most often, then it is the abstract and conclusion. Read the abstract and conclusion. Get to grips with these sections. You can get through lots of papers and feel quite confident you've got an idea of these conversations that are happening between all these different papers before you delve into any of them and spend your precious time getting lost in a lovely full paper. 
 
Aimee: On that note, we'll finish up here. Thank you so much for talking to us about academic reading today. As always, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you. Thank you also to our listeners for joining us for the episode. We really hope you found it useful and feel more confident about approaching your academic reading in the future. Thanks again for joining us today for this episode on academic reading as part of the Study Matters podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode via our web page, which we've linked in the show notes for this episode. In the meantime, you can get in touch with us via email us at Academic.Skills@keele.ac.uk and we’ll include this information in the show notes to this episode. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care!

Resources for episode 2

Angela spoke about her annual Becoming Well Read symposium and academic reading retreats, which she created to help students and academics enhance their academic reading practices. Want to find out more about reading retreats and why they are beneficial for learning how to read critically? Read Angela’s article on academic reading retreats. 
 
Angela spoke about a worksheet she has created to help you understand the main argument and methodology of an academic article by summarising the abstract and conclusion. You can download a copy of this abstract conclusion synthesis worksheet. 
 
Angela mentioned a example data extraction table, which you can use to help you make connections between academic texts you read for your assignments. Download the document to access two example versions of the synthesis matrix. 
 
Angela mentioned Alison Wray and Mike Wallace’s book Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates, which provides lots of great tips for critical reading and writing at postgraduate level. 

Aimee mentioned a collaborative reading tool called Talis Elevate, which she uses to help students read and annotate texts together online. Find out more about Talis Elevate and view Aimee’s presentation on collaborative reading from the Teach. Learn. Collaborate. Repeat. Conference (2021). 
 

Transcript for episode 3

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome back to Study Matters, an academic and study skills podcast hosted by Keele University. This episode focuses on imposter syndrome, why managing it matters for your studies, and some techniques you can use to help you manage imposter syndrome to find joy in your learning. I'm your host, Aimee Merrydew, and joining us to discuss this topic is Toni Karic. Toni specialises in postgraduate mental health and wellbeing and has been involved in a number of initiatives to remove barriers to well-being, including the Start to Success project. Toni draws on this experience in our conversation today, creating an episode that’s packed full of strategies for identifying and managing imposter syndrome to help students succeed in their studies. Thanks for listening to Study Matters. We hope you find the episode useful.  
 
Welcome to the podcast, Toni. Before we chat about imposter syndrome, please could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role? 
 
Toni Karic: Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. I'm the Student Mental Health project officer and my role focuses on postgraduate support, so I work on the Start to Success project and we’re creating resources and running workshops to support the mental health and wellbeing of students. 
 
Aimee: Brilliant. Thank you so much. I think we should just jump right in then. What is imposter syndrome in a learning context and how would you define it for our listeners? 
 
Toni: I think imposter syndrome really just refers to that internal experience that we have of believing that you might not be as competent as other people perceive you to be. And, it might also be associated with feeling as though you're a fraud, that any moment you'll be found out, that you don't belong, or that you only got where you are through luck. And I think that one, especially in a learning context, is quite common. I've read things online where people have said that the students they’ve worked with have thought they got accepted onto that course through error, basically. So yes, I think the feeling of not belonging and fraudulence is a common one. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of our listeners may be able to empathise with whatever context that they're working within. So why do you think that imposter syndrome might be so common in a learning and a university context? 
 
Toni: I think there's quite a few different reasons. Comparison is one of first things. We often compare our progress to the progress of our peers. And I think in academia especially, people might share their progress with their friends. You might see how other people have progressed through, like if you're doing a PhD, how they got through that progression and things like that. And I think that can trigger those feelings. But the fact is, we often also don't see the challenges that people face when they're going through their studies. And we also don't see the tools they've got to manage challenges, the support they've got to manage challenges or other kinds of privilege that they've got to help them navigate their academic experience. 
 
Another thing that triggers feelings of imposter syndrome is: there's a lot of competition as well, especially when you sort of like progress into sort of postgraduate, there's a lot of pressure to publish or to go to talks and things like that. And I think that adds even more extra pressure, especially when you've got those comparisons. You might be seeing what other people are going on to do and you might be looking at where they are in their studies. You know, if you're doing a PhD, someone might be running their first study while you haven’t even got your ethics in, for example. But the fact is, everyone is on a different journey, and I think sometimes we forget that.  
 
Aimee: Yeah, it can be unhelpful to make those comparisons, but I think sometimes we maybe instinctively make those comparisons, which leads me onto my next question, which is how you think people can identify whether or not they're experiencing imposter syndrome? What are some of the common signs?  
 
Toni: You can think about common signs in terms of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. In terms of thoughts, you might be having thoughts of ‘I shouldn't have to ask for help. I shouldn't need to ask for help. I should already know this. I shouldn't need support. Anyone could have achieved what I've achieved so far. I'm only here because of luck or because of help from others’. I think these are some really common thoughts. And in terms of feelings, you might be feeling anxious. You might be having feelings of self-doubt. And in terms of behaviours, I think it can manifest in not asking for help, not putting yourself forward for things because you feel that self-doubt, and also being a perfectionist or over-preparing for your work. If you think, ‘you know, yeah, I identify with that’, then I think they’re signifiers that you might be experiencing imposter syndrome. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, I mean, I’m definitely identifying some of the things that you've mentioned there. Perfectionism is really something I’ve had to work on over the years because I would find myself spending huge amounts of time on something that didn't necessarily need that amount of time invested into it. So yeah, I think what you've just said there really resonates with some of my experiences.  
 
I think what would be really helpful for our listeners is if you would kindly recommend two or three strategies that they could try and use in order to help them manage imposter syndrome, if that's something that they're experiencing. And it would be really great if for each of these techniques that you recommend, if you could say why you think they are useful for studying and learning. 
 
Toni: Yeah, of course, no problem. I think the first tip I would give is to make sure that you recognise your achievements and progress. Our brain is really hardwired to pay attention to deficits. Anything that's negative or missing, we’re really, really good at recognising and paying attention to. And that can be things in our life or things we perceive to be missing or a deficit in ourselves. What we are far less good at is spotting the things in our lives and in ourselves that are going well or have gone well or that could be perceived as strengths or positives. This is a really, really hard thing to do. If you've ever had to write any kind of job application, it can feel like you're bragging, and it can feel really uncomfortable. But I think it's really useful to get into the habit of because we're so good at talking to ourselves in a critical way that I think we need to build skills for talking to ourselves more kindly. 
 
There are a few different ways that I've heard of people doing this. One student I spoke to said they record all of their progress in Excel: if they read a journal article, that goes in Excel. If they spend an afternoon talking to a friend about their work, that goes in the record. If they go for a walk, they record it as thinking time. And often when we think about recording achievements, we think about it as being these big things, like getting something published or going to a conference, and it can then become almost a competition to outdo yourself. But I think recalibrating what we see as achievement is a really important thing to do and to learn how to do. If you spend time thinking, that is just as much valuable time and deserving of being recorded as going to a conference. 
 
I personally keep a calendar. On my Outlook calendar I write all the things that I've done that day and I find that far more preferable than a To-Do list. I can't get on with To-Do lists. I always feel overwhelmed by them, so instead I write a ‘Done’ list. It's really nice then to look back on and see. When you think and feel like ‘I've spent all this time and I haven't done anything’, but you go back and you look and you see all that you have done and have achieved, you know, even if it's not anything that you might see as being deserving of recognition. 
 
So yeah, I would say make sure that you don't get into competition with yourself. If you're someone who finds it hard to brag about yourself or recognise those achievements, then I think this is something that would be valuable to practise. And also remembering as you do this that you're worth as a person is not defined by your productivity. If you're a person who finds it difficult to recognise ‘thinking time’ or a walk as being worthwhile, then I think this would be something that would be valuable to do. 
 
Aimee: I think these are all really, really helpful techniques, so thank you for sharing them with us. Some of our listeners may be educators and involved in learning support. How might they help students to manage imposter syndrome? How can they embed these conversations and these techniques into their teaching and their curricula? 
 
Toni: That's a really good question. I think because the things that trigger impostor syndrome are quite varied, there’s probably no one approach to address the issue completely, but I'll have a go at outlining a few things that might help.  
 
The first thing I would encourage would be for educators and those involved in learning support to look at in what capacity they work with students and what aspect of the student experience might be triggering the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that are associated with imposter syndrome. And then look for opportunities for having open conversations that normalise some of those experiences that might feed into imposter syndrome and then look at whether skills development or interventions at the level of the individual would be most useful or whether interventions that perhaps change the learning environment would be better.  
 
I suppose what I mean by that is it's normal to look at imposter syndrome as something that happens at the level of the individual. It's natural to then provide skills development without looking at what aspects of the environment might also play a part. That could be things like, is the academic culture and learning environment one that provides opportunities to practise failure? Is it one where students feel comfortable asking for help? Is it one where students can see people like themselves succeed in their chosen discipline?  
 
I'll use an example of something that came through my work with PGRs. It was really common for people to talk about feeling as though they shouldn't ask for help, that they should already know the answer to whatever query, question, or uncertainty they had. While working with that group, we might look at how to cultivate an academic culture that promotes asking for help, or at least normalises not knowing the answer or direction you want to go in right away—especially for new starters.  
 
And we might also look at how to create opportunities to have open conversations about failure. One thing that came up a lot in my work with PGRs was how many of them emphasise the importance of owning your own success as a way of managing imposter syndrome. It can be hard to own your own successes, but it's all too easy to see failure as some sort of proof that we don't belong. And I think that is especially so because failure is something that we often don't talk about and we often do it in private, so we don't get to see other people's experiences of something that is actually a normal, common part of the learning process. So, for PGRs, which is the group that I've mostly been working with, we might demystify the PhD a little bit and look at running sessions where lecturers or supervisors might share their own experiences of failure to get that conversation going. 
 
And there's also a big pressure to succeed at university and a lot of us can see things like failure or even maybe just not getting the result that we expect as proof that we are actually frauds and we don't belong. So, we might look at reframing failure a little bit or, teaching students how to fail well, how to re-imagine failure and how to build from it. Research also says that perfectionism is quite closely linked with imposter syndrome and people might go to great lengths in order to avoid failure or to uphold those unsustainable high standards. So, we might run workshops where you teach skills that help people to pursue healthy high standards, rather than unrelenting high standards that then go on to negatively impact their life.  
 
Those are a couple of ways—using failure as an example—of things that we might do. To summarise: look for opportunities to have open conversations that normalise common experiences. Secondly, look at interventions at the individual and finally, look at what aspects of the academic environment might play a role in imposter syndrome. 
 
Aimee: Thank you again, you've given us so much food for thought there and also some practical techniques that we can all implement into our teaching to support the people that we teach. To finish up the episode then, I thought it would be really great to hear what your top tip is to help our listeners manage imposter syndrome for their academic studies. What’s your one takeaway that you want people to remember?  
 
Toni: My top takeaway would probably be to have the audacity. And this was something that my friend said to me that she was trying to have more of, and it really resonated with me. It means things like, putting yourself forward for things. Have the audacity to put yourself forward for, you know, a presentation or an opportunity or anything, really, because I think it's only through taking those—they can feel like risks at the time—but by taking those opportunities or those risks, I think we often learn so much about ourselves in the process, mostly that we can do the things that we might otherwise not have gone for or done. So that would be my top tip: just go for it, have a go! 
 
Aimee: Great! I think, are such a valuable reflective activity as well, isn't it? You can push yourself to do something that may make you feel initially maybe uncomfortable, like presenting your research at a conference or sharing your research findings through publishing it in an academic journal—to actually give yourself the opportunity to try it out and reflect on how it went and how you felt doing could be a really, really valuable learning experience throughout our studying journeys.  
 
I think we'll finish up there. Thank you again so much for coming on the podcast. It's been really, really great to talk to you today about some of the ways we can identify and manage imposter syndrome, so thank you for your time and coming onto the show today.  
 
Toni: Thank you for having me! 
 
Aimee: Thanks again for joining us today for this episode on managing imposter syndrome as part of the Study Matters podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode via our webpage, which we've linked in the show notes for this episode. You can get in touch with us via Twitter at @Keele_AS or email us at Academic.Skills@keele.ac.uk. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care.

Resources for episode 3

Toni mentioned Start to Success, which is a two-year project led by Keele University and Staffordshire University in partnership with universities, colleges, local authorities, police, and NHS providers across the region. Start to Success aims to support the mental health and wellbeing of students by removing barriers, improving services, and enabling student success. 
 
You can find out more about Start to Success and access the project resources. 

Transcript for episode 4

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, an academic and study skills podcast hosted by Keele University. I'm your host, Aimee Merrydew, and today we’ll be thinking about reflective writing, why it matters for academic studies, and how you can write reflectively to help you think critically about what you're doing, so you can learn from your experiences. As with all our episodes, this episode includes practical tips for students and how to embed them into the curriculum as educators, so without further ado, I'll introduce you to our guest for today: Reverend Professor Will Foster.  
 
Will is the Director of the Master’s in Business Administration and Executive Programmes here at Keele and he has a tonne of experience in teaching reflective writing, so we're very grateful to have him on the podcast today and hope you find our conversation useful.  
 
Thanks again for joining us, Will. Before we dive into reflective writing strategies, please could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in reflective writing? 
 
Will Foster: Yes, certainly, and if I start with why I'm interested in reflective writing, it goes all the way back to after I graduated and I was working for Rolls-Royce and they very kindly put me on an MBA, a Masters’ in Business Administration. As part of that, we had to write reflectively. To an engineer, which is what I was, this doesn't come naturally, but I found it very powerful in terms of the development that it gave. So very briefly I worked for Rolls-Royce for five years, got my MBA, and went on to work in consultancy, HR, and recruitment for nine years. There I was helping some of the global brands, large corporates, as well as some very small, local, family businesses in terms of their HR and recruitment. And that was wonderful. That gave me a really good grounding in terms of the actual applied nature of leadership, which is my passion: leadership and organisational culture and strategy. Those are the things that I really get excited about. And then I moved into education, so I worked at Wolverhampton University for 13 years as an Associate Dean and Head of various Schools and then as a Dean and Provost before joining Keele in my current role. 
 
Aimee: Thanks! It's really great to hear a little bit more about your background and why you are interested in reflection. Like you, when I first came to reflective writing, I was quite apprehensive about it. I didn't know how to engage in this type of writing. It was very unfamiliar to me and these are feelings that I'm sure are shared amongst many of the people listening to this episode today, so it's really great to hear you reflect on how beneficial reflective writing turned out to be for your learning and your professional development. But could you also tell us what you mean by reflective writing? How would you define it for listeners?  
 
Will: I'm not sure I could define it, but I could talk a little bit about it. Let's talk about the purpose. The purpose of reflective writing is to help you learn from a particular practical experience and it's effectively looking back to help you look forward. It helps you to make connections between what you’re taught in theory and what you’re doing in practice. 
 
I always talk about the Kolb cycle—that’s K O L B—and Kolb created this idea of a cycle of events of reflection. You start with a concrete experience, so that’s doing something, and then you reflect and observe what was happening. You think back and you review that experience. Now the important part then, as academics, is that we then bring theory and concepts to allow you to conceptualise what was going on and in the light of thinking academically about what was going on, you can then think about, ‘well, how would I do things differently?’  
 
This is called active experimentation: ‘What would I do next time?’ And actually, if you can worry, then you can reflect because worrying is just a certain type of reflection. It usually lacks the theoretical element, but that’s what we bring to the party in terms of the academics. And we look back at these past experiences or our feelings or our emotions to help us perform better in the future. We analyse and explore what happened and why it happened. We bring theory in, and we use academic language to help us consider the strengths and weaknesses and the anxieties that we had or the errors that we made. 
 
And the really interesting thing about it is, whereas lots of other academic writing, we encourage students to write in the third person and write objectively, reflective writing is all about you. It’s all about ‘I’. So, we encourage you to use the I-word. I did this. I thought that. This happened to me. 
 
Aimee: I think it’s that ability or the encouragement of writing in the first person that can often throw students off, because it’s not usually, particularly in an academic setting, the style of writing that they're used to doing. I know it’s something, with the students that I've taught in the School of English, they always ask me: “am I allowed to use ‘I’ in my essays?” And they always seem quite thrown by their ability to put themself within that piece of work. And you've started to touch upon why you think this matters, but do you have anything else that you would like to share with listeners about why you think that reflective writing does matter for academic studies? 
 
Will: Yeah, absolutely. I often say people who work for 10 years can either have 10 years of experience or they can have one year of experience 10 times. And it’s that idea that through reflection, we are not staying the same.  
 
Reflection is the thing that gets us to think about how we would behave differently, how we would think differently, how we would do things differently when we encounter similar sorts of situations in the future. It also helps us to identify our strengths, but also our weaknesses. So, what do we need to really capitalise on in the future? And what sort of things do we need to be aware of in terms of our weaknesses that might trip us up? And what do we need to do about those as well?  
 
And reflectivity, although I make it sound quite a personal activity (and it is that), it also helps us in our interactions with others, because quite often some of the challenges and difficulties that we encounter in our studies and our working life are around the social contexts that we're in. And when we’re in a social context, there are very complex dynamics that are going on. And so, reflection helps us to think deeply. It helps us to think deeply about what's really going on—dip below the surface of actually what happened and then it might be about mine or the other person's feelings or the opinions, but it helps us to critically analyse what was really going on internally to me and in that social dynamic, that relationship with the other person or the other people. 
 
Aimee: I think with reflection—you just sparked a thought for me there—is it provides an opportunity to really slow down and pause in an often quick-paced world and environment. So really it gives us permission to stop and think about what's happened, how we feel about it, and what we may continue to do next time, but also what we may do differently in order to come to a slightly different conclusion that may be better for our development. 
 
Will: That is a brilliant point. And I'm going to take a tangent if that's okay? You introduced me as the Reverend Professor at the beginning and the reason: I am an ordained minister. I'm a pastor, as well as being a full-time academic at Keele. I've worked for charities, I've worked as a consultant for different organisations and what I tend to do is bring all of those experiences into these conversations.  
 
There's a great author called John Mark Comer, C-O-M-E-R, and he wrote a brilliant book that was about the ruthless elimination of hurry. This comes from a very wise, experienced and mature Christian person, called Dallas Willard. And the story goes that John Ortberg—who is a very famous writer and author and pastor himself—was being mentored by Dallas Willard. He was on a phone call and John said to Dallas: “what do I need to do? What do I need to do in order to really deepen my spiritual life and my experiences of life?” There was a long pause on the phone and then Dallas said, “ruthlessly eliminate hurry”.  
 
So, John wrote that down, and he said, “OK, OK, what's next? Come on. What else?” And there was another long pause. And Dallas said, ‘that's it’.  
 
It was a bit of a shock because what John Ortberg wanted was that the ‘10 things that you can do to deepen and improve your life’. And what Dallas was really zoning in on, is exactly what you just said Aimee, which is that our society over the past 100 years, since the industrial revolution, has massively increased in its pace, but not just its pace, also the rate of change. It was one of the Greek philosophers who said—and it was Heraclitus of Ephesus—that the only constant in life is change. And I always add: what we're finding today is the rate of change is accelerating. 
 
If you think about it, in today's age, we've got mobile communications, we've got the internet, we’re global, we've had a digital revolution and people's lives are massively packed and hurried. And what happens there is that we can really miss what's going on internally with us. It’s this slowing down that allows us to go deep and that stops us working on the surface. Sorry, that was a long answer! But hopefully there's something in there that someone will find useful. 
 
Aimee: No, it is useful. And it just reminds me to continue going out on my daily bike rides just to shut off from my computer and my phone and just hear the birds in the air around me. But you've fed us in quite nicely to the next question I wanted to ask you. Why do you think people struggle with reflective writing? What are the common issues that they might experience when trying to engage in this type of writing? And also why do you think these issues might be so common?  
 
Will: I think in academia in particular, we train our students to be very objective. Now, that's not true across all of the subjects, but many, many of the subjects are founded in Natural Sciences. And indeed, in business—the area that I'm interested in—if you go to the early 1900s, you've got Henry Fayol and Frederick Taylor and they bring in this idea of scientific management. In science, what we're taught is that we want to make things as repeatable and objective as possible. And I think in science, the job is to try and isolate the experimenter from the experiment. And it's the same in business; if we're doing company reports, then we're writing in a manner that is impersonal. And so we can't be surprised when people, who have been taught to write impersonally, struggle initially when they're asked to write in the first person.  
 
I think the other thing is—let's face it—many of us maybe lack a bit of confidence. Lots of people I've met in business, and students as well, struggle really to talk about themselves because they just don't feel they've got anything worthwhile to say. So that can be another thing.  
 
I think the biggest barrier, however, is that true reflective writing is exposing. When it works at its best and when I've seen some of my MBA students—my MBA students are mature students who are already senior leaders in full time jobs who are studying part-time—their writing comes to its best is when they are very vulnerable, and when they are very honest and open about what was really going on internally with them. And of course that's a very difficult thing to do, because often when we're in a job, when we're paid—or even as a student before even we get to that stage—we want to put forward our best selves. We want the world to see us in the best possible light. You've only got to look at all the posts on Facebook. Facebook is a brilliant—and I'll show my age now because everybody out there saying, “Oh, surely you mean Instagram or whatever else?”—but the social media, it's all about showing your best life and because you're seeing everybody else's best life, well, of course, between those photo moments, people are going through difficulties. They're going through problems. Life is messy, but almost the social media instances airbrush all of that out, and we only see the very best bits. And so, what reflective writing does at its best, is it allows us to drop those barriers, to drop those walls, and to engage with our authentic self. 
 
Aimee: I think what we're coming to here is, on the one hand, reflective writing is a brilliant tool for helping us to take stock of our strengths and our areas for development. But on the other hand, engaging in that type of thinking and writing can make people feel quite vulnerable because they have to almost expose parts of themselves that we might not normally share with people. When you were speaking, you just made me think back to an episode that I recently recorded with Toni Karic at Keele on imposter syndrome and managing it. And it's that idea of: we live in a world where we have to be perfect—or we feel like we have to be perfect—and we're only allowed to share our successes and keep hidden some of those things that we struggle with or things that we might perceive as failures. But actually, I think by allowing ourselves to pause, think, reflect through our writing, it can perhaps help to navigate and manage some of those feelings of imposter syndrome that I think many of us experience, which leads us to the next question I wanted to ask you, which is would you please be able to briefly recommend two or three strategies that can help people to overcome or manage these issues when writing reflectively? Why do you think these strategies are useful? And also, you've very generously recommended some resources for this episode, but if you have any other resources here that you think would help people when it comes to reflective writing, please do let us know and we'll add them in the show notes. 
 
Will: Certainly! Let me just pick up on your point about imposter syndrome first and I think this is something that I have only recently—believe it or not—come across that concept, but I can relate to the idea of it all the way through my own career and my own learning and my own journey. I think the great thing that I've noticed in our primary schools at the moment, is that when I went to my daughter… my youngest daughter is just moving up to secondary, so my youngest daughter is just going to secondary. She starts tomorrow, actually. But in the primary schools, they have—on the walls—lots of examples of people who failed a lot before they succeeded. In fact, what they have is a little acronym, which is: ‘fail’ means ‘first attempt in learning’.  
And it's this idea that actually—I think the current generations are much better at this than the moderns and the post-moderns, because in the modern and the post-modern, it was about this idea of putting forward your absolute best possible ‘role-model self’. And I think what that's created in society, certainly amongst the generation that's come in behind me, is a desire for authenticity. In the past, people will have respected authority and they'll have done things just because someone's got a position in authority. But what we've seen is authority is flawed and people want authenticity now. What reflective writing allows you to tap into that true self. What I would say is, it is a vulnerable activity and you need to do that in a safe space. I am very much recognising that vulnerability with other people is absolutely critical to understanding who we truly are and reaching out for our best selves. And for that, that means we have to learn from failures, acknowledge failures, in fact even fail forward. When we start something, expect to fail! But don't see that failure as the end of the line, see it as a step towards. How many times did Edison try and make the light bulb and Pasteur, penicillin? All of these sorts of examples give us hope for that.  
 
But in terms of strategies: I have a template. It's not my template. It's one I discovered. That's probably my biggest advice for reflective writing—there's some brilliant resources out there, just Google it. Go to Birmingham Uni, Edinburgh Uni, other universities. Everybody's got something to say about reflective writing, so there's some brilliant resources out there that will help you.  
 
I found and developed a couple of things. One is a template. And in this template, it structures the sort of things that you might think about for your reflective writing. The first thing is that we think about the event itself. What prompted you to reflect? So what actually happened?  
 
And then from there, when you've thought about what happened, the next question might be: what did I learn? What was really going on? Or, what can I learn from thinking about this event? You might think about, next, what went well in that event and what didn't go so well? You might think about your emotions, you might think about your reactions.  
 
But then—as you've thought about those—the thing I would say is: what theory or what concepts can I bring in to bear on this event that happened? For MBA students, for example, we get them to do a 1,500 word reflective diary for every taught module that they do. What we ask them to do is focus on what happened when they were studying that module. It might be something they learnt in the class. It might be an interaction with other students. It could be something that happened in their workplace or it might actually be nothing to do with this particular module, but something in that module has triggered something that happened.  
 
Bring all of that theory and concepts and whatever else into the space, because then what you think about is: what are the implications of this learning? How does it relate to either my workplace if I'm working or my studies if I'm studying? It might be my family life or my community life. How is this relevant? How does it relate?  
 
And then finally, what am I going to do with that? What opportunities does this suggest to broaden my knowledge and understanding for the future? What other development might I need to? I might need to go on a difficult conversations course, for example. If I've had a bit of a conflict situation with someone at work or in my class or that working with on a group project and I'm thinking to myself, ‘crikey, I feel really rubbish after that—that really didn't go well’. And one of the reasons it didn't go well was I needed to have a difficult conversation with that person, but I didn't. I wasn't quite equipped to have that conversation. Well, there are many courses to do that.  
 
And then the final question is: how might I change my practice or my behaviour in the future? What specific actions can I put in place if I ever encounter this again? I think that having a structured process to think critically about our reflections is probably the easiest help because if you’re starting with a blank piece of paper, one of two things happens. We either end up with writer's block and not knowing what to think about or we end up writing reflectively, but very descriptively—we end up writing narratively. 
 
There is a place for narrative writing, and I am a big fan of it, but when we're writing reflectively, we've usually got a limited word count, so we need to be showing our analytical side. What can happen if we haven't got a structure, we can end up being quite descriptive in our writing.  
 
Other bits of advice which you've probably already picked up is go deep in reflection. Don't just report what happened, but what was really going on. What did it mean to you? What impact did it have? How did it question your beliefs or your stereotypes? What did it expose—that self-critical, honest, vulnerable element. And of course, we've already mentioned writing in the first person. It’s about I, It’s about me. That doesn't mean you can't relate it to other people: you learn just as much from other people as you do in the classroom. So, think about how have other people given you feedback, or how have you sought feedback, that will help you in this area that you're reflecting on? 
 
So, yeah, I think they are a few ideas. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, I think one of the things that you mentioned was that, for the Masters’ in Business Administration courses, the students on the course engage in reflective writing at the end of each module, which made me think: reflective writing is really an ongoing process, isn't it? And the more you do it, the more you practise it, the better you become at this skill, this type of writing. It's about building up that familiarity and that… what’s the word I'm looking for? I kind of want to say, “comfort in being a little bit uncomfortable”. That sounds a bit weird… 
 
Will: Yeah, you've got to push yourself out of the comfort zone and recognise it's a learnt skill. Reflective writing is a learnt skill and I'm not going to mention the name of the person, but I supervise students on the Keele MA in Higher Education Practice, and some of my students are nursing students—and they don't have an issue with reflective writing—but some of the students come from very technical backgrounds.  
 
And I had one student who was particularly struggling with understanding why reflective writing and why action research was relevant. But despite their objections and despite them feeling really not equipped to do it, we went on a journey together. I gave them lots of encouragement. And when you set out on this journey, the other bit of advice perhaps is come alongside someone who's good at reflective writing. So, all of those who are studying science subjects, get alongside the teachers or the nurses, and they will help you in overcoming those barriers.  
 
But I can promise you that the students who at the very outset feel this is not for them, they can't see any point in it, that it's really difficult and they don't want to do it, if you stick with it, if you learn the skills, if you see it as a skill to acquire rather than some sort of… I think sometimes people feel it's a bit ephemeral and a little bit fluffy, and a little bit ‘not valuable’ because it doesn't fit in the natural sciences construct. But if we recognise this idea that, actually, we’re social beings in a social world and lots of things that happen can't be explained rationally or scientifically—we're delving a bit deeper than the surface science. We're looking at, well, why and how in terms of people and dynamics and that sort of thing. You can't get at this purely from a scientific method.  
 
You have to think about these about these other things and there can be barriers there, but please, see it as a skill to acquire and then you set yourself up. Yeah, when you're riding a bike, nobody—or very few people, I would imagine—when they're young, jumps on a bike and rides it straight away. You’re learning balancing skills, you’re learning observation skills, you’re learning how to pedal. Or perhaps some of our students are learning to drive. You know, think of all the complex things that are going on in driving lessons and we have to start off, you know. Probably in your first lesson, you're on a car park in a safe space, just turning the wheel. Your instructor’s probably changing the gears and dealing with the brakes, because you have to learn a complex skill. This is complex. A little bit like learning to drive, perhaps.  
 
Aimee: You’ve reminded me of my driving lessons, but anyway, I digress. You have a very good skill at leading the conversation into the next question, so thank you. What I wanted to ask you was: some of our listeners might be educators and they might be learning support workers, so what advice would you have for these listeners about how they can teach reflective writing? Do you have any tips that they can use to support students with developing this academic skill? 
 
Will: I would say refer to our colleagues in KIITE—particularly Angela Rhead. I work quite closely with Angela Rhead, so there are resources in Keele that we can draw upon. But my best advice would be to equip yourself with as many ideas and thoughts about reflective writing, some models: I mentioned Kolb, but there are lots of reflective practitioners, and share these with the students.  
 
Recognise that reflective writing is going to be alien to a large proportion, and therefore we need to help them over some of those barriers that we've talked about. We need to, you know, I do use Kolb—not because it's the most contemporary model, because it's very, very simple and when people are first moving into reflective writing, we can introduce the more complicated theories and concepts later on. But to start with, let's just start with something simple that students can hang their hats on. Developing and giving them a template is important.  
 
The other thing that I have developed over the last two years is a rubric. I've now got a reflective writing rubric and it uses the Keele generic postgraduate marking criteria to look at the elements students should be thinking about in reflective writing. The first bit is reflectivity. Is this reflection descriptive or is it analytical? Is it relevant? The clarity of writing—we want students to write clearly. Even though it's reflective writing in the ‘I’, it still needs to be concise and clear. Is the language expressive? As a reader, can I create a mental picture of the situations that are being described or the abstract concepts explained? How relevant is it to the learning context that's going on at the moment? Is it really relevant or do the reflections meander on without any relevance at all? Is there analysis there? Do they draw on concepts and models? Are there connections between what the student is learning and reflecting on now and what happened in the past and what they've learnt from other people or other courses that they've done, for example? And has the student been self-critical?  
 
The first time the students write a reflective log for me who are in the Senior Leader MBA cohort, often it isn't very self-critical. It might be reporting things that happened that went wrong, but they never look to the self for that. I think as educators, if we understand what we're looking for from the student out of that reflective writing process and we put them into a marking scheme or a rubric, that really helps the student to create some frameworks for how they're going to engage with reflective writing. 
 
Aimee: One of the things that I've done in the past, which I think feeds on from your idea of the rubric, is that I model reflective writing and I'll do it on something like my teaching, for example. I'll speak with the students, and I'll say “this is what happened, this is what I felt about it, these were the actions and the outcomes and what would I do differently next time? But equally, what might I keep the same?” I also take the opportunity to model reflective writing or reflective thinking for them so that—to go back to what we were saying earlier about that vulnerability—I'm also making myself vulnerable and sharing some of my reflective thoughts with them to help put them a little bit more ease. 
 
Will: That's really powerful. I think students are always interested in how the person teaching them applies this themselves. I think that the other thing that can be helpful, just bouncing off your idea there, is providing examples the students have done before. Either good examples of reflective writing or examples of where there might be weaknesses.  
 
Now, of course, because it's a vulnerable activity, we have to be careful about which examples we select, and we have to get the permission of the student who submitted that piece of work, but certainly in my experience, I've been able to go to students who have written reflective pieces and say, “look, if we make one or two changes so that it's anonymised and so that people do not know who you are, would you be happy for me to share both the reflective diary, the piece of reflective writing, but also my feedback on that?” So the students can get, you know, get inside my head really when I'm reading a piece in reflective writing. The other thing that Angela Rhead and I have done very successfully with our MBA students before we had the lockdowns, before COVID, is, we ran workshops where we talked about examples of reflective writing. We put paragraphs of reflective writing on the screen, and we asked students to pretend that they were marking these pieces of reflection. How would they see those pieces of reflection? And what would they give the mark? And what feedback would they give the student? How would they improve that piece of reflection, so almost turning it round and getting students to apply those rubrics themselves? 
 
Aimee: I think that's a great activity and it's something I've tried in other areas of practice, in terms of assessments. Not reflective assessments but getting students to peer review an assessment to place themselves in the position of the reader, which is something that I think when we write we can often forget. But really, we are writing for someone to read this, so we need to embody that position.  
 
This brings us to the final question I'd like to ask you to finish up this episode, which is: what is your top tip for people when writing reflective pieces for their academic studies? What would you like people to remember?  
 
Will: Well, crikey, we've covered so much ground. That one is really, really difficult to answer. I think my biggest tip is to see it as a process. Wherever you are on that process, you can always develop and learn a little bit more. If you've never written reflectively before, see it as a start of the learning process. If you have written massively on reflection, then engage with a community of practice so that you can pass on your knowledge—and also that you can learn from others as well. I think that would be my top tip: see reflective writing as a long, lifelong process.  
 
I meant to say this before: as part of my spiritual disciplines, I journal. But what I've realised is journaling is a form of reflective practice—in that particular instance, I am reflecting on my spiritual journey. But take the spiritual out of it. And I always encourage my MBA students to have a learning journal. In this case, you are reflecting on your learning and what I find then is that if they, at the start of their learning journey for a module… I teach leadership, let's say, so they start on leadership, they’ve never done reflective writing before. Alongside what they're doing in the classroom, what they're doing in their workplaces, the reading that they're doing and the research that they're doing, they're also writing down—in a journal, in a learning journal—what’s happened, how did I feel? Why did that happen? What was going on? What else happened? And then when they get to the end of the module and they've got to write their reflective diary, they're not starting with a blank piece of paper. They're starting with a rich source of information that they can then curate into their reflective diary. So, see it as a process. Keep a learning journal. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, I think it's very easy to forget things that have happened, so tracking our thoughts and feelings about activities as, or maybe just after, they've happened and then looking back on them and reflecting upon it in your writing could be a really great strategy to help people when it comes to writing reflectively for their studies. 
 
Will: Absolutely. What that enables you to do as well—you're absolutely right—people forget, and people, when they look back on historical events, also tend to interpret them differently to when those events happened at the time, so by keeping a learning journal, you have got a record of what you actually felt was happening at the time that you can look back on, but also—as you've gone on a learning journey—you can look back and see how far you've come as well. And you can say, “oh yeah, I remember when I used to handle that situation in this particular way, I used to think this particular way!” And there is something we talked right at the start, about that confidence and about that imposter syndrome: I think having a learning journal, and seeing it as a process, helps you to realise quite how far you've come on that journey. 
 
Aimee: Well, thank you so much for coming on the episode today, Will. It's been really great and very insightful talking to you—I feel like I've been doing lots of reflecting while we've been speaking, so thank you once again. It's been a pleasure to chat with you! 
 
Will: You're more than welcome and thanks to all of your listeners for listening! 
 
Aimee: Thanks again for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode on our webpage, which we've linked in the show notes to this episode. You can also get in touch with us via Twitter at Keele_AS or email us at Academic.Skills@keele.ac.uk. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care.

Resources for episode 4

Will mentioned a book by John Mark Comer called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World. Will drew upon the book to talk about the importance of pausing and reflecting on our learning, especially in a fast-paced world and working environment. 
 
Will mentioned Kolb’s reflective cycle, which you can use to help structure your reflective writing. Find out more about Kolb’s reflective cycle. 
 
Will shared this reflective writing worksheet, which you can adapt to your own context. 

Transcript for episode 5

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, an academic and study skills podcast hosted by Keele University. As with all our episodes, this episode includes practical tips for students and how to embed them into the curriculum as educators, so without further ado, I'll introduce you to Rachael Lewis, who's our guest today. Rachael is a Training and Information Support Librarian, and today she'll be talking to us about literature reviews, why they matter for academic studies, and how we should conduct them using tried and tested techniques.  
 
Welcome to the podcast, Rachael, and thanks for joining us today. Before we chat about literature reviews and how to perform them, please can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role? 
 
Rachael Lewis: Well, I'm a Training and Information Support Librarian in the Health Library based at the Royal Stoke Hospital site. I spend most of my time teaching information skills, such as database searching or critical appraisal, to undergraduate or postgraduate students and to NHS health professionals. The rest of my job involves more research type role, carrying out in depth database searches to clinical staff working in the NHS, and supporting groups working to bring research evidence into clinical practice. 
 
Aimee: Thank you for introducing yourself to us. Let's kick off with the first question then, so what is a literature review? How would you define it for our listeners?  
 
Rachael: I would say it's a summary of the literature about a specific topic. It not only summarises the literature but synthesises it and analyses it and presents the findings in a very organised way. At this point, it's important to mention that a literature review is not the same as a systematic review, as many students confuse the two. A systematic review aims to find out everything written about a topic. These reviews are done under very strict rules, usually by a team of experienced researchers, for example, the Cochrane collaboration. With a literature review or sometimes called systematic review of the literature, this is not such a thorough process, and it doesn't look at all literature on a subject, but it synthesises the literature, facts and database searching and authoritative texts. Whatever sort of review is involved, the database searches need to be transparent and reproducible so that anybody reading them could understand how the search results were found and could repeat the process if they wanted to. Accurate record keeping is very important for this, and I'm going to talk a little bit about this later on. 
 
Another important thing is doing a scoping or test search in a couple of databases to check how much literature there is on your subject before you settle on a title for your dissertation. I find some students find it very, very hard to visualise what a literature review is. And sometimes I tell them to think of it as if they're climbing up a ladder to look out of a high window. I ask them to tell me what it is they can see, not only describing but comparing, contrasting and interpreting what is going on, so I can make sense of what is happening, so I don't need to look out the window myself. I don't need to read all the literature myself as they can repackage a summary of information for me. When I read it, I can quickly grasp what is known about a topic.  
 
I also think we need to remember that most literature reviews start with a question. 
 
Aimee: Thank you so much for that very comprehensive overview of what you mean by a literature review. I know that's helpful for me to differentiate between a literature review and a systematic review, so hopefully our listeners have found that helpful for understanding literature reviews themselves. Let's jump into the third question. Why do you think that literature reviews matter in academic writing? Why do you think it's important for students to know how to conduct them? 
 
Rachael: I do think it's very important for students to conduct literature reviews because there's so much about a subject that students can discover from doing their review. First of all, it will tell them what has been published on a particular subject. It can help them identify any gaps in the knowledge about a topic and help them think about what their study can add to the existing knowledge. Other things they can find during their literature review are: what are the main authors or publications in their subject? What are the key ideas in that topic? And is there agreement about these ideas or is there a conflict of opinion? 
 
A literature review can also help students in lots of other ways. It can give them a framework to build their case on, and they also let students have a deeper understanding of their subject or perhaps to see it from a different perspective. I also think literature reviews can be useful, as they can help students develop more transferable skills that may be useful in their later working life, such as how to critically appraise information, how to summarise complex information, and how to communicate this clearly and simply to others. 
 
They also learn things like time management, involving things like meeting deadlines, managing word counts, and creating bibliographies. It's also a chance for them to experience a more self-guided style of learning and they'll learnt to work in collaboration with their supervisor. And this may be a slightly different experience, and a different relationship, from the one that they previously had with their lecturers. 
 
I'd also say that getting to know a subject in depth can boost their confidence and it can make students feel like an expert. When this goes well, it can be a really positive experience—the students really want to find out more and more about their topic. In the healthcare field, where I work, students often develop ideas about the knowledge they have gained, and they can put this into practical use to change the patient's experience for the better. 
 
Aimee: Thank you so much. I really love how you have explained to us all the ways that conducting and engaging with a literature review can actually help you to develop a whole host of skills beyond that initial or immediate literature review that they’re conducting. That's a really interesting way that you framed it there, and I think it just goes to show just how much this type of academic writing really does matter for the students to engage in and hone their skills in. For this next question, I want you to think about your experience of supporting students with their literature reviews. What common issues do people experience when performing and presenting literature reviews in their academic work? And why do you think these issues are so common?  
 
Rachael: There are few things that I do find come up again and again, Aimee. I mean, first of all, there's a general lack of planning. This can start at the beginning when the students are choosing a topic for review: choosing the topic is one of the most difficult parts of the process. Students often come up with what seems to be a wonderful idea for their review and spend a lot of time carefully wording their questions, but when they actually start searching the databases, they'll be very disappointed as they often find that little or no suitable literature on that particular topic. Some students can become obsessed with these unworkable topics, which may be too broad or too narrow to fit in the scope of their review. Other students might choose topics to which they have a personal connection and they just don't seem to be able to let them drop and can't stop searching or they might start going off on a tangent and wasting a lot of time on fruitless searching. 
 
I think some of these issues may be due to the fact that a lot of students lack experience in producing an extended piece of academic writing in their course: they need to learn to balance their enthusiasm for a topic with a need to complete the project on time. There's also a real need to set boundaries when looking for information. You need to decide early on what you want to include and what you want to exclude.  
 
Another other thing that I find comes up is the question of poor time management, as students tend to underestimate how long the whole process is going to take. This includes not just the search for information, but the time taken to get the full text of articles, to write a review, and to produce the bibliography. 
 
I also see other issues appearing, particularly one that I call ‘style over substance’, as some people, some people get more interested in charts and flow diagrams than the quality of the studies that they found in their search. This may be due to the fact there isn't much time in academic courses to really get used to the idea of different study types and the job that these different types of studies do in research. And you need to focus on the idea that literature reviews are all about the literature itself. 
 
Another thing that I've noticed is problems with record-keeping. So again, students won't keep a record of their search history or where they’ve looked for information. That's something that we need to know: the databases and other resources that they've looked in, and they need to present their results in a professional manner by providing a complete search history from the database searches. Students need to keep details of where the evidence was found and how they interpreted it. 
 
Aimee: Just as you were speaking then I was thinking, ‘oh, I wish I'd gone and seen Rachael much earlier in my studies!’ I feel like you could have saved me a lot of headache and frustration. Poor record-keeping is definitely something that I struggled with earlier on in my academic career when I was studying for my undergraduate degree. I'm sure there'll be lots of people probably nodding their head in agreement with what you're saying—hopefully those people will find this episode useful, which brings me to the next question.  
 
Please could you briefly recommend two or three strategies that can help students to navigate these issues when conducting their own literature review? Why do you think that these strategies are useful? And if you know of any resources that people can use to help them better understand and conduct their literature reviews, please do let us know and we'll link them in the show notes. 
 
Rachael: First of all, I would say it's really important to do one of these scoping or test searches when you’re first searching the databases. Ideally, students should do this before they first meet with their supervisor. The scoping search is going to give them a lot of information: They’re going to get some idea of how much literature there is on that topic and what sorts of study types have involved, which is important. Students will be able to have a much more constructive discussion with their supervisor if they already have some idea of the ‘lie of the land’ and how much literature there is out there. 
 
I'd also say it's a good idea to have a Plan B—an alternative topic—if your first choice of subject for the review doesn't work out. The key thing to remember is you need to be guided by the literature that you find, as this will help you decide on your title, so you need to remember you can only write about literature that's there and not the literature that you wish was there.  
 
Another thing that I would say is the importance of keeping records. You need to record the search words that work for your subject in each of the databases. You need to be able to save your search history and run it again, so if students aren't sure how to do that, just go and ask the library staff and they'll be able to advise them. This search history gives information about the databases’ search, the search words that were used, and any limits applied to the search.  
It's also a good idea to record how many records were retrieved from each database and also details of the search provider—sometimes this is called the search platform, for example: EBSCO. You also need to record the number of duplicate records. There's quite a lot of overlapping coverage in different databases: they’ll have the same journal articles and so journal articles will appear twice. You need to spot these duplicates or doubles and remove them. 
 
The other thing that I would really advise to do is to make a timetable and try to keep to it. I know that this is quite hard. Sometimes I think it's a good idea to try and set a false deadline, perhaps a couple of weeks before your submission date is due, and then that will give you more room for manoeuvre if anything unexpected happens. For example, it might take more time than you expected to get articles on inter-library loan from the library. It can take up to five working days to source them and also you might not be able to meet with your supervisor on the dates that you'd hoped, so often if you plan to work backwards from your submission date and decide what you're going to do on each week. 
 
Aimee: Brilliant. Thank you so much! I feel like one of the things that's really coming through in this conversation is the significance of making sure that when we're conducting our literature reviews that we do so in a way where we're recording what we do and what we find. And you've just reminded me of one of the ways I found quite useful to do that myself. For the listeners, my background is within English literature so that's where I'm coming from here, I keep an annotated bibliography. I just do it on Word document where what I do is I, as you said Rachael, keep a record of all the references, the findings, what their methodology might be, and I just write it in a paragraph rather than a table format. And you're quite right: it's important that we're basing our literature review on what we find and not what we hope to find, so what I do there is I have another column where I include a heading that says something along the lines of ‘how I want to engage with this in my own work’ (you can call it something else). And what I'll do there is if I found any gaps within the research that I want to address, that's where I make a note there so that I can think about it when I'm doing my literature review and how my own work builds upon that. But you've reminded me to make sure that I do actually keep opening up that annotated bibliography and adding to it as I do my reading to make sure I'm keeping those accurate records and notes, so thank you again for that reminder!  
 
Let's go onto the next question. Some of our listeners may be educators and involved in learning support. How might they help students to conduct literature reviews more effectively? How can they embed this academic skills development into their teaching and their curriculum? 
 
Rachael: One thing that I would suggest that educators do is to let their students see some examples of literature reviews before they have to write them, then it would be a bit clearer in their mind exactly what they're aiming for. I also think it'd be a good idea to give the students an extended piece of written work to do earlier in the course so they can gain more experience of academic writing. Particularly invocational courses, it can be a while before people do some academic writing and they can be rather daunted by the thought of it. 
 
Another important thing to remember is to emphasise the quality of the evidence is the most important thing about literature that you find. It's all about quality, not the quantity of records found. I think it also be helpful if educators could discuss the marking criteria and explain to students what they might get a lot of marks for and what they're looking for in a literature review.  
 
It would also be really helpful if people who are supervising students doing a dissertation don't let the students persist with a topic that’s unworkable for long periods. If the student clearly is unable to find suitable literature of the right amount and the right quality, it might be better to drop that topic and try searching with another one. Supervisors have to be sure that all the supervisors are giving the same sort of advice to the students on a particular course. Students do talk amongst themselves and if they find out someone has been told to do something different from what they thought they were told to do, it does unsettle them and makes them feel very anxious.  
 
Another thing to consider: maybe some kind of simple learning contract with the students at the beginning of the process, so students know exactly what's expected of them and when they need to do these things. 
 
Aimee: Brilliant. Thank you. I think your point about not allowing the students to continue a topic that might not have enough research to build upon is a really key point that the literature review can really help with identifying. So actually, by conducting this literature review, students and their supervisors can identify whether it's going to be a manageable and realistic topic for the student to continue researching. I think that's a really key takeaway there to hold on to and that brings us very nicely to the final question for this episode. What is your top tip for people when it comes to performing a literature review for their academic studies? What would your number one takeaway be that you would like listeners to remember? 
 
Rachael: That has to be, do a coping search at the beginning of the process. It just saves so much time and stress if you've got some idea of what sort of literature is out there. 
 
Aimee: Thank you, Rachael. And, as I said, I wish I'd come and spoken to you much earlier in my in my degree, as I feel like you would have saved me a lot of stress and heartache, so thank you very much for joining us on this episode of Study Matters. It's been incredibly interesting and fun talking to you, and I hope our listeners have taken a lot from this episode. 
 
Rachael: Thank you, Aimee.  
 
Aimee: Thanks again for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode on our webpage, which we've linked in the show notes to this episode. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have the future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please do like, subscribe and leave the comments, to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care!

Resources for episode 5

Books: 
The following books are stocked in the Keele Library and can be requested via our library catalogue Library Search. Instructions on using Library Search.

• Aveyard, Helen. Doing a Literature Review in Health and Social Care: A Practical Guide. Fourth edition. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2019.
• Booth, Andrew, Anthea Sutton, and Diana Papaioannou. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review. Second edition. Los Angeles: Sage, 2016.

Study Guides: 
Read this study guide for further guidance on researching and writing your thematic literature review.
Depending on your subject, you might be tasked with producing a systematic literature review. We recommend this study guide on systematic literature reviews.
 
Podcast: 
This London School of Economics and Political Science podcast episode provides more support on conducting literature reviews. 
 

Transcript for episode 6

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, an academic and study skills podcast hosted by Keele University. Each episode, we’ll provide practical techniques for students and tips on how to embed them into the curriculum as educators. This episode is all about theory, why engaging with it matters for our research, and some techniques we can all use to help us engage with theory effectively in our academic work. I’m Aimee Merrydew and joining us today to discuss this topic is Amy Blaney. Amy's a Lecturer in the School of Digital Technologies and Arts at Staffordshire University and a PhD Candidate in English literature at Keele University. We hope you enjoy listening to our conversation. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, Amy, and for taking the time to share some of your techniques for engaging with theory.  
 
Amy Blaney: Lovely to be here. Thank you very much for having me.  
 
Aimee: You're very welcome. Thanks for joining us! Before we chat about interacting with theory, please can you tell us a little bit about yourself and also your teaching roles? 
 
Amy: So, as you said, I am a PhD Candidate here at Keele, heading into my third year (which is quite scary) of my PhD in English Literature. My Ph.D. focuses on the afterlives of Arthurian myth in the literature of the long 18th century. My teaching is quite different to that, so I teach at Staffordshire. I'm a sessional teacher there and during the 2021 academic year, I started teaching there, so during the pandemic year. I teach a range of literary texts on their first-year survey course, which is called Introduction to English and then I also teach a level 5–6 module on Shakespeare, so second and third year and this year I'm also hoping to be teaching on an academic skills module, then probably the only other thing I ought to mention is that I'm a mature student as well, so I returned to university to do my MA after an 11-year gap. And during the time I was out of academia, I was employed in several administrative and management roles, so I haven't just gone through—I've had quite a gap from university as well.

Aimee: I think that's always really interesting because you'll bring a lot of those skills and experiences that you've taken from those roles and you can apply it to your work, so it'll be really great to have a chat with you today to learn about some of the techniques that you've taken on and applied in your own work, so let's jump in! What is theory? How would you define it for our listeners?

Amy: Theory, I think, is quite a tricky word because its meaning can vary across academic disciplines and contexts. If you look it up in a dictionary, you'll find a few different meanings. And the one that most people know is that they go, ‘I have a theory about…’ which takes to mean, ‘I think something about this’ and that is a meaning of theory, but it's not really what we mean when we talk about theory in an academic context. For my purposes and for our purposes today, we're talking about theory as a system of ideas or principles upon which a particular discipline is based, so it's the foundations upon which critical thinking and debate within a discipline is built. I really like the idea of it being a foundation—the idea that you build ideas upon ideas and theory is there at the bottom. But theory can also come in further up the building because you're always adding new theory to your building and the whole point of academia really is that we never have a building with a roof. We're always, we're always building on new ideas.  

And another way of thinking about this type of theory, which might make more sense in a scientific context or if you have a particularly scientific mind—which I don't—is that it's a rational type of abstract thinking, so it's normally about a larger phenomenon or it's the results of such thinking. I quite liked the idea that you're rationalising something abstract by talking about it and doing something theoretical.

Aimee: I really love the metaphor of the building blocks and the building of the structure. We could think of the essay or the exam or the presentation, or whatever it is that where we're making as being that house that you've spoken about. And each block is a part of that theory that you're building or engaging with and, the ingredients that you're bringing into your, your house, your essay, your work. I love that metaphor. Why do you think that theory matters in academic writing? Why do you think it's so important? 
 
Amy: Regardless of the academic discipline you work within, theory is almost inescapable. It's important simply because, on some level, you're going to have to engage with it at some point in your course—and I have learnt this through experience. No matter how much you try and run away from the theory, the theory will find you and it will catch you, and it will require to be put into your writing. That might be because you have to understand it in order to pass the course, or it might be because you suddenly get an assignment that says you have to use it in order to get a good grade or to pass the assignment. There is an element of you need to learn to engage with theory because you're going to have to do it, but also it is more important than that. I think it's important for other reasons, too. So for many disciplines, including my own of English, understanding and engaging with theoretical work and ideas, is part of engaging with the key principles of your subject. If you want to demonstrate that you know your subject, you have to engage with theory, and the chances are that you are engaging with theory, but you don't always realise and label it as such. And learning to work and incorporate theory is quite key to becoming a critical thinker, reader, and writer. Unless you know those foundations, you have nothing upon which to build your house, so it's part of becoming an active learner, which is why I think—although it can seem very scary and very intimidating—hopefully by the end of this podcast it might seem less scary and intimidating, it is really important that we do work with the theories that are within our disciplines.

Aimee: Yeah, I think it's about thinking about it in terms of engaging in conversations with other people that are interested in this issue or this topic that you're discussing. Or maybe the theory is not related to the topic that you're focussing on, but you're still engaging in dialogue with that theory in order to think through some of the ideas that you're working through in your assignment and your academic work. So, yeah, it really is a conversation, isn't it? 

Amy: Very, very much so. Yeah, it's having a conversation with the people who came before you in your discipline and the people who are working alongside you in your discipline and using that conversation to form your own ideas.

Aimee: And then also, in turn, opening up conversations for other people to engage with when they read through your work. It keeps that dialogue going, which I think is removing that fear of having to say the final word. We'll go on to some of those issues and techniques, but first, before I run away with myself, I wanted you to think about your experience of teaching theory or even your own experiences of engaging with theory in your own work. You know, as you said, you’re a PhD Candidate in English, I'm sure you'll be doing this a lot yourself. What common issues do people experience when engaging with theory? Why do you think these issues are so common?  

Amy: As I briefly mentioned, I loathed engaging with theory. I don’t loathe it quite as much now, but I certainly did. I was genuinely afraid of it at undergraduate level and we did two theory modules at undergraduate level and I passed them—somehow. Credit to my lecturers! But it really wasn't until my MA that I felt like I began to understand why theory was important and how to engage with it in an effective manner. I was very much kind of theory-afraid: I was in a corner being scared of it. But my experience of teaching is that a lot of students feel that way at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. They're scared of engaging with theory, and when they do, they often do it by regurgitating a particular sort of key theorist rather than using the principles of that theory to express their own engagement with the text. 

You'll read an essay and then it will be like, ‘this is the theory bit: I'm now going to quote Gilbert and Gubar on feminism’. Then you'll read the theory paragraph, and the rest of the essay will carry on almost as if that paragraph didn't happen and it's just put in there to fulfil the criteria. I think that's because, whilst there are very few inherently complex ideas in existence within theory, the body of work that we call ‘theory’ is very vast and very complex. It is often based on dozens of different ideas, many of which sometimes contradict each other—I say sometimes, often contradict each other.

In addition to that, the language of theory can be very complex, so in literary theory, in my field—as an example—many of the key theorists originally wrote in French, so much of the theory that we read is being read in translation. Some of that translation is quite clumsy or quite awkward. When you have that on a load of abstract ideas, on a surface level, that makes the reading quite dense and quite difficult: particularly when theorists are inventing their own words to mean a particular thing that they're talking about. It also often includes very unfamiliar words, graphs, charts, difficult concepts and that is not writing that we encounter in everyday life—it's often not writing that we encounter at any point before university level study, so it's very easy to feel intimidated when you first start reading it.

Aimee: I completely agree. I think it must have taken me probably until the end of my undergraduate degree to realise that theoretical language and academic language more generally is another form of language to what I was used to speaking every day, so it's about learning that language, isn't it? Familiarising yourself with individual types of words that we might see cropping up throughout these pieces if we're reading work within the same area. What do these words mean? What do they signify? It's about becoming attuned to that language and that brings me to the next question. 

Can you briefly recommend two or three strategies that can help students to navigate these issues when engaging with theory? And could you also let us know why you think these strategies are useful? And, in addition to that, if you know of any resources that people can use to help them better understand and interact with theory than please do, let us know and we will add them as notes to the show notes.

Amy: I think the first thing is to have patience. Reading theory is a skill in and of itself—like any skill, it's going to take time to master. It's very easy to pick up your first piece of theoretical writing, decide that it is difficult and confusing. You don't understand it and then never go back to that piece of writing, or to that theory, and just go ‘I don't really understand Marxism’ or ‘I don't really understand poststructuralism, I'm not going to touch that’. You need to be prepared for your theoretical reading to take quite a long time initially and for there to be an initial level of confusion with that difficult surface level of the writing and that is not down to you being intellectually incapable of engaging with these ideas. It is because it is a new skill and you are learning. I really wish somebody had told me that earlier on that it's okay to find it difficult and find it hard.

It helps to remember why I think you're engaging with the theory. Presumably, you are looking for something that you can use to support your own work or support your own ideas, your own reading of a text, or a particular choice of methodology or your own practice. It's key to remember that you are there to use the theory not to let the theory use you.

Something that I found really helpful is Peter Barry, in his excellent book Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Critical Theory said “we ought not to issue the theory with a blank cheque to spend our time for us”, which I really like because while we're engaging with theory, it does require some initial patience, but you don't have to be endlessly patient with it. You should require it to be clear and deliver something solid that you can use in your own work, rather than just reading it for the sake of reading it. I very much had the pleasure of being taught by Peter in my undergraduate days and his book has saved my bacon on more than one occasion. It's a fabulous resource. I still go back to it now—I go back to it when I have to teach theory to my students, and I refer my students to it all the time because it is wise and clear and easy to navigate. It is literary theory, but I think it is useful for students in the humanities and social sciences more widely and even students in the sciences, the natural and life sciences. I think if you're wanting an introduction on to how to use theory, a lot of what he says is applicable, so if you could borrow a copy from the library and look at the sections that might be applicable, then then even though the actual theories themselves he's discussing might not apply to your work, the way he talks about using theory is very helpful. 

I suppose my final tip is if you find a particular theory too complex, then see if there is another way in, and engage with that theory on a secondary level. This is something I was taught in my MA because I was trying to engage with Michel Foucault’s three volume The History of Sexuality.

Now it's three volumes. It's quite big. And it's written originally in French and was translated quite a while ago. And it's really important work: it reframes many of the ideas about the study of sexuality and literature, but it is very long and it's very dense, and it was written in 1976. Whilst it was very important in its day, our ideas around the concept have developed quite a lot since then, so I went to Judith Butler's work instead because ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ developed some of Foucault’s ideas and it quarrels with some others, some Freudian ones as well, so engaging with the theory that came before. But it is considerably shorter because it's an article rather than a three-volume set of books, and I think much more accessible in language. In addition, Butler is still writing about gender and sexuality today. That allowed me to then go and read and engage with more contemporary theorists in the field. And knowing who to go to in that regard can be quite difficult, but I would say to go and speak with your tutors because the chances are that they have had their own moments of wrestling with theory that they do not like. Every tutor—guaranteed will—have a particular set of ideas or theory that they generally find quite unintelligible, but periodically they have to engage with it, so they're quite good at knowing other options to go and look up. 

In terms of recommended resources, obviously Peter Barry's Beginning Theory is my go-to. There is also a larger anthology called Literary Theory: An Anthology, which was edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. It's a real doorstop. The most recent edition is 2004, and although again, that's targeted at literary theory, there are some key writings by cultural theorists, so Derrida, Marx, Kant in that anthology. So, it’s quite useful for just going and reading key theoretical ideas.

Jonathan Culler’s Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction was another one that I found very helpful. But the reason I wanted to recommend that is because other titles in that series may be very relevant to students in other disciplines. They have very short introductions for feminism, for example, existentialism, Marx, Nietzsche, political philosophy, lots of different science subjects. There's often a very short introduction for nearly everything in terms of academic disciplines and they're all pocket sized. They're all quite cheap and they're written by key scholars in the field in an accessible manner. There is a full list on their website, which we can link, I'm sure, in the show notes.

Then the final thing I want to recommend was a book by Jeanne Godfrey called How to Use Reading in Your Essays and although that is not specifically about theory, it is a great book on using any kind of reading in your writing. Sometimes knowing how to incorporate the ideas that we read is a very difficult thing to know how to do—again, it's a skill you learn and get. But Jeanne's book is excellent for that: it has tips for ensuring that your reading is working for you and is supporting your own ideas rather than dominating and overshadowing them. I think the tips that she has are good for ensuring that you don't do that ‘and here is the theory paragraph’, but that it's incorporated into your work doing something in your work.

Aimee: Thank you so much for sharing all of that and, I must admit, your suggestion to engage with the theory in a different medium is something that I am frequently doing within my own work. I have found podcasts and recorded lectures or talks on YouTube or just on the internet generally, really have saved me quite a bit of a headache in terms of understanding some of the ideas I need to engage with initially. I'll often—say I might have a book or an article by someone—Google them and see if they've given a talk on it, and I'll listen to it first and make my initial notes just while I'm listening to it and then I'll go to the written form of that idea that they're engaging with. And it just helps me to spark ideas and put my initial thoughts down before I sit there and worry about reading a 300-page book or whatever it might be, which obviously takes its time and it's a different skill. That has been really useful for me personally, so hopefully it will also be useful for our listeners. Some of our listeners may also be educators and involved in learning support, so this next question I want you to think about some of the ways that educators can help students to engage with very more effectively. How can they embed this academic skills development into their teaching and that curriculum? 
 
Amy: The one thing I think educators really need to remember—and when we're practising academics, it can be really hard to do that—is that theory is often very new for their students, so it can be very intimidating because it's new. Even by the time you're doing your PhD, you're often using theory without even realising you're using theory. It's there: it's just embedded into your work. And when you're doing that every day, it's really easy to forget what a minefield it can be and that you don't necessarily know how to get around it. I always think of theory a little bit as if I was climbing up a hill to write (my essay is a hill and I'm climbing up it) if I come across a fence on that hill, I might find a way to go around it because I know there's a stile over there. My students don't know that the stile is there and are going to spend quite a long time trying to get over the fence. And, to me, it's helpful to know that I was there: I was that student trying to like get over the fence, even though it's covered with barbed wire and there's an angry bull on the other side of it, not realising that there's a stile and a path. I think that can be quite helpful.  
And it isn't always helped by teaching theory as a separate module, either. I can totally understand the reasoning behind a theory module, but I do think it can make theory appear to be ‘Theory’—capital T—something that we separate from our everyday academic practice when, in reality, theory is the foundation of most academic disciplines and is interwoven into much of what we do when we engage with our work. I think we need to actively point out to students when we're engaging with theory, when we're teaching it, and to make it clear that if a student is thinking or practising critically, the chances are that they're using a theoretical approach. I really realised this on my Shakespeare module when that the students said, “Oh, you haven't talked to any theory”. I was like, “I've been teaching you theory all semester. Do you remember that session that we did where we talked about women and the role of women in this play? Well, that's feminist theory that we're engaging with”. But I hadn't pointed out and I realise I need to remember to point this out and to tell my students what I'm doing so that they know that we're engaging with theory by doing this. 

Aimee: That brings us nicely to our final question. Speaking of stiles and pathways to accessing theory, which is another great metaphor by the way, what is your top tip for people when it comes to engaging with theory for their academic studies? What's your number one takeaway that you want listeners to remember?

Amy: I think the main thing to remember is that theory is not a big, scary monster that we lock in the closet until we need to get it out, throw it in our essays, or take a class in it. It is part of the everyday. And, just like any other academic skill, it can be learnt with a little patience, a little time, and a lot of practise.

Aimee: Brilliant, thank you so much. And thank you again for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you.

Amy: It's been really lovely to chat with you and I hope that people find it helpful to know a little bit more about theory.

Aimee: Thanks again for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode on our webpage, which we've linked in the show notes to this episode. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have the future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please do like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us, and share the podcast with anyone you think can benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care!

Resources for episode 6

The following books are stocked in Keele Library and can be requested via our library catalogue Library Search. Instructions on how to use the Keele Library Search.

• Barry, Peter (2009) Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rd Edition. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.
• Culler, Jonathan (1997) Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Other titles in the Very Short Introductions book series may be relevant to students in other disciplines. For example, there is Feminist: A Very Short Introduction, as well as books on existentialism, Marxism, Nietzsche, political philosophy, and many other theoretical topics. The books usually contain good further reading suggestions, so they are great ways into new concepts or ideas.
• Godfrey, Jeanne (2018) How to Use Reading in your Essays. 3rd Edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Although not specifically about theory, this book is great for learning how to use any kind of reading in your writing. It has some tips for ensuring your reading works for you and supports your own ideas, rather than dominate and overshadow them.
• Rivkin, Julie. and Ryan, Michael. (Eds.) (2017) Literary Theory: An Anthology. 3rd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. While this book is targeted at literary theory, it includes key writings by cultural theorists (e.g. Derrida, Marx, Kant), making it useful to other disciplines. 

 Theoretical articles and books mentioned in the episode:

• Butler, Judith. ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal 40(4), pp. 519–531.
• Foucault, Michel. (1978) The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. by Robert Hurley. London: Penguin. First published in French in 1976. 
  There are three more volumes in The History of Sexuality, titled The Use of Pleasure (1984, 1985), The Care of the Self (1984, 1986), and Confessions of the Flesh (2018, 2021).
• Gilbert, Sandra. M. and Gubar, Susan. (2020) The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. First published in 1979. 

Transcript for episode 7

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, an academic and study skills podcast hosted by Keele University. Each episode we’ll provide practical techniques for students and tips on how to embed them into the curriculum as educators. This episode focuses on academic conferences, why presenting research at them is beneficial for academic and professional development, and how to prepare to present at conferences to make the most of these opportunities. 
 
I’m Aimee Merrydew and joining us today to discuss all things academic conferences is Dr Chris Little. Chris is a Senior Lecturer in Academic Development at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he focuses on supporting academic staff development through lecturer training and consultancy work. Prior to this role, Chris worked as a Learning Developer at Keele University, where he established the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research back in 2017, so who better than Chris to come along and chat with us all today about the benefits of academic conferences for student learning and undergraduate research development? Welcome to Study Matters, Chris! It's great to have you on the podcast and back at Keele virtually. Thank you for taking the time to come and chat with us all today about academic conferences, so let's kick off with the first question. Broadly speaking, what is an academic conference? How would you define it for our listeners? 
 
Chris Little: I think the simplest way to think about an academic conference is that it's an event where typically academic researchers share their current research, normally through spoken presentations, but also through other things like academic poster presentations and there's also things like lightning talks and PechaKuchas that are all becoming a bit more popular now as well. It's chiefly a chance for academics to showcase their current work to their peers and have conversations about this research and network and make connections over coffee and all the free food. And that's where you go big at a conference.  
 
Aimee: Aside from going along for nice food, why do you think that academic conferences matter? Why do you think it's worthwhile for students to present and attend conferences for their studies? 
 
Chris: I think they matter to academics and researchers because they're one of the ways in which academic success or your profile is measured and it can help with things like promotions and getting new jobs and recognition and all of that. I think for students, which is what this is chiefly all about, all the research has shown conferences give you a lot more skills. They allow you to develop as a person very quickly in a very short amount of time, so you can sharpen up your presentation skills, your critical thinking, the way in which you analyse other people's arguments and disciplines, and also those things around networking and developing your confidence. They're not just things you do when you've got a job and a business card. They are things that can help you to get that job and the business card, so a lot of the studies that have gone into undergraduate research and conferences in particular have really focussed on the growth of those kind of like personal skills, academic skills, and graduate skills as well. The research I did at Keele, where we run what's now called Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research, proved it was actually a big springboard for students to go on and do other things. There was loads of students who, through doing that conference and finding it a really enjoyable experience and getting all of those other benefits, thought ‘right, what else can I go on to do?’ Loads of the presenters went on to do the British Conference of Undergraduate Research. We had quite a few get into the World Congress on Undergraduate Research, both the first and second time it ran and the university supported students to go over to Qatar to present, which was amazing. I didn't get to go, but they bought me a nice mug, which was great. 
 
But it also was a big jumping off point for people who thought ‘I can go to a course that's not necessarily not for students, but could be for students. I can go and sign up to different courses and things like that’. And so not only does it give you something brilliant to put on your CV, it will give you the confidence to go and find more brilliant things to go on your CV. And I think all of those skills, whether they're the academic skills, the interpersonal skills, the graduate skills, or just that confidence, they're all essential for doing well in your degree too by making connections with other students and asking the right questions of staff members. But they're also essential to doing well in a job or in postgraduate study. 
 
And I think the final thing I'd say for students, is that conferences are important because typically students, particularly at the external conferences, tend to present their dissertation. Students have put so much work into their dissertation, just as they do in other assignments, but typically no one ever sees it. Once it goes to the marker, that's it. With a little bit of a tweak, you can get so much more out of assignments that you've already done loads of work on, so why not present a conference? Conferences give you that extra thing for what you've already done, all the hard work. So that’s why. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, I think one of the things that I've really loved about joining the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research team is seeing how much of a supportive environment it is and that opportunity, as you've just said, to get support for your research and take it to a wider audience beyond your supervisor who's marking your dissertation. That opportunity to discuss your research with different people is a really great way to get feedback, to reflect on what you're doing, and think about it in a new way. When I presented at conferences in the past, I've left with new perspectives on my research. And that's for me why it matters because it can really, not always in a huge way, transform the way you think about something and approach it for future research or future employment, whatever pathway you want to pursue. 
 
Chris: I think, particularly the undergraduate research conferences, they give you so much more of that than postgraduate conferences or ones you do when you're in a discipline, because the postgraduate or discipline specific conferences tend to speak to your very narrow field and you tend to be talking to people who understand your field. Whereas the undergraduate conferences give you this massive awakening of, if I'm a physicist, I'm going to have to explain this to a nurse, to an artist, to a photographer, a biologist. Some students might see that as a daunting thing, but in my experience, most students see it as an amazing challenge. And then when they're on the other side and they've presented and then watching somebody else from a completely different discipline, they're just like, ‘wow, my mind is absolutely blown by this’, but again because they can understand it. I always think, going back to that question of why students should do conferences, if you can articulate what you know to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it and get them interested enough to watch you and pay attention and ask a question, then you are very, very good at public speaking. You might not feel you're the most charismatic or the most charming or have loads of jokes or whizzy slides, but if you can do that then the main aim of speaking in public and communicating professionally is to communicate the message. And if you can do that, then that's amazing. I've never seen a bad presentation at an undergraduate conference and I think the huge opportunity for that, not challenging of your viewpoint or your discipline, but just an appreciation of it through explaining it to people who don't know it. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, I think that's such a key point, isn't it? If you can articulate something and elaborate on it with people who know nothing about your subject area, it indicates you know what you're talking about. You understand the content. Before we move on to our next question, let’s quickly pick up on what you said there about being impressed by the presentations for our listeners. We often upload the presentation recordings onto the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research webpage, so in the show notes I will include a link so people can explore presentations from previous years. I would definitely recommend exploring them out of interest, but particularly if you're interested in presenting an academic conference because it’s a really great place to start and get some inspiration. You've started to touch on some of the issues people might encounter, so for this next question please could you think about your experience of supporting students to present their research at conferences? What common issues have you found that people tend to experience and why do you think these issues might be so common? 
 
Chris: Being completely honest, when I started the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research, I thought the students would be really worried about presenting and would be really low on confidence and fret about it. Because of that perception, I put on loads of extra stuff and always did each year. But actually, in my experience, the students don't really need that. What they like is an opportunity to see where they might present because it's typically not going to be in a classroom they've ever been in or in a space they've ever been in. In my experience of the undergraduate conferences I've been to and all the staff ones where they've had student presenters, the most competent, impressive, and memorable presentations I've seen have been student presentations, not staff members. I think the students care so much about doing a good job. That would be the main problem. I think the main issue that comes up is how much they care about doing a good job. They can build it up to be something more than it is. They see themselves doing a Steve Jobs type talk or a TED talk type thing. And very few of us have the time or production companies behind us to do that at a conference.  
 
And so the other thing I would pick up on is that students often focus too much on what the slides look like and not knowing their talk. I think this comes back to the way in which students are assessed on presentations. They've had experiences in the past with assessed presentations where they've lost marks for the style of the presentation or for saying um or ah. And I still believe the reason you get so hung up on those two issues is because they care so much. And that's why the student presentations I've seen tended to be the best ones at conferences. You're presenting to an audience of fellow students all wanting a good experience from the event. No one walks into a student conference wanting to tear somebody else down or to undermine them or anything like that. As soon as that moment hits, you can see normally within a few seconds of them starting to present, all those worries about what it looks like or how they sound, they just disappear and they know it's going to be a good experience for them. 
 
I think going back to the two questions, I think those things come up from the way in which we are assessed in universities, typically. I think the majority of university assessments are still written assessments, so in terms of a conference, you’re using skills you're not very comfortable with and aren’t very well versed in using. You can’t edit a presentation as you're doing it. You don't get to record it and then submit it. You deliver it live most of the time.  
 
Aimee: What, there’s not a time machine? 
 
Chris: No, no, sadly, no. I wish there were for some of my early presentations. I really, really do. But yeah, I think that's why those issues come up. And I think it’s an empowering experience as soon as they realise it's not an assessment in any way, shape, or form, it's just a platform. That's all it is. It's not adversarial. It's not assessment at all. And I think that's when they overcome those fears.  
 
Aimee: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that shift from getting a mark for something to thinking about it as a platform to engage in conversation about your research and other people's research is important. People have come along because they want to hear what you've got to say or to learn about your poster. It's that chance to engage in that discussion and conversation. I think that idea of being perceived as perfect is definitely an issue I've encountered myself as a presenter. I used to spend absolutely ages designing my slides and making them look perfect. For my first conference presentation back in 2017 before I started my doctoral programme, I learnt a 15-minute conference presentation script off by heart. Word for word and that caused me a lot of anxiety. I was worried. I was really focussed on performing my lines as opposed to communicating a key message that I wanted to give. And I think it comes back to that issue, which is both a blessing and a curse, of caring so much about something. I wanted it to be perfect, but one of the things I've been saying to the presenters for this year’s undergraduate conference at Keele is to move from that saying of ‘practise makes perfect’ to ‘practise makes better’. I think that can help overcome some of those issues you've touched upon, but I'd really love to hear some of the strategies you've been thinking about that can be used to help students to manage and overcome these issues you've mentioned when presenting at an academic conference. When you let us know these strategies, could you let us know why you think they're useful? And if you have any resources you think would be helpful for people please send them my way and I’ll included in the show notes for people. 
 
Chris: I think that ‘practise makes better’ is the perfect way of putting it. I think practise is important, but not to the point where you've rehearsed. It's not lines or a performance in that sense. But I think having a few dry runs really helps. And the thing that we used to do with the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research presenters was take them to the venue to the rooms in which they were going to present and to show them where people would be sat. If they were up for it, we'd get them to just stand up on the stage and talk to get used to not projecting, but talking for more than one person. Because what we often do when we practise our presentations is we sit in front of the computer and we put a slideshow on and we go through all the animations that we put in that look amazing. And what we actually do is mumble to ourselves, not present, so then when you have to stand up and you haven't got all this, I can't show this on a podcast, I'm hunching and doing things in the hands, but you haven't got all this like armour in front of you, so to speak, or this support in front of you. When you're presenting, you need to know what it's going to look like and you need to know what your body's going to feel like when you're standing. And I think that's really important. I also think if you're going to do a few dry runs where you might stand and present it or sit and present it, however you want to do it, there's a massive opportunity there to press record on your phone and actually go through the cringy thing of having to listen to your own voice and pick up on the things that no one else will. No one else will care if you squeak on a certain word or anything like that, but you will while you're presenting, so if you can stop those roadblocks from appearing while you were doing it or work a way around them, then that's really good. 
 
I was made aware over the last year or so there's a coach feature on PowerPoint 365, so you click this coach button and it will sort of record your presentation and then it gives you some feedback on pace, clarity, the inclusivity of your language, those kind of things. That's quite useful, but it's done with an inclusive educationalist mindset. It's done with more of a corporate mindset. And they are a bit harsh on ums and ahs. But personally speaking, I never care whether someone ums or ahs. I think it just shows you who they are. That's fine. When I started supporting presentations at conferences, what I would do is watch the presentation and say these are the questions I've come up with. These are the sort of things I would ask if I was in the audience and I'm interested. But actually the most useful thing is to get students to listen to their own presentation and to come up with those questions themselves. Because students often worry about that Q & A section that comes after, including are they going to trip me up? Am I going to say, I don't know? And if you don't know, that's fine, just say, I'm sorry, I don't know, give me your details and I'll get back to you. It's fine to not know something. You’re not expected to be the font of all knowledge. But I think practising trying to understand what questions might come up is really useful. Practise visualising yourself in the venue presenting rather than speaking into your computer or into your hand or muttering under your breath and not even actually making sounds. Actually presenting is a really good thing. And then that critiquing and coming up with your own questions, those things really help. I think a combination of those things for different people reduce the fear of it going wrong on that one go that you get to deliver the presentation live. And it should give you the confidence to enjoy it rather than just enduring it. And I think that's really important. When you see someone who's really prepared, because you do have to prepare, but when they've prepared and they enjoy it and you see them coming off the stage, you can see the buzz they’ve got from it. You know, whatever it is, I say stage, you know what I mean, the podium or wherever, you can see how much they've loved doing it and loved showing off their expertise because that's what it is. It's a platform to do that.  
 
Aimee: I think the preparation is so key, isn't it? And not over-preparing but doing it in a way where you get comfortable hearing your own voice. For a lot of people, it's quite uncomfortable hearing your own voice. I don't know if that's just an us thing, but I sense it's not. I sense it causes a lot of nervousness and anxiety, so getting used to hearing yourself talk and practising is so key. When I was new to giving presentations, I was so nervous I would speak really, really fast. I think by practising it and timing yourself as well, you can see if you might have spoken a little bit too fast to the point where you're not breathing because you're not having a pause. But also, it's difficult for people to follow along, so doing that practising can let you know, OK, well, actually, I was within time and spoke at a good pace. And, you know, I've been looking through the resources you've made for previous Keele undergraduate conferences and one of the things I picked up on was we might feel like it's taking an eternity, but actually we tend to speak a lot faster when we are a bit nervous, so preparing for that and speaking more slowly than you would normally is a really good thing that you can practise in advance to help you prepare for the day. 
 
Chris: I think, the other thing, I've just remembered this because I'm doing it now. Listeners can’t see this, but I've got a pen. When I speak at presentations or teaching, I come across as quite confident. But I'm not. I'm really not. And I always have a pen handy and I don't think you can hear it, but I always play with the lid, clicking, right, so I used to have like little clicky pens or marker pens I’d play with the lid. That's my way of getting through my nerves. That allows me to slow down or speed up or to make jokes or to be a bit more relaxed as long as I've got my pen. That's my comfort blanket, I've got my pen. I used to do a lot of work with students trying to get them to understand what their thing was they were worried about and what their thing is that might make them feel a little bit better about that. For most people, that's just making sure you've got a drink of water. For most people that will do it. Not everyone needs to click a pen every 10 seconds like I do. But just finding some things that allow you to relax and tread the right side of that line from caring so much, which is brilliant, to caring too much, which can be quite harmful and quite toxic. I think finding whatever works for you, whether it's a pen, whether it's a stress toy or fidget spinner or something else, it doesn't really matter. No one will notice those things, so if you have them there, you know you will feel better about it. It doesn't matter if anybody else cares.  
 
Aimee: Working with people to find out what works for them is a really great piece of advice and something I think leads us quite nicely into our penultimate question, which I always like to aim at educators who are listening to the podcast. Some of our listeners might be teachers or be involved in learning support. How might they help students to participate in academic conferences? Are there any ways they could embed this type of opportunity and skills development into their teaching and their curriculum? 
 
Chris: Loads. I mean, you're the perfect example there Aimee. I didn't know you were going to say that, but you hadn't done a presentation until you got to your PhD. I had one presentation in my degree. We’re two examples of people who did very well through education but absolutely found the prospect of speaking to other people about it terrifying. You memorised your lines. I had mine with me in various formats. I had, and this is how long ago it was, I had a USB, I had a CD, I had a paper copy. I had multiple paper copies, actually. For the first conference, I was a PhD student in London, my presentation was after lunch. I was so nervous I couldn't go to the lunch where everyone else was, so I went to the pub and stupidly had a couple of beers and that allowed me to relax enough. It's the worst thing I've ever done in my life because I wish I could remember because it went really well. And I still speak to people who I met at that first conference after that. But I'm positive that if I had more exposure to this activity before then, that wouldn't have happened.  
 
And I think anyone who wants their students to come out of their degrees or their support or whatever with these skills then you have to do that. Students will come and find these things. They will come and find the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research, but there's no reason why an essay, for example, couldn’t be an abstract that met the Keele undergraduate conference abstract requirements or the British Conference requirements and a presentation, so they could have everything they need to go to a conference before the conference has even happened and they will have had feedback from their member of staff. They will have an experience of doing it. Yes, it would have been assessed and it'd be slightly different and they might adjust the ways they explain things. But I think making assessment a little bit more progressive and outward-facing can really help.  
 
You know, there's a real explosion of undergraduate research journals as well. I know the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research publishes student pieces after. But there are other ones as well, so why not rather than getting them to write an essay about something, get them to write a journal article about it according to a journal article style. You won't get everybody submitting to that journal and getting in, but some will and for them, that would mean the world. It's amazing and you’re testing exactly the same skills in both of those examples. So for me, it's about design and programmes designing your assessments so students have a wealth of objects, like reusable learning objects, they can take forward and use in different formats in different places rather than a bank of essays like students like you and I had. I think moving towards those authentic and outward facing progressive assessment strategies brings in so much more opportunity for peer learning and developing graduate attributes. It’s more inclusive to groups from widening participation backgrounds, which are massively important and should always have been massively important, but are especially important now. 
 
And in terms of supporting students through this experience: just be honest. That story I told there about the pen was always a really big thing for me. If I went into a group and I was put up in front of them to be the person who knows how to present, I think admitting from the very beginning I'm nervous about this presentation I'm going to give to you right now puts you on a real level with them. And then all of sudden, they're very honest about why they're nervous. They're very honest about what it means to them. And because of that, you get a much greater ability to understand them and to support them. I think being real with people and telling people about your experiences is important because no one has a 100 percent hit rate. No one's amazing all of the time. We've all messed up somewhere. I think it's really important to say that when you're supporting students. 
 
Aimee: Yeah, I think it comes back to the connections we can create through this type of activity, isn't it? It's about realising that presenting at a conference or even presenting full stop might be quite new for a lot of students. If we make ourselves vulnerable with them and say ‘I completely understand something that might cause a bit of anxiety’, but if we think about it as a conversation about your research rather than a polished West End performance and finding what works for them, what they find supportive and comforting, and what makes it a fun experience for them, whilst also identifying some of the things they might want to focus on when preparing to help them calm their nerves, I think that could be a really powerful way to make it a fun experience because it would be a real shame if it was a really awful experience you never want to do again. We want it to be fun. We want it to be something people look back on and remember the conversations they had about the research, but also remember the opportunities to meet people. I don’t think you can always do that if you don't feel comfortable. I think that honesty, bringing our own perspectives and our own experiences into it, can be a way to create those connections and help students to open up about how they're feeling.  
 
Chris:  Yeah. Hundred percent, completely agree.  
 
Aimee: I think that's a nice way to wrap up the episode with our final question. What is your top tip for people when it comes to presenting at an academic conference? What would your number one takeaway be that you want listeners to remember? 
 
Chris: I'm going to have two because it's actually two questions you asked me there. My first tip is to ask questions. Whether you’re an audience member or a presenter, ask questions. If you're just going along to a conference to see what one's like with the thought of doing one next year, push yourself to ask a question in front of everybody. That's a really good thing to do. If you're a presenter and you don't know something about how the day's going to run or where you're going to present or what you need to do, ask that question. Don't wing it. Don't put yourself in that precarious situation of being a little bit nervous about what's to come. I was talking to a member of staff the other day about this because they were doing the presentation assessment and I asked, where are the students going to sit or stand? And they said, well they’ll stand. And I said, well it didn't say that in the assessment, so they'll sit if they want to. And that's the other thing. If you feel more comfortable sitting and you'll do a better job, tell them that's what you're going to do. Ask it as a question, but infer that's what you're going to do. In terms of the big takeaway from this episode, conferences are amazing experiences. Enjoy them. One of the very first students who presented at the first iteration of the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research was so nervous. He had loads of extra coaching, loads of conversations, loads of emails asking questions which were the right thing to do. He had lots of run-throughs of his presentation with myself and different members of staff and then we got to the first one and he was just really nervous and I said to him: you're not on trial. This is just a conversation with like-minded people who are interested in what you've got to say. And after he presented really well, I caught up with him and he said, I took your advice to heart and that was it. I treated it as a conversation. He's one of the people who went on to present at the Qatar Global Conference, so he'd gone from being one of the most nervous people I'd ever seen to presenting at the first Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research and then saying, right, you know what? I enjoyed it, so I'm going to go and present in front of goodness knows how many thousands of people at the Qatar conference. And the way he talked about it after Qatar was that he didn't see it as a presentation, he just saw it as a respectful conversation between colleagues. And there's nothing to not enjoy about that. I think if you can get your mind there to a place where you see presentations as a respectful, friendly conversation between colleagues or potentially friends, then you'll enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, you'll be really good at it. And that's it.  
Aimee: That's amazing. I mean, it's just a key example, isn't it. When you explore these types of opportunities, doors open up that you might not have been aware of. This person probably never would have thought they would have gone on to present at an international conference in front of thousands of people, but by getting involved in the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research, it gave them that confidence boost that they can do this and they can have this conversation with like-minded peers, like that you said, and it can be a fun experience.  
 
Chris: And they done all of that by the end of their second year of university. By just taking a chance, asking questions, and being willing to move their mindset a tiny bit. It's amazing. 
 
Aimee: That it's amazing and it's something that would be really great to open it up and encourage more people to get involved with, which is why I think your point about educators talking about these types of activities with students can mean they explore them early on and really make the most of these opportunities during their degree and see what's out there for them. Thank you very much for coming along and chatting with me today. It's been really great to talk with you. I think you have set up such a great conference. You've really nurtured it into something that I think is so amazing. I've absolutely loved working with the student presenters this year. I think they've been really inspirational. They've got some really fantastic research and I'm looking forward to cheerleading them on on the day. So, yeah, thank you.  
 
Chris: All good. It's the single best thing I've ever done in my career and it always will be. It's the thing I looked forward to every single year. It's an amazing thing to be part of. 
 
Aimee: Thanks again for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode on our webpage, which we've linked in the show notes to this episode. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like subscribe and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care.

Resources for episode 7

Chris mentioned the following undergraduate research conferences: Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research, British Conference of Undergraduate Research, World Congress on Undergraduate Research.  
 
Chris mentioned the student edition of the Journal of Academic Development and Education (JADE), which publishes student abstracts, posters, and selected 3,000-word journal articles by the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research presenters. 
 
You can explore previous abstracts, posters, and articles on the Keele Conference of Undergraduate Research webpages.

Transcript for episode 8

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, a podcast hosted by Keele University about academic skills and why they matter for student success in higher education. Each episode, we’ll share practical academic skills techniques for students and tips on how to embed them into the curriculum as educators. I’m Aimee Merrydew and joining us today is Scott Chesworth. In this episode, Scott and I chat about library escape rooms, why escape rooms and games are beneficial for students' learning, and how to build library-themed escape rooms into the curriculum to make libraries more engaging and accessible for students.

Scott has been in Keele Campus Library since 2015 and is the Liaison Research Support Librarian, where he supports the Schools of Chemical and Physical sciences, Psychology and the Foundation year, as well as all researchers across the university. He's a chartered librarian, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and 2021 winner of the Keele Excellence Award in Supporting Student Learning resulting from his work in developing and delivering innovative training sessions, including the use of escape rooms to make library sessions more fun and engaging, so who better than Scott to come and chat with us all today about escape rooms and why they matter for student learning?

Scott Chesworth: Hello. Thank you so much for inviting me, Aimee. I'm really looking forward to talking about this and to talking about my library escape rooms.

Aimee: It's great to have you on the show, so thank you for coming along. Let's kick off with the first question. Broadly speaking, what is gamification in libraries?

Scott: Well, I think to begin with, you need to understand what we mean by gamification. Gamification is using game elements in non-game environments. This is something supermarkets do, for instance. They use gamification in terms of loyalty schemes to try and engage their consumers to buy their products and, through that loyalty scheme, they get vouchers. They get prizes. We do a similar sort of thing in libraries, and that is the base level of gamification. We've got an online resource called In a Nutshell, which is an interactive online resource people can access, covering things like library search and literature, searching, managing your references. Whilst progressing through the resource, you get badges. That's basic level gamification progression and you get something for it.

But then at a more advanced level, gamification in libraries is about trying to engage all students or staff members to want to use the library and library resources. Within a training session, instead of it being delivered as a workshop where you're given a question and you're asked to search for information on something, we could make it more interesting by splitting the two groups into two teams to have a little bit of competition going on where one team, for instance, is tasked to have a look at one resource and then the others look at that and then they feed that back and they get points or maybe they get prizes. Sweets are always a great incentive for students.
 
Aimee: I mean, you had me at badges. It's almost like a sticker chart, isn't it? Just give me a sticker chart and I'll be the most productive person.

Scott: Exactly.
 
Aimee: You’ve started to touch upon this, but why do you think gamification matters in libraries? And why do you think it's worthwhile for students to learn how to use libraries through your games?

Scott: Well, the thing with university libraries is that for a lot of students, it is their first experience of a library because unfortunately some schools don't have a school library anymore. Maybe they've used libraries in colleges. And so coming into the university library can be very overwhelming. Gamification, using games, making it fun and engaging is a way to make students feel more comfortable. And I think that's really important to get that impression the library isn't scary. And you can do that by making library inductions fun by having quizzes or by having things like escape rooms.

But also the thing is that library information, whilst it's a really important skill to have information literacy, it can be a bit dry. Teaching things about referencing and literature searching is so important but you've got to make it engaging otherwise you’re going to lose the student. And I think that's why the Library Escape Room is really good and I'll talk a little bit more about why I think that it is really useful, but also when students come for a library induction, for instance, they know what to expect, so if we have a fun activity, it’s unexpected. And when you do things that are different and unexpected, it sinks in more. So that's another great reason to do it.
 
But some students love libraries and books. Just coming into a library, seeing how huge it is and how many thousands of books that we have, is great for them. But other students, they need an extra incentive and they maybe need more of a reason to be motivated to use the library. And that is where gamification comes in handy.

Aimee: Yeah, it's that hook, isn't it? Whether people are interested or not interested, it's a way to gauge interest so they can get the most out of this really rich resource that they can then go on to use for all their studies.

Scott: Exactly.

Aimee: You've mentioned a couple of issues there in terms of how daunting libraries can feel for people or be perceived as quite a dry subject. From your experience of supporting students to use the library for their studies, are there any other common issues you've found people tend to experience? And why do you think these issues might be so common?

Scott: Well, these days students often come in with their smartphones. They've got the devices. They've got tablets. And they’re very good at using them. They’re very good at multitasking when using them. But what they're not so good at is searching for information effectively. Developing those information literacy skills of finding, evaluating, and referencing information are things that students tend to miss. And that's what the library team is there for to help students to develop these skills, so whilst they are good at using their devices, they're not generally digitally literate and that's what we need to help them with.

But also I think a lot of students believe the library is a one stop shop and they’re so used to using Google that when they come on to our library catalogue and they start using the Library Search, it's great in terms of providing them that one search. But for their subjects, they've got to understand that they're going to be looking at subject specific resources. And you're not always going to get that just by looking at the library catalogue, so this is where it's really important to start thinking more deeply about your subject.

On a surface level, it’s fine using the library catalogue. Yes, it does provide a one stop search. But there are lots of subject related resources specific to their subject areas that they will then have to engage with. And I think that's one of the common issues students have when they first arrive.

Aimee: Yeah. And I can see perfectly just how your creative strategy of using things like escape rooms would be such a great way to help students to learn how to use libraries, but also learn how to go beyond libraries for, like you said, that more subject specific information they can find beyond the Keele library catalogue or whatever libraries they're using. So let's think a little bit more about these escape rooms you've started to mention. The escape rooms are a form of game-based learning, aren't they?

Scott: They are.

Aimee: How have your escape rooms helped students learn how to use the library for their studies and why have they been useful?

Scott: Usually when students come to the library or during their induction week, they will have a library induction, generally a traditional library induction, which will involve students being being told about the library: how many items they can borrow, how long for, about study spaces, being shown how to use the catalogue. But it's a very passive experience. The great thing about the escape room activity is that it's an active experience because it's not just about them being told what we have and how to use it. It's actually engaging more with the resources. And so, there would be articles in the library escape room, which they've got to find information from. The information will often lead them to searching for a book on the library catalogue, so it's a test of their information retrieval skills. Being able to find it on the Library catalogue as well as the information retrieval aspect of that, involves evaluating information and finding the information they actually need from that before they can go onto to find what it is they're searching for, which is something you don't get the chance to do in a traditional library induction. Yeah, you get shown how to do it, but you don't do it yourself, so it becomes an active activity.

The escape rooms began, certainly the physical escape rooms, as a subject specific activity. I did it with a group of Forensic Science undergraduates and I wrote a paper about that experience in our in-house journal, called the Journal of Academic Development and Education, called ‘Escape to the Library: Reframing the Library Induction’, so you can read all about it there. The escape room idea has evolved a great deal, but it's not just about using library resources and information retrieval because it covers so much more than that. It's about developing critical thinking skills, so key employability skills, by solving puzzles in order to advance in the game. It's about developing team building skills because you've got to work within the team and work effectively within a team in order to succeed. So whilst you're looking at the room and you're looking at information within that room, you've got to be able to tell your team what you've seen. And that's really important, so communication is also really important in that as well. It's not just keeping all the information to yourself, but you've got to tell people what's going on. It's also against the clock in a lot of cases, so it involves working under pressure to deadlines. There are some key employability skills that are involved in these games, so it's not just about how to find and use the library resources. There's a lot more involved in them as well and I think that's why it's such a valuable activity.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, I had to evolve the physical game into a digital version of the escape room. It's something I've created in Microsoft OneNote, so I create the platform in that and then deliver it over Teams so you've still got that collaborative experience. I found that's worked really well. And the great thing about the digital escape room is that it allows me to create more immersive environments than I would be able to create in a physical escape room because I'm not limited by resources. I'm not limited by budget. I could take people all across the world. So for me, the digital escape room works much better than the physical, but they still both offer a cooperative experience.

Aimee: Your latest escape room is called Carrot and Stick, isn't it? Have I got it correct?

Scott: The latest one. Yes, which was the first one that I did as a standalone escape room, with the idea that students or staff could access it and work on itself. And it's really just a bitesized escape room because in a lot of cases, generally commercial escape rooms, they’re 60 minutes. I've designed mine to be around about 60 minutes because that's the expected time. And it also allows me to have more of a narrative structure because a lot of my games are about the story and about the narrative in there as well. But it's not always easy to do a 60-minute escape room in a timetable session. You may have to reduce that, so that's why I've looked at the idea of doing bitesized escape rooms so you can still have the core elements of information retrieval, so finding the information using the library catalogue and problem solving as well. You could do it on your own or you could do it in a team and cooperate. And that's really looking at different ways I can deliver this activity because not everybody can do 60 minutes.

Aimee: I'll link the escape rooms in the show notes and then people can have a play and jump into it and dive in. And I know you tend to run them throughout the year as well, don't you?

Scott: Yes.

Aimee: We'll include links to the Keele Library webpage so people can keep checking and get involved in future escape rooms.

Scott: That’ll be good. I mean, because they take a long time to create, I've created them as events which run across the whole week, certainly when I do the live sessions, so as many people can experience that as well, because the thing with the escape room is that once you've done it once you can’t do it again. I have to keep creating new ones and I don't have a problem with that because I love creating them, but it's not necessarily an activity you can just keep picking up year-on-year, especially since I have regulars who do look forward to doing the escape rooms.

Aimee: They like the badges!

Scott: They like the badges. You have to keep your audience entertained and interested.
 
Aimee: Some of our listeners might be educators and involved in learning support. How might they make use of or even design escape rooms themselves to help students familiarise themselves with libraries for their learning? Are there any ways they can embed this type of activity and opportunity for academic skills development into their teaching and curriculum? I know you have started to touch upon that, but I’d love to hear some more.

Scott: If you are thinking about doing an escape room, then you can do this for any subject at all and it's not just about helping to promote library resources. The idea of the digital escape room isn't a new idea. The idea of using escape rooms in libraries is not a new idea either. And it has been used in other areas, not just libraries. It's been used in things like human resource management. You can use the escape rooms in any way that you like, so there's no limit to that. When you are looking at it on a curriculum basis, then something that is subject specific, using subject specific resources and particularly using subject specific library resources, will help the students to understand what resources the library has to support that subject area. And I think that's really a good basis to begin by developing an escape room within the curriculum.

Aimee: The reading list could be used, couldn’t it?

Scott: The reading list could definitely be used. One thing to think about when you're designing your escape room is to give yourself plenty of time because they do take a lot of time. Even bitesized ones can take time because you'll have an idea, but you've still got to think about how you're going to create that and which resources you need to link into that. This is where using the library subject resources page, if you are going to use library resources, is a good place to start because that groups all of the resources for that particular subject on the one page, so you can pick those and easily put them in.

Whilst you're thinking about how long it's going to take, think about the timing in regards to the session. Like I’ve said, I try and do 60-minute escape rooms. It's not easy to fit that within the Keele Hour where usually we don't start sessions until 5 minutes after the hour and we end the session 5 minutes before to allow transition. A really important part of delivering the escape room is briefing to explain what it is that's going on and also evaluation. You have to get some feedback from the students to give the students a chance to feedback to you and to each other, to come down from the high during the escape room. That leaves you 35–40 minutes to deliver the escape room. That's something to think about when you're delivering it.
 
Or you could, as I have started to do with the digital escape room, treat it as a flipped classroom exercise. I have developed something called The Guide, which is a OneNote document, which explains how the digital scheme works, how OneNote works, and how they can navigate through. It also explains how some of the puzzles work because sometimes there is a bit of a dichotomy between the student succeeding and the student learning. And with the escape room, it's okay to fail. That's absolutely fine. You've got a set time limit. If you don't do it, you don't do it. But what have you learnt during the game? It's thinking about giving them the best chance, really. For those students who read the guide beforehand and understand how the escape route works, it saves me time to explain it during the session and they've got a better chance of understanding what they need to do ahead of it and a better chance to succeed. That's the great thing about using games: in a lot of cases within education, you don't get the opportunity to fail. But whereas with games, there are winners and there are losers. We can't all win. As much as schools say, ‘Oh, you know, everybody has to win’, I don't believe that. It's really important students understand that sometimes you don't win. And what do you learn from that? That's a really important thing to take away.

The other thing to think about as well as time is learning objectives. What is it that you want that escape room to do? It's not just a fun activity, it's doing something as well. We're thinking about the learning objectives and what you want to achieve, such as an awareness of the resources to support this subject, developing information retrieval skills, and developing critical thinking, all those skills. It's really important to include those learning objectives.
 
Aimee: Yeah. It's keeping the learning at the forefront of all the planning, isn't it? What's the purpose of this game? What are the intended learning outcomes? And that brings us nicely onto our final question for this episode. What is your top tip for students and educators when it comes to using game-based learning techniques to increase their engagement with library resources and all the other various benefits of game-based learning. What would your ultimate top tip be?

Scott: My ultimate top tip for students is: Give it a go. Come along to one of my escape rooms and sign up to the Teams ones. I've got one I'm developing at the moment, which is called Better the Devil you Know. It's a digital escape. Academics and Professional Services Staff, if you're listening, please spread the word of this next escape room. I'd say that is the top tip for students: Come and have a go.

Aimee: Come and have a go. Give it a go. I'm hoping you have ‘Better the Devil You Know’ as your theme song. Is it the Steps song? That’s all that came to mind when you said ‘Better the Devil You Know’.

Scott: It’s Kylie, isn’t it?

Aimee: Is it Kylie?
 
Scott: It’s Kylie, ‘Better the Devil you Know’.
 
Aimee: Gosh! Why did I get Steps in my head?

Scott: They may have done it.

Aimee: Maybe.

Scott: But it’s Kylie that I know.

Aimee: Oh, sorry, Kylie. Sorry if you’re listening!
 
Scott: And for educators, my tip is to get in touch with me because you don't need to feel like you have to re-create the wheel. If you want to use an escape room to promote library resources and use of subject resources, get in touch. Get in touch with myself. Get in touch with any of the Liaison Librarian team. Your library is here to help and support you, so don't feel like you need to do it on your own.

Aimee: Thank you so much. I think that's a really nice way to end the episode. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. It's really interesting to hear about all the exciting work you're doing with game-based learning, in particular around escape rooms. As I said earlier, I'll link all of the resources you've mentioned in the episode show notes so people can explore them and also have a go at the escape rooms, so thank you so much for taking the time to come and talk with us.

Scott: That's brilliant. Thank you, Aimee. It's been great to share my escape rooms with everybody.

Aimee: Thanks again for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode on our webpage, which we've linked in the show notes to this episode. We'd love to hear from you about the thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you need to benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care.

Resources for episode 8

• Digital Library Escape Room Guide ("The Guide") 
• Bitesize digital Library Escape Room ("Carrot or Stick?") 
• Escape Room article, "Escape [to] the Library: Reframing the Library Induction" 

Transcript for episode 9

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, a podcast hosted by Keele University about academic skills and why they matter for students’ success in higher education. Each episode we’ll share practical academic skills techniques for students and tips on how to embed them into the curriculum as educators. This episode focuses on experiential learning, why it matters for academic development and employability, and how you can make the most of experiential learning opportunities as a student. I'm Aimee Merrydew and joining us today to discuss this topic is Alice Whitehouse. Alice is a Digital Advisor Programme Manager here at Keele University, where she supports students to engage in paid projects alongside their studies, so I'm really looking forward to having a chat with Alice today and I hope that you find our conversation on experiential learning useful. Before we chat about experiential learning, please can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role?  
 
Alice Whitehouse: Yeah, thank you for having me. I studied Events Management at Sheffield Hallam University and that’s what stemmed my interest in this area because I learnt so much from doing the events. Obviously learning the theory is very important, but it was the doing for me that really got down to the nitty gritty. So that's where this this interest all stemmed from. And now, as you say, I'm looking after the Digital Advisor Programme, so any students listening to this episode, make sure you’re signed up to the talent pool.  
 
Aimee: I know. I wish I got involved in these kinds of opportunities when I was a student. I don't know if I was as ambitious, but it sounds like really great opportunities and I’m really happy to chat with you about some of the benefits of engaging in this type of opportunity today, so thanks again for joining us. Let's kick off with the first question. Firstly, what is experiential learning? How would you define it for our listeners?  
 
Alice: Experiential learning is learning through experience. It's basically a fancy word for just that, so you can also get experiential marketing, which is where you learn marketing through an experience, including things like placements, work experience, what you did at school, internships, it could be apprenticeships as well. Experiential learning includes everything that is learning through experience.  
 
Aimee: You've taken me back to my Year 10 work experience, where I gained work experience at a hair salon.  
 
Alice: Mine was in a garden centre.  
 
Aimee: Oh, wow! I bet that was fun.   
 
Alice: Fortunately, it was a sunny two weeks and I really enjoyed it.  
 
Aimee: There we are, so it was more like a holiday…  
 
Alice: Yeah.  
 
Aimee: Why do you think experiential learning matters and why is it worthwhile for students to engage in?  
 
Alice: I think the main thing is it's applying the theory to a real-life scenario. I think that's really important because, as we know, things aren't always straightforward. And as lots of the theories or research will suggest, often things don't happen to go right. And I think it's really important for developing many skills to understand that big problems happen and it's about how you deal with them. That was a long way round of saying that I think experiential learning really develops technical skills. Whatever you've learnt in your degree, you'll have a focus and it's putting those into action, but also it's about learning those soft skills, such as problem solving and resilience. Those skills should not be under-estimated because I think that's kind of what makes you a wholesome and talented employee.  
 
And just to add on to that as well, I just had to look on online to see what the research was saying at the moment and a really new article, which was produced by the BBC, said internships are now considered entry-level jobs and the key for building work experience when you leave college or university. And so I think it's so important that Keele offers students these opportunities because when you leave, you’ll feel more confident to go into a graduate job rather than it being your first experience.  
 
Aimee: That sounds really great. If I'm right in thinking, the programme you were a part of was called the Digital Advisor Programme.  
 
Alice: Yeah.   
 
Aimee: I'll include a link in the show notes so listeners can check that out and explore it and see if it's something they want to get involved in if they're a student or, if they're an educator, bring it to the attention of the students they teach, so I'll include this information in the show notes.   
 
Alice: Thank you. Something I'm very passionate about is allowing students to have the opportunity to gain experience in whatever degree they are studying. At the moment, I'm speaking to all academic areas to understand all the different skills the students have in each of their subjects to understand what skill set from them we can offer to businesses. For example, I’m chatting with a Chemistry lecturer about the fact students can do samples of materials and then we can tell that to businesses. And through this project, we've got funding to fund students at no cost to the businesses, meaning we can help you guys to get experience in roles you will then go into after uni. That’s the plan.  
 
Aimee: That's amazing! You're really tailoring it to the degrees and making sure the internship is relevant so that when students finish their degrees, they can say to employers, look I've got this fantastic degree, I've got the subject knowledge and the expertise, but I've also applied this knowledge in practise through this internship.  
 
Alice: Exactly. Yeah. I'm trying to do that with every subject and then I'm going to the businesses with the skills that students have got because I think that's the way to match up businesses with the students: offer businesses the skills students have got.  
 
Aimee: That's amazing. My background is in English Literature, so I'm thinking, ‘oh, what opportunities would be available’?   
 
Alice:  For you, I’d recommend copyediting on a website. Lots of the English students like the writing, grammar, structuring, and making things look attractive with the writing.  
 
Aimee: There we are, so if you're listening to this episode, whatever subject area you work within, check out the Digital Advisor Programme and see what's out there for you.  
 
Alice: Definitely.   
 
Aimee: Let's move on to the next question. For this question, I want you to think about your experience of supporting students with experiential learning while on their internships and placements. What common issues do people experience and why do you think these issues are so common?  
 
Alice: The first thing I would say is I think there is a consensus we can basically get you any opportunity you want and the dream internship will come in and it will be handed to you. That's not the case. Getting your ‘dream internship’ is unlikely because how would you know it's your dream internship? It might be that you go into it and then actually it's not what you expect it to be, but also opening your mindset to the fact that everything has got something that will be useful to you. I would say the first thing is don't wait for your dream internship to come up. If you see something and you think, ‘oh, that actually relates to what I'm doing’ or ‘I've got an interest in that area’, apply for it! Just because you do one internship, it doesn't mean you can't do another as well.  
 
And you might think the internship isn’t very relatable to what you're doing in your degree at the moment. We've had so many students that have done things and then actually thought, I really enjoyed it. Actually, I think I might want to go into this area or they've had an okay experience, but they've actually learnt how to use software which has then opened up another door for them. The internships are 40-hour paid projects. 40 hours is small enough that you haven't felt like you've wasted your time, but big enough that you can learn something from it, so I would say go for it on the opportunities. Don't um and ah about it too much.  
 
Aimee: Yeah, so when I started my doctoral programme in English Literature in 2017, I never thought I'd be sat here today recording a podcast episode with you on experiential learning. I didn't think I'd go into academic and learning development as a job, and I absolutely love it. I feel like I'm doing what I should have always been doing, but I didn't know that when I started my doctoral programme and it was by keeping an open mind that I'm where I am today, and it's the best decision I've ever made. So yeah, listeners, just explore the opportunities that are out there for you. And even if you're a little bit unsure, give it a go. It may be the best thing you do.   
 
Alice: And at this point you've got me to support you. Don't be worried. There is support there, so these internships are a great opportunity to try something new. I always think university is a hub of people with thousands of different skills. If you want to try something new, university is the best place to do it.  
 
Aimee: And it's a paid opportunity. Win-Win. Can you briefly recommend two or three strategies that can help students to manage and overcome the issue that you've just mentioned when engaging in experiential learning activities? Why do you think these strategies are useful? If you know of any resources people can use to help them better understand and engage in experiential learning opportunities, then please let me know and we'll hyperlink them in the show notes.  
 
Alice: Yeah. I've written down three pieces of advice because I thought this was a really good question. If I could tell these things to students all the time, I think my life would be a lot simpler. Most courses offer the opportunity for some form of experiential learning, whether it's a 75-hour placement or your course has a placement in it, where you work in industry for one whole year or there’s any kind of lab work or anything like that. Most courses have this opportunity and so if they're giving you the opportunity, I would honestly take it. There were a few people on my course when I studied Events Management who didn't do a placement and I couldn't understand how you can leave university not having done any events and then go into events, so take the placement year, it'll develop you so much. And actually I think the fourth year makes much more sense because you've had industry experience and you've applied everything you've learnt and then you go back to university and the penny drops a lot of time.  
 
Aimee: It enhances perspective, doesn’t it? 
  
Alice: Yeah. The penny dropped for me, 100%. And the second thing I would say is you can find internships at the moment and I'll give you the link to these to link. Keele Internships page is updated every Thursday and the opportunities on there are varied. They're up to date. There's some internships that are short and some that are long. That's really good to look at. In terms of outside the university, you can look at Rate my Placement and Indeed. There's this consensus that Indeed is for jobs but actually has lots of internships on there. Finally, tap into the Careers events because I think these are really under-utilised. They have people coming in to talk to the students and they run events or they run workshops, whether it’s understanding (if you're an international student) your visa requirements once you've graduated, whether you want to know about internships, and there’s tailored events. For example, if you're in accounting, you can speak to an accountancy firm. There's so many different events and workshops, so really tap into that. It’s there for a reason and I think we could populate that better.  
 
Aimee: Yeah, I know the Careers team have a weekly newsletter and they always have so many exciting opportunities they publish in the newsletter, so explore that. And if you're listening and you're a student or an educator from outside of Keele, your university will likely have something similar, so explore those opportunities available to you in your context. Thank you for sharing those strategies. And I think the takeaway from this conversation is to pursue what's available to you. Keep an open mind. Some of our listeners may be educators and involved in learning support. How might they help students to engage in experiential learning opportunities such as the internships more effectively? How can they embed this opportunity and the skills development into their teaching and in their curriculum?  
 
Alice: One thing I think it’s worth the students knowing, and again this hasn't changed since I was at university and it seems to be similar here, is that they're required to find their own placement and, if the students knew this in first year or second year, it would take the pressure off the educators. I don't know where this conception comes from, but students often reach third year and because they've got a tutor who acts as their placement coordinator, there's this expectation they help students to find the placements. Obviously there is support, but there is too many students per educator to do that. And I think letting the students know in advance, whether it's the year before, just so that they can ramp up looking and have a fair crack at finding a placement they enjoy.  
 
The other thing I would say is signpost the student to Careers for CV and cover letter advice. Educators aren’t expected to provide this support. I think advice on CV and cover letters have changed so much. They are very subjective documents anyway, to be honest, but don’t feel like that's your responsibility as educators because the last time you may have written a CV may have been a while ago and things change, so just making sure the people who are the experts in that area are giving the advice. And then just besides placements, I’d recommend embedding more hands-on opportunities. This is something I’m rallying for at the moment and you'll probably hear more from me on this in the future, but embedding more hands on opportunities in the curriculum and doing more events in which the students can get involved. There was an activity called Caribbean Elective and you can find it online: it was two days where students from different subjects and year groups came together to solve problems for people who live in the Caribbean and the mixing of the students, the groups, and the conversations and the friends that have been made since is all part of experiential learning as well. That's social development: working in a team with people you've never met before. That is what happens when you go into the workplace, so I think more opportunities like that is really important as well.  
 
Aimee: It’s networking as well, isn’t it? I'm pretty sure you were posting images on LinkedIn. And you have a good amount of people involved…   
 
Alice: We did, about 70.  
 
Aimee: It looked like a really great day, full of lots of conversation and there was clearly lots of group work. As you've just said, when you're in a workplace, you're probably not going to be with people who did exactly the same course as you, at exactly the same time; you’re going to work with lots of different people, so being able to work well with them to come up with ideas and work collaboratively is such an important skill that will not only help employability, but also academic studies because it can bring that perspective and a change in perspective as well.  
 
Alice: Yeah, definitely. That's one thing I say is never under-estimate soft skills. The power of being sociable and being able to work with different people will make a change.  
 
Aimee: Yeah. Let's wrap up this episode. I think you've given us lots to think about, which I'm really grateful for, and I'm sure listeners are too. To finish up, what would be your top tip for people when it comes to experiential learning? What's your number one takeaway that you want listeners to remember?  
 
Alice: I’ve got a little quotation I wanted to share, which is that I live my life being a sponge. I try and listen intently and if people ask you about me, they’ll be like ‘she asks a lot of questions’. But that's because I want to understand the answers and the knowledge because everybody has so much different knowledge and so one part of experiential learning is being immersed in the experience and learning from it. And so, you might think ‘I've been to that class and didn't learn anything’. You did. I promise you learnt something from that class. Every experience has something to offer. When you're in the moment, try and be a sponge and learn from everything and everyone.  
 
Aimee: Be a sponge. I love that! Listeners may find it useful to listen to our episode on reflective writing because it would pair very well with what you've said about reflecting on what you've learnt through this experiential learning activity you've engaged in. We'll finish up there. Thank you so much for talking with us today on the Study Matters Podcast about experiential learning. It's been great fun chatting to you as always and it's been incredibly helpful to listen to what you've got to say.  
  
Alice:  Thanks, Aimee.   
 
Aimee: Thanks again for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode on our webpage, which we've linked in the show notes to this episode. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us to share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and take care.

Resources for episode 9

• The Digital Advisor programme is a scheme that provides paid internships for Keele students until June 2023. Keele students and graduates are matched with small to medium sized businesses in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire to improve their digital capabilities. 
• BBC article on why internships are now considered entry level jobs. 
• Journal article on the link between experiential learning and learning outcomes. 
• Caribbean Elective. This four-day bootcamp enabled Keele and University of Birmingham students to work together to inspire lasting change in Caribbean communities. 
• Keele Careers and Employability. 

Transcript for episode 10

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, a practical podcast hosted by the Keele University Library Team about academic skills and why they matter for the student success in higher education. Each episode we’ll interview an educator about an area of academic practice in which students typically struggle from reading to writing and all things in between. And what's more, we'll share top tips to help you study and complete your work more effectively. I'm Aimee Merrydew, and this episode is all about academic writing. Here to talk with us about this topic today is Dr. Malini Devadas. Malini is an academic writing coach who helps students and academics to overcome their writing fears by sharing strategies to write more efficiently, so who better than Malini to come along and chat with us all today about how you can grow your confidence in your writing skills? 
 
By the end of the episode, you should be able to understand some of the common struggles people encounter when it comes to academic writing and you should feel more confident to apply tried and tested strategies to plan, write, and critique your work at university, so without further ado, let's jump into the episode. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast to talk to us today about academic writing. It's going to be really great talking to you. I know I've used a lot of your resources to help me with my writing. You send your emails and your newsletter, which has been incredibly helpful for me, so I was excited when you could come on to the show to talk to us all about academic writing and how you can help listeners, so thank you. 
 
Malini Devadas: That's my absolute pleasure, Aimee, and thanks for having me. 
 
Aimee: You're very welcome. Let's get started then. Broadly speaking, what is academic writing in a nutshell? How would you define it? 
 
Malini: This is a great question because I struggle to define it actually. If you think about the broad spectrum of academia, there's a huge difference between writing about physics or law or economics. Every discipline has its own style and every journal has its own style. I think that a lot of people fear the concept of academic writing because they've turned it into something more complicated than it needs to be and actually it's just about communicating your research. That's it. And I see this a lot when I talk to mature age graduate students, Ph.D. students, who have spent 30 years writing reports in their career very confidently and then they say to me: I don't know how to write a thesis. I can't do academic writing and it's just because their idea of what academic writing is that it’s something scary and complicated. But in the end, we're just trying to communicate to another human. And, you know, we've got our research and we know our stuff. We should just be able to write about it without labelling it as something that's frightening. 
 
Aimee: That's definitely something I understand and share as someone who's currently in the later stages of their PhD. I feel like a lot of my journey as a PhD student has been demystifying what I feel writing is or what reading is or all the different things that we need to do, so we can pick up on that throughout this episode. Why do you feel that academic writing is important? Why do you think it's worthwhile for people to learn how to write academic papers, which might be essays, articles, dissertations, or any other format? Why do you think it's important?  
 
Malini: Well, it's a pretty major way of communicating our research, so that's just the currency we use: publications and theses. That's how people are assessed: essays. Apart from giving oral presentations, the other way to communicate is writing, so it's just a skill that's essential, I'd say, for most jobs, even outside of academia. And again, they're all just about telling a story as far as I'm concerned. It's just the format is different. If you haven't written a thesis before, it's useful to read other people's theses to see what they look like so you have an idea of what you're creating. If you haven't written a journal article before... usually by that stage people have read lots of articles, so you have some idea about what you're writing... But in terms of the sentences and paragraphs, it's still the same principles, whether it's an email, a report, a thesis, it's still each paragraph is an idea. You use words and sentences to create those ideas and you string them together and put in some headings sometimes, and that's your writing. So at the fundamental level it's all the same, it's just the tone might be slightly different. The formality of the language might be different, the length is different, but it's a skill that's useful in all jobs, academic or not, so it is an important skill to practise and learn.  
 
Aimee: Again, completely agree. When I'm talking to students about academic writing, I say it's almost like you've got your ingredients and you learn how to put those ingredients together and that recipe might change based on what it is you're doing, but it's really just looking at that recipe and seeing how different things are put together, what the techniques are. As you said about paragraphs, every paragraph contains an idea, so I think that's a really great way to look at it, to really think about the structure, to help you then formulate your own writing. For the next question, I'd like you to think about your experience of coaching lots of different people to help them with their writing skills. What common issues do you find that people tend to experience when writing and why do you think they're so common? 
 
Malini: These days, I do coaching and when people come to me they’re usually stuck in one of three places. And this is graduate students or even early career academics and sometimes senior academic staff as well. The first place they get stuck is they're not even getting to the computer, right? They just cannot prioritise writing and so days, weeks, months go by and nothing's happened. And that is a huge problem because it doesn't matter how good you are at writing if you don't get to the computer to write it, then it’s not going to happen.
 
The second place where people get stuck is they haven't thought about what they're trying to say. And unfortunately in our culture there's this idea about productivity equalling how many words did I write? So then either they don't write anything because they've got writer's block or they just write hundreds of words to feel like they've been productive, but they're not ordered logically, they've not thought about what they're trying to say. They're not good quality words necessarily. And so then they just end up with this very rough thing they can't actually turn into a polished piece because there's no structure. They don't have the skills to turn that into something they could actually submit, so it's kind of a waste of time. That's the second thing is just not knowing what to say. 
 
And then the third problem I see is people just not submitting. For a thesis, it's not so common because there’s a deadline but for journal articles, I work with clients who have six, seven, eight unfinished manuscripts still sitting on the computer and usually that's a result of fear, so they just never finish it. There's always something to add or they put it aside and then suddenly it's three years later and they haven't submitted it and it just gets harder to do that, so that's a third place where people get stuck and then I help them get past whatever's in the way so they can submit it without fear. 
 
Aimee: Listeners won’t be able to see this, but I’m nodding my head in agreement here because I’ve felt all those emotions and feelings that come along with those issues and I really liked what you were saying earlier in the episode about finding your story and communicating it. And for me, I used to and still do struggle with communicating what it is I want to say. I often have to go back and ask myself: what is my story I'm trying to tell here? If I keep that at the forefront of my mind, I can then plan accordingly and work towards telling that story. But that's definitely something I share. It's an issue I've had myself, so in a way I'm comforted to know that I'm not alone. 
 
Malini: No, it's very common and the process I use and help people with is to do a paragraph plan, so that's plan every single paragraph, which people don't want to do because it's time consuming and they feel pressure to have volume of words. One thing I get irritated by is seeing on social media this idea that you should just write lots of words and edit it later. The problem is most people cannot edit it later properly, so they just get stuck with this 10,000-word rough draft and they can't finish it: it's just too overwhelming and so it's like the hare and the tortoise story. They've rushed to get the words on the page and then get stuck for weeks or months, whereas I think it's much better to take more time at the start. And when I get people to do the paragraph plan, is to think if I didn't read the paragraph, just tell me the one-line version of the paragraph, the one sentence version of the paragraph, so I don't have to read it. People find this quite confronting because I'm asking them to answer, what are you actually saying? Sometimes my clients will say, I don't actually know what I'm saying here. They have no idea what they're trying to say or they're scared to say it because it's controversial. They don't feel qualified. They're not sure the data backs them up. They're nervous about it and so that's why they can't write it and instead of confronting that and dealing with it, they just write about some other vaguely related thing so they've got something to show for their time. When people get stuck, it's really useful to think what am I trying to say here? And just talking to the phone, recording yourself, talking about it helps to get the ideas out and to make sure before you start writing a paragraph you actually know what you're saying. 
 
Aimee: I'm a planner. I spend quite a lot of time planning initially upfront because I'm not one of those people that can just write. It doesn't work for me. I need to know what I'm working towards. Otherwise, the blank page, whether it's on the computer or in a notebook, it stares at me and I can't do it so I'm definitely a planner and I like the paragraph plans. Again, that's something I picked up from you. You've started to move us on to our next question now about some strategies that people can use to help them manage and overcome these issues they might experience when they write academically. You started talking about planning. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about there or any other strategies you'd like to share with listeners? If you have any resources you feel would help people to write more confidently and effectively, then please do let us know and we can hyperlink them in the show notes. 
 
Malini: Yeah. I think going back to the three problems, the first strategy is just making time to write. And the way to do that is to see yourself as someone who writes and this is the work I do as a transformational coach is helping people become a writer. When you see yourself as a writer, you write. When you see yourself as a writer, you block out time for writing. A little bit most days is my preferred approach. When you see yourself as a writer and someone asks you to help them when it’s your writing time, you say I can't do it because I'm writing or I'm busy. And so that's really the first step is for people to make time for writing because otherwise it just falls to the bottom of the to do list and it never gets finished. Even though that's not a strategy as such, it is a strategy in terms of learning to say no, learning to protect your time for writing, and not feeling guilty. That's the other thing. I hear a lot of women in particular say, ‘Oh, I feel bad to shut the door’ on their colleagues, on their family, on the whoever it is to work on my paper because it's a solo task and it feels like they're being selfish, but it's part of the job. It's your job description. You have to write things and so it's just getting comfortable with the idea of having that writing time. And my work is to help people enjoy and look forward to that time. And when people can get to that stage, they can't wait to do their writing each day, even if it's just 20 minutes because, moving on to the next part, they've got the paragraph plan. When you've got a plan, you can just do one paragraph at a time. For a lot of my clients, they're busy, they're teaching, they’ve got families, they've got admin, they don't have 4 hours to sit and write, so the way we do that is we break it down into paragraphs and then start with the easiest paragraph first, so if paragraph seven is easiest, tick that off the list, get it done, you feel good, do the next one, and you can plan your time, so today I'm going to work on paragraph ten, sit at the desk and do it instead of sitting down reading what I wrote yesterday, looking at a journal article or reference, fiddling with something and wasting all that time. 
 
And then the third step, or really the third strategy, is just to submit. That sounds easy, but when people say to me, ‘Oh, it's not quite finished, I need to read some more papers, I need to collect some more data, I need to make it perfect’, that's a red flag for me. If someone wants to read more papers, they've got to tell me why. Which papers are you reading and why do you need to read them? Because there's new literature coming out every 5 seconds. The paper's going to take a year to get published. In that time, more literature is going to come out, so it's going to be out of date. That's the reality of it. When people are generally feeling this sense of it's not quite finished, they often can't tell me why it's not finished. It's usually the fear that's coming up and, as they get closer and closer to finishing, all of these things will get in the way and they'll make more obstacles for themselves because they're scared about it being rejected. But my take on it is that yes it might get rejected. All the writers in the world, academic or not, the ones that are published the most are the ones that probably had the most rejections. Have the courage to put it out there and not let any praise or criticism affect you personally. It's just about the paper. It's just two people's opinion. If you give it to 100 people, you’ll get different opinions, so just put it out there. 
 
Aimee: I remember reading something you wrote, it was either in an email or on Twitter, I can't remember, but it's always stuck with me when you said about submitting and not being scared of submitting and to use it as an opportunity to get feedback and not see that is as a really scary thing, but actually something that can help our writing and us to grow as writers because we get another pair of eyes on the work. Just keep work on your computer to yourself for six months makes it quite difficult to see outside or beyond what you've already got because you've spent time working on it, so to get that perspective from someone else can really help that writing and our ideas to grow. I think that final point is something I've really struggled with myself, but something I've almost forced myself to do: put that submission date in my calendar and stick to it. Even if it's not finished, I'll send my chapter to my supervisor and say, ‘right, it's not quite finished in this area. I really appreciate your perspective on this point or section’ and I have really seen an improvement in my writing as a result because I'm not leaving a year to submit a chapter when I should have submitted it seven months ago. 
 
Malini: I think what you said is a good approach, which is to say these are the bits I'm worried about. Can you please, if you've got no other time, just look at these sections, look at this paragraph? This is my concern. I think the most important thing is to create a space where people feel safe to submit their writing because this is what I see is that people do not submit things because they're scared of the feedback. And I think helping people see there's not really anything bad about someone's writing unless you know that grammatically speaking there are things that are wrong. But beyond that everyone has a voice. And I would encourage people to help students to be confident their voice is fine. And yes, you'll refine your writing voice over the years from when you're starting out. If I look at something I wrote in my twenties, it's different to now in my fifties, but just giving students the confidence to say, you know what, just write. The thing I say to people is just write for yourself, just develop a writing practice. One thing you can do is read a journal article and write a one paragraph summary about the journal article. No one else is going to see that, right? You could do that each week and then over the years you'll see you find it easier to write and then also learn to do the self-critique. Like the way you were talking about it earlier, which is you send work to someone and say I'm worried about these bits. I think a good skill for people to have is to learn to assess their own writing objectively because some people are very hard on themselves and will think their writing's terrible but not based on any fact just a feeling. Other people think their writing is fantastic. Again, it's just based on their confidence levels, so what we're trying to do, and I've been an editor for a long time, is learning to assess your own writing and go let me check the structure. Is it logical? Yes. Let me check the paragraphs. Does it express an idea? Yes. Let me look at each sentence. Is the meaning clear? I know as an editor myself, my writing has improved because I'm always looking at other people's work. I think learning to look at your own work, learning to edit other people's work as well within the classroom, they're all really good skills for writing. Just reading other published work and critiquing it as well can help, but it's just one of those things that the more you practise, the better you get at it. But learning to share your writing with other people can be quite confronting for some people. And I think if you create a safe space and people feel that they can submit it and they know no one's going to say anything terrible, they're going to learn how to critique their work and other people's. 
 
And the other thing is that often the students will say, well I want to resolve this issue, but they just can't resolve it on their own. And we've got the technology now to call a Zoom meeting and have a ten-minute conversation with your supervisor to say, I don't really understand this concept. Can we talk about it versus sitting on something for three months thinking you’ll work it out yourself and not being able to work it out? Supervisor's getting frustrated because they haven't seen it, so send things and just remember there's two aspects of feedback. One is the content of the feedback. Is it useful or not? It's not always and then the delivery. Some people unfortunately give useful feedback but don't know how to deliver it in a tactful way. Other people are nice but they don’t say much useful, so you've got to separate out the delivery and not take that personally and then just look at the content and say, okay, what's useful here? And remember, it's still only one person's opinion and supervisors aren't magically wonderful writers themselves. You know, there's no correlation really between someone's seniority and their writing skills. Really I would say when you're getting feedback from people, it should be about the data, the analysis, the citations, the logic, the argument, not about the expression, unless it's something that's not clear. But unfortunately, a lot of people start giving feedback on style when there's nothing wrong with the writing and so then people feel like they can't write when actually it's just a different style. 
 
Aimee: Yeah. Your point about feedback being one or two people's perspective made me think of another point before we move on to our next question. I can see here how presenting your research, whether that’s at conferences, seminars or events for the public, provides a wider range of perspectives on your ideas and could really help your writing because you're communicating your ideas and getting instant feedback on it that you can then feed in. I think, again, your point about getting students to self-critique their writing is so important because often students will do things effectively in their writing (and I think this point is true for academics and professional writers as well), but not always knowing what they're doing well. They just know how to do it. Having that focus on strengths so they can keep doing it can help to boost confidence and also help students to identify what they might need to develop in their writing practices. I think that self-critique, but also creating a safe space for people to explore their writing and their voice, are all really crucial bits of advice. One more thing that really struck me: I loved your first point about establishing an identity as a writer. I think that's something students would also really benefit from doing. They are researchers, they are writing, so to see themselves in that position can really help to develop that confidence, but also that sense of enjoyment of getting back to that writing. You've got your plan, you are a writer, you're communicating your ideas, so developing that passion that can sometimes get lost when you're working towards all these assessment deadlines. 
 
Malini: In Australia, at least, it's not cool to like doing your writing. So, you know, I see a lot of people complaining about how much they hate their theses and hate writing. And so I understand not everyone has to love it or will love it. But when we talk about it like that, we're not going to want to do it like. Who wants to do something they hate or they think they can't do? Instead, I would say at least feel neutrally about it and learn to accept that it's okay to enjoy it. And that's what I want for people to enjoy writing the thesis or writing their papers. But I know in Australia, I don't know what it's like in the UK, that when people dare to say anything positive about writing, people think they're boasting and don't like it. People have said to me, ‘oh, I really enjoy writing and I think I'm doing something wrong’ because all their other students hate writing all the time and they feel like maybe they're not doing it right. I say just don't tell people you like it, you can enjoy it quietly. But it's not really the done thing to talk about how we like certain things, like academic writing, so I just say enjoy it and that can be your secret. 
 
Aimee: Let's finish up with the final question then. I always like to ask guests on the show what their top tip would be for the topic we've been talking about, so for you that would be: what is your top tip for listeners when it comes to their academic writing? 
 
Malini: Look, I think it really is: just do it. And I just realised I didn't answer your question about the resources, so earlier you asked about any resources to share. I did my undergraduate in the nineties. There were few resources. When I was going through school and university, there was a library. That was pretty much it, so you had to go to the library and get a book. And if they didn't have it, you had to get a loan from another library, so information was still hard to come by even back then. Now we have the opposite, right? Literally so much information. And I see a lot of people, academics, like to learn things. They like to go to training courses. They like to read books on writing. They like to watch webinars and all those things. I want to encourage people to just write. Don't overthink it, okay? You can take courses on specific things or when you get feedback, if someone says, ‘Oh, your grammar is a bit weak’, you can study that. Or ‘your structure is not that logical’. You can learn about that. But essentially the more you do it, the easier it's going to get and the more confident you're going to feel. And so I encourage people to make that time now. Whatever level you at undergraduate, postgraduate, postdoc, or early career academic, just make a little bit of time everyday for writing. And if you have nothing that you're writing yourself, just practise writing about something you read. The more you do it, the more comfortable you'll feel with it, so I think that's really the main tip. 
 
Aimee: Brilliant. Just do it, practise writing, and don't fear submitting. That's the takeaways for me from this episode, so thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with us today about academic writing and writing more generally. I was excited for this conversation. I knew it would be useful and my thoughts weren’t wrong. It's been incredibly helpful, so thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. 
 
Malini: Oh, that's my pleasure, Aimee. Thanks for having me. I hope it's been helpful for other people to think differently about writing and to remove the fear and just know that you've got something to say and people want to hear what you have to say. That's the main thing. And I know for students that's really difficult because I know as a student you feel like you don't know anything compared to everyone else, but actually your thesis in particular is your time. It's your moment to say, I did this work. This is what I found. This is what I think. This is why it matters. And people want to hear what you have to say. 
 
Aimee: Thanks again to listen to the Study Matters Podcast. You can view the transcript and resources for this episode on our webpage, which we linked in the show notes to this episode. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening Study Matters and we hope you'll join us again for our next episode.

Transcript for episode 11

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, a practical podcast hosted by the Keele University Library Team about academic skills and why they matter for students success in higher education. Each episode we’ll interview an educator about an area of academic practice in which students typically struggle from reading to writing and all things in between. And what's more, we'll share top tips to help you study and complete your work more effectively.

I’m Aimee Merrydew and today's episode is all about podcasts and how you can produce them for your assessments and to support your learning. Joining me to discuss this topic is Rebekka Jolley. Rebekka is a Lecturer in Performing Arts and Programme Leader of the Theatre Performance Programme at University Centre St Helens. Rebekka has a background in supporting students with academic study skills and is passionate about embedding them into the curriculum and is an interdisciplinary practice as research doctoral candidate in English Literature and Theatre Studies at Liverpool Hope University. Her thesis focuses on Gertrude Stein’s early play texts and she specialises in avant-garde and modernist theatre and literature. Rebekka is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Certified Practitioner of Learning Development. She's also supported students to use podcasts as part of their learning, so who better than Rebekka to join us today to talk all about podcasts and how you can use them to support your own learning and assessments? Thanks for listening to the episode. We hope you enjoy it. Let's jump in.

Thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk to us all about podcasts and student generated podcasts specifically, Rebekka.

Rebekka Jolley: Thanks for having me.  
 
Aimee: We'll kick off with the first question, then. Broadly speaking, what are student generated podcasts?

Rebekka: Student generated podcasts are podcasts that are made by students. A lot of us use podcasts that are already created within our teaching to vary the information and research that our students are introduced to, but student generated podcasts are podcasts that are made by students, so that might be inside a session or outside of a session.

Aimee: Fantastic! Why do you think student generated podcasts matter for learning and why is it worthwhile for students to make their own podcast during their studies?
 
Rebekka: I think it's important for students to have a varied experience whilst they're studying their degree and too often students are asked to write essays and PowerPoint slides to do presentations, and it's very repetitive. The assessments that students do are tasks they do together in sessions and I wanted to break up that monotony within my own teaching. I'm using podcasts within my own teaching, so I thought what better way to get them to use those research and critical thinking skills than for them to create their own podcast scripts, which they then record and turn them into mini episodes?

In my sessions, they don't create a full podcast, but that’s something other teachers and lecturing staff could do if they've got a longer period of time. I think it's important for students to learn how to do it themselves because it's using a creative side of the brain to help students understand and further explore their subject area in a way they maybe hadn't done previously.

For my students within theatre and performance, they're used to thinking creatively and creating and devising work, but I've heard of staff members who've used student generated podcasts in subjects such as science and engineering to help students think with empirical knowledge and numbers in a very different way. The podcast activities help those scientific minds gain those creative problem solving and thinking skills, so I think it benefits a lot of subjects and a lot of different courses and it's more engaging for the students because they're actively having to do it as a task, whether that be inside or outside of a session.

Aimee: Yeah, I'm naturally very fascinated by podcasts and using them for teaching and learning. Before we go on to the next question, I'm curious to know if the students can take these podcast recordings, whether it's a full episode or a snippet of it, outside of their course and share it more widely? They're such a fantastic digital resource that students could use for employability, for example.

Rebekka: Yeah, definitely. That would be a really engaging thing to put on a digital CV to show what they’ve created. Two of my students are actually carrying on their podcast where they talk about different theatre practitioners and chat together. They have also done role-playing episodes, where they role play as the theatre practitioner they're focusing on. It helps their acting skills and interview skills. There are different formats of creating podcasts, so there’s roundtable discussions, debates, and then interviews like we are doing right now. If the students choose to do interview-style podcasts, it can help them to prepare for interviews, postgraduate study, and job applications, so it helps not only with skills they need for the course and to be successful students, but it helps with further progression afterwards as well.
 
Aimee: That's fantastic and really exciting. Is the students’ podcast the one you included in your recent chapter on using student generated podcasts?

Rebekka: Yeah. One of the scripts is available from that chapter.
 
Aimee: It's an open access chapter in the 100 Ideas for Active Learning book, so we'll link that in the show notes so people can read it. Let's move on to the next question, then. I'd like you to think about your experience of supporting students to generate their own podcasts. What common issues do people tend to experience and why do you think these issues are so common?

Rebekka: The main issue I encounter is where to start, so they hit a writer's block straight away because they're not used to writing in this style. They’re used to writing essays, logbooks, or evaluations. They're really not used to writing in a way where they include their research and criticality within an informal phrasing. Then when the students were recording the episodes after they'd written the scripts, they found they weren't sticking just to the scripts, they were adding things in and it became more organic. To stop students thinking too rigidly and avoid that writer's block, you can say it's not a script you have to stick to. It's something you can organically move through and change and if people decide to record the episodes with their students and create a full episode, then that's something you can help the students with through their presentation skills.

The other thing students struggled with was introducing quotations and how to include research within the actual podcast script itself. We got around that issue by drafting a sample podcast script together as a big group before they went into separate groups and that helped them understand how to do it organically rather than sounding like it's an essay that is read aloud. Those were the two main things that my students encountered.

Aimee: I can see how that would be so fantastic, not only for the podcast episode that they record, but also for their other learning and assessments. Including how to integrate research by the critics and scholars, as well as thinking about how they might start introducing evidence in interviews or when they're talking to people outside their courses. Do you have any strategies you think will be useful to help students when they generate their own podcasts?

Rebekka: Yes. At the start of the session where I introduce the podcasts, I went through different examples of podcast scripts. There are different structures, so there's an interview-style like what we're doing currently, a roundtable discussion where you may have people who have different views and talk about the same subject in a back-and-forth between three or four different people, then there's the classic debates where one person has a very clear view and the other opposes it. There are other formats I discussed in my chapter, but those are the ones I shared with my students.

Rather than just saying here's the classic tropes and here's how it's usually structured, I got the students to find their own examples of things that they listen to and that they're familiar with so that they could understand how their favourite podcast episodes are structured. And that really helped them because they had that familiarity with that format and it helped sort of bridge that gap between the writer's block that I mentioned and ‘oh, where do we start? How do we do this?’ And so that was one thing that that helped was getting the students to go and find examples for themselves, including things that they listen to leisurely. That helped them not only engage with it but further their understanding because it's something that they're familiar with and that they like as well.

Aimee: Yeah, I think you're making a more widely applicable point here. When we're working with students, it's about encouraging them to find their voice, isn't it? And of course that would apply to a podcast. You want it to feel natural in terms of how you're talking on the podcast, how you're presenting, so finding examples of podcasts they like could encourage them to recognise they don’t need to be a certain way, they can find something that works for them, and that can help them to feel more comfortable with what is probably a new sort of learning activity for most people.

Rebekka: Exactly and something that felt alien at first became quite familiar and more comfortable because it's something they listen to on the bus as they are coming into University or whilst they're at home doing chores, that kind of thing. They also began to analyse things they enjoy as well, which within my subjects of theatre and performance, we're always analysing performances. When it came to them working on the presentation skills and how to talk on the podcast, I said, right, let's go back to those examples that you guys found and let's analyse the performance of those podcast hosts or interviewees and that really helps them then sort of mimic and mirror the behaviours and phrasing that was within the podcasts they like to listen to and they felt much more confident then when it came to presenting.

Aimee: It is such a fantastic way to make academic sources much more accessible, isn't it? Academic writing is almost like a different language; you have to learn academic writing. Of course there's different variations of academic writing, but it still feels very separate from how most people speak day-to-day, so I could see how this podcast activity really makes the ideas and the concepts much more accessible and it's testing people's understanding because they've got to be able to convey their ideas and communicate it in everyday language.

Rebekka: Exactly. When I was working in my study skills role, one thing that students struggled with is that oftentimes they would have this fantastic area of research, but they wouldn't be able to articulate it to a lay audience in layman's terms. Lay writing was a really important aspect of their study skills development. I think when you're in such a specialised area, no matter what subject you are learning, you have all these specialised terms you know but outside of your subject area they are not well-known and people won’t necessarily understand what they mean. Students become so passionate about their areas of interest, and their research specialisms, as they move through their degrees that a podcast sort of helps remove all of that so that the students become more familiar with articulating their arguments and their thoughts and ideas in lay language. So, you know, in layman's terms so that an open audience of anybody could understand it. And you know, for further research, if, you know, students want to go on to postgraduate study if you are writing conference abstracts or abstracts for publication, it's really important that you're able to articulate your research ideas and summary, in layman's terms, so that it attracts a wider audience. And I think that these podcast scripts allow the students to get used to using that lay language and articulating in their ideas too, in a non-specialised way. 

Aimee: Yeah. Before we move on to the next question, you've just made me think I'm coming into the final stages of my Ph.D. in English literature and I'm thinking ‘why have I not used the podcast like a podcast format to sort of really bring together my ideas across the chapters and communicate what it is I am trying to say?’ Because I have got about 65,000 words now and I don't really remember what I wrote a few months ago, let alone two years ago. I am sat here thinking, ‘why am I not using this format that I use myself to help me understand what I'm trying to say and then communicate that clearly to anyone that will be willing to listen to me’.

Rebekka: Yeah. That's something podcasts could be used for: developing abstracts for writing or if you need to summarise a dissertation. It is also really good for writing introductions and conclusions for essays and presentations because the time limit that you have with a podcast episode means students need to be able to summarise their ideas in a succinct way, so that time limit helps them to be able to get familiar with articulating ideas in a small word count you have for an introduction and a conclusion or an abstract, and so it does help with other assessments and helps to develop their succinct writing and articulation skills.

If you're not feeling confident with the software, another thing you can do is write podcast scripts rather than actually recording the episode itself. It still introduces those skills of writing in lay terms, using creative methods, and using different language and writing structures. You could present it live in the class rather than recording it. If you don't have time for that or you don't feel confident with it. The students will still get the benefit and development of those skills if you just get them to write the podcast scripts and then present in session and do it live. 
 
Aimee: I think that's a fantastic idea. It is centring the learning and what you want people to get out of it. We’ll, finish up here then with my final question. What is your top tip for students and educators when it comes to student generated podcasts?

Rebekka: My top tip would be just giving it a go, just try it. And you know, if the editing software puts you off, like I said, remove that side of it and present live instead. Explore outside of the classroom. Don't just do it within in the class itself, explore things like YouTube tutorials or listen to other people's podcasts. Have a look for student generated podcasts too because there are a lot out there and they are really fantastic resources. Start to analyse, dissect, and interrogate the things you listen to daily and ask yourself ‘what format is this? what kind of language are they using? and how are they presenting this topic? How is this discussion evolving?’ I think a lot of people don't realise podcasts most of the time are scripted to an extent. They'll have a set of questions people are sent beforehand, so they'll have time to prepare for if it's an interview style. If it's like a roundtable discussion, then there'll be loose time slots on who will speak when. I think a lot of people think a podcast is a very organic thing where there are two people or a group of people who just sit in a room and talk about something, when in actual fact there's a lot of preparation. Whether that preparation involves researching certain topic areas, finding experts to come in and discuss it, or researching the topic itself so there's an even split on who discusses what and when. So just like you would analyse a journal article or a book chapter or a publication, start analysing the podcast episodes in that way so that you become familiar with the structure of it and the language that's used so you feel more confident when you do actually come to writing the scripts or presenting it itself.

Aimee: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming along today. It's been really interesting to talk to you. I really enjoyed reading your chapter in the book 100 Ideas for Active Learning. It's been a huge pleasure to talk to you more about student generated podcasts, so thank you for taking the time to come on to the show.

Rebekka: Thank you for having me. It's been fantastic.

Aimee: Thanks for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and we hope you'll join us again for our next episode.

Transcript for episode 12

Aimee Merrydew: Today we'll be talking about digital reading with Jamie Wood. Jamie is a Professor of History and Education in the School of Humanities and Heritage at the University of Lincoln, where he has worked since 2013. His work in history pedagogy in higher education has focussed on the use of active, inquiry based and digital approaches to developing students' disciplinary skills and knowledge, so Jamie is the perfect person to come along and chat with us all today about digital reading. Thank you for taking the time to come and chat with us, Jamie.

Jamie Wood: It is my pleasure. I’m looking forward to it.

Aimee: Brilliant, so we will jump into our first question. Broadly speaking, please could you let us know what digital reading is and how this activity relates to student learning?

Jamie: Digital reading means different things to different people. That's one of the things I've discovered over the last couple of years as I've been working on it. For some people, it's reading a digital text such as PDFs, websites, and other sorts of digital texts or digitised texts. For some people, it's the kind of platforms that you use to do the reading so that might be a virtual learning environment, a website, your phone, laptop Kindle or another type of e-reader. Sometimes it's the kind of text. And for others it's the platforms. I think for others it's the process and the experience of reading and it can be all of these things woven together. It really varies depending on who you ask and the questions you ask them as to what it means. But those are some of the ways in which I think about it. 

The second part of your question was, what does it mean for student learning and why is it important? Well, I think it's important because increasingly students are accessing readings through online platforms, so through search engines, library catalogues, and the databases that library catalogues give you access to. They're finding and accessing things digitally and then reading in the ways in which I described. The way they are gathering a lot of the knowledge they're using for learning is digital.  Even if they go to get a book, there is that process around obtaining a physical hard copy of a book. There is that process of discovery through digital means.  

One of the things I've discovered through working on the various projects I’ve been doing over the past year or two is that many students actually use digital means to access hard copy resources. Quite a lot of students will find a PDF and print it out or find a book and print out the section they're particularly interested in. There is this kind of blurred line between the digital and the analogue in lots of cases as well. It's not a sharp dividing line. And then, for some students, it varies according to the context in which they find themselves. Many people don't have rigidly fixed study habits. Study habits change as well, depending upon the kind of task you want to do, whether you’re working, where you're working, and how you're working. Those sorts of things all affect it, too.  

Aimee: You touched on some important things there. We often sort of see this divide between reading a hard copy and reading a text digitally, but often we combine the two. Different tasks require different ways of reading and I'm sure we'll pick up on that throughout our conversation today. 

I know you've done a lot of work recently on a project called Active Online Reading, and you've produced lots of fantastic resources on that, so I'd like to think about some of the work you've been doing there specifically about why you feel like digital reading matters for students. Why do you think it's worthwhile for them to develop their digital reading skills during their studies at university? 

Jamie: I think it matters for some of the reasons that we've already outlined. It is the primary means by which students access information and therefore develop their knowledge independently of lectures or seminars, or whatever type of delivery mechanism the specific discipline has. That's where large parts of independent learning are happening. In some disciplines, there's a wide variance in the number of face-to-face contact hours that a student will have. For some disciplines, so much of their work isn’t meant to take place in an independent learning context. It's even more important for disciplines like History or English or what might be viewed as traditional disciplines, so I think that's why it's really important. 

I think there's a big distinction between the focus that has been placed on information literacy or digital literacy, so developing students' abilities to search for, filter, use, and repurpose information they have found either offline or online. There has been a quite big focus on that. Those sorts of projects themselves are not complete. It is not like students are perfect at finding information and filtering it online, but there has been very little focus on the habits of online reading or digital reading.  

Indeed, there's not much focus on any kind of reading. There's a kind of expectation that students come to university and they can read. Obviously to some degree they can read, but their reading prior to coming to university has been rightly focussed on preparing them for assessments. It's not been developed to meet the requirements of the specific disciplines or the specific needs that they have when they come to university. There's this real divide between things like digital literacy, which has had some focus, and things like digital reading, which hasn't had a great deal of focus. 

The assumption is that students learn through osmosis. They come to university and by ‘reading the subject’ they learn incidentally and accidentally. Whereas I think it's necessary for us to think in a more structured and purposeful way about how we induct students into reading at university. As I've outlined, increasing amounts of reading are taking place online and there's been much less focus on online reading pedagogies than there has on offline reading pedagogies and there's not been a great deal of focus on offline reading pedagogies. There's a real gap there, which was partly what the Active Online Reading Project was intended to address. 

Really there were two things that we were looking at. The first one was trying to understand where students are coming from and what their practices are. And the second strand of it was trying to get a handle on how we teach them to read, both online and digitally, so how we're preparing them to be able to develop their skills or encouraging them to develop their skills in reading in these relatively new forms. Those are the two strands of the project that we are trying to bring together. 

Aimee: I think your point is so key about challenging the assumption that all students come to university knowing how to read because they have got into university. 

When I was teaching in the School of English at Keele University, I would always hold up a copy of one of my novels from when I was an undergraduate. When I was sorting through my books and thinking about the books I should keep or get rid of, I kept this particular book because I opened it and it had whole pages of a novel highlighted in pink highlighter. When I was reading it, I obviously thought ‘oh, this is all really important,’ but I didn't have the skills to know how to select the most important information or how I should be taking notes on a text. When I went to write about that text for my essay, it became quite difficult to know what areas to focus on because I’d highlighted everything. 

I always would take that into classes when we were thinking about close reading skills. And I know I'm moving onto hardcopy here, but I think the point applies to digital reading. As you said, there's a blend between online and digital in some ways. I would show the class this copy and say, “look what I've done.” We would talk about it and the different ways we might read that page. And I think it is just as important to do that when we're reading a digital text. I think that’s a really, really important point to not to have that assumption and to teach those skills. 

And you have started to touch upon the next question I want to ask you, which is about your experiences of supporting students to read digital sources. What are the common issues that people tend to experience, and why do you think they're so common? I know you've said not having digital literacy and information literacy, and those assumptions that the students know how to read. But can you think of any other issues?  

Jamie: Yeah, we did a survey of students across the country and beyond the UK of their experiences of reading online and their practices of reading online. And we asked them about some of the challenges that they face or had faced. Some of them are about digital literacy, but some of them are very firmly about reading.  

One of the challenges is overload and distraction. When people are reading online and are connected to the web and reading on a phone or device where there are multiple apps running at the same time with notifications potentially pinging up for you, it's hard to focus on the task at hand, which is reading. Obviously, that pertains to other things you might be trying to focus on, but that's what they talked about in relation to reading. So, there were a number of strategies that people suggested, that could help to overcome that. But that was one of the key things, this sort of digital distraction. 

And in terms of overload, I'm not sure overload is the right word, but there was this thing around having too many platforms. When going through a university library or through a university database, a lecturer might want students to read two articles. But the articles might be on different databases and so require the user to load up different platforms. Some platforms run in the browser, but some of them load up in a different type of app. If you're doing several modules at the same time, and maybe researching a dissertation, you're just constantly shuffling between different ways of information being displayed to you, across different platforms and different apps, aside from the fact you've got all these potential other distractions on the outside. I think that's one of the challenges in terms of just managing that. It can be difficult. Whereas in a more ‘hardcopy’ scenario, it's a little bit easier to block out some of those things. Those were two of the challenges in terms of distraction and overload that they described.  

They described the very physical challenges of digital reading that I hadn’t really thought about, but now I reflect on it and think it is absolutely true and I’ve experienced it, too. After sitting at your computer for long periods of time, people talked about it giving them back ache, and things like eyestrain and headaches. These are physical things that are the result of something that doesn’t seem to be that physical, so that was a very interesting finding. 

Then there were some things that really relate to your anecdote about the extremely highlighted book. Those sorts of issues are common in the digital sphere as well. It's not knowing what to look for or where to look for it within a text. How to handle and manage the text at the level of the page, but also at the level of the overall object. So, in terms of the article or the book, how do I navigate through this in an efficient way, so I don't end up skim reading the whole thing and not taking anything in? Or going so deeply into it that it takes forever to get through it? So, they described not having strategies for reading. Some of those were issues that were universal to reading in general, and some of them I think, relate to digital reading specifically. So, those would be some of the things that I would pick out as key challenges. 

Aimee: In another episode with Angela Rhead, we talk about strategic reading, and Angela calls it reading for academic purposes. And I think that's really key, isn't it? Knowing why we're reading a text and what we want to get out of it. 

Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. 

Aimee: It's not to say you shut down interesting points that come up unexpectedly but knowing why you're reading it is important and that's something we as educators can help students to figure out. 

That brings us very nicely on to our next question. Please could you briefly recommend 2 or 3 strategies you feel can help students to tackle the issues that you've mentioned, to help them develop their digital reading skills and to achieve their academic goals? And could you also let us know why you feel these strategies are useful for people?  

Jamie: We worked with a number of student ambassadors. We used them as informants in a way. They gave us quite detailed feedback on their own specific reading practices. Some of them talked about the ways in which they seek to block out information. Using things like apps on whatever device you're using to do your reading. Specific apps let you set timers that allow you to spend 40 minutes reading and then ten minutes in which you can be distracted. So, structuring digital breaks was one of the strategies.  

Another one was to try and close everything down that you think might distract you. Turn off as many notifications as possible. Think very carefully about how you layout your screen for doing your reading. If you've got a screen that's big enough, you might want the word document you're using to take notes, and then something else that might be useful on the screen at the same time. That could be a dictionary for example, if you're doing a language type of subject. That allows you to work quite efficiently and keep everything on one screen rather than constantly clicking between different apps. Those are a couple of strategies that I think are really useful in terms of avoiding distraction and keeping focused.  

Students who had been encouraged to read collaboratively, to engage in reading together whether that was in class or online reported that being a positive experience that really helped them to develop their understanding of readings. It helped them to come to terms with one of those real threshold concepts: that texts have multiple meanings. Even texts that can seem very simple can be interpreted in many different ways. Students early on in their studies often struggle with that. Collaborative reading is a way in which students can see what other students are reading and their comments on the readings. They said that was really helpful in starting to understand that texts can be interpreted in different ways. That there isn't necessarily a right answer. They said that they didn’t need to worry about being right or wrong, and that collaborative reading helped them to get used to sharing their ideas. Students being open to reading collaboratively is a really a positive one. 

I'm also a huge advocate of annotation. I think annotating the text is a really a powerful way of students articulating their understanding of a text. Starting to process it, even if it's just on a very minor level of adding a few notes to a text, can really help them to start to demonstrate their understanding. By annotation, I don't mean taking notes where you kind of copy out large chunks of text or get loads of quotes. What I'm talking about is specific additions to the text that really demonstrate: okay, I've got a question about this, or this is what I think this paragraph is going on about, this is the really important quote, not these are the 50 quotes that I think are important in this article. This purposeful annotation activity is really powerful and will be helpful for students. 

Aimee: When reading in this way for academic purposes, you're having a conversation not only with the author or authors of that text, but also yourself and, if you’re reading collaboratively, the other readers that are annotating that text. Having that conversation and not just copying or highlighting huge amounts of text and leaving it at that encourages people to be very active in their engagement with the text.  

Jamie: Yeah.  

Aimee: You’re writing your thoughts, what you feel about it, what ideas it sparked, any areas that you're unsure of. One of the things we can do as educators is to go into the digital text and help to model those types of reading and that’s the beauty of collaborative reading platforms. 

Jamie: Yeah. 

Aimee: People can see particular areas, rather than it just being quite unstructured reading. And again, I don't want to shut down any points of interest that might emerge but knowing why you're reading it can really help with those annotations. Let's move on to our final question then. 

I always ask people, what is your top tip when it comes to digital reading? You can have two tips if you'd like: one for students and one for staff. It's up to you. What would your top tip or tips be? 

Jamie: I think for both it's around being active and purposeful in the way in which you read, or the way in which you try and structure the reading. Really thinking about what it is you want to get out of the reading and then working backwards from that. To figure out a process that will enable them to get that out of the reading, rather than it being a passive process in which you provide the reading and then have a seminar to discuss the reading. Obviously, it is great to have the seminar to discuss the reading as that’s where all the learning really coalesces, but I think if you can structure something in beforehand that's more deliberate and encouraging them to be active in the text, then that's really going to help them when it comes to the to the seminar. Otherwise, I think you're missing an opportunity. Certain students often perform better in seminars than others, so enabling students to structure that preparation more will help engagement in seminars to be a bit more even, perhaps.
 
When I first started teaching nearly 20 years ago, I used to think I set too much reading and that the students didn't do it because they’d come to class and you'd try to mount a discussion and it didn't seem like they had very much of an understanding of what they'd read. I used to think that was because they hadn't done the reading. Nowadays, I think it's mainly because they hadn't thought about it, so that processing and that thinking hadn't happened. 

I think the more that students can be encouraged to do that processing activity, the cognitive act of, what does this mean? Why is this important? I think having those sorts of questions in mind would help students as well. That encourages you to be active and encourages you to read with a purpose. It encourages you to process the reading as you're going, rather than wading through it really slowly or skimming through it really quickly and getting to the end and being like: I have no clue what that was about, but I'll go to the seminar and somebody will hopefully tell me. I think those two things that I've described are potentially in alignment with one another. If students can go and develop an active disposition, and staff can structure in things that will help them to be active, that's the best way of making the most of the potential of digital reading. 

Aimee: I completely agree. I think it always comes back to our active engagement, doesn't it? And even if that active engagement might be, I'm really struggling with this, I need to think it through some more, I need to have some conversations. That's a really important learning point that happens, more so than just reading it and not really understanding it.  

I've definitely done that before. Where I’ve read from start to finish and I didn't really understand what happened and have moved on to the next thing. If I could think I don't know what's going on here, that’s important because it means I have actively thought I need to go away and do some more reading around this and have some conversations. I think that's a keyword: active reading. 

Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast to chat with us all today about the work that you've been doing in digital reading and reading generally. It's been great to talk to you. I always have lots of fun and learn a lot from our conversations. Thank you for taking the time to come on the podcast.  

Jamie: No problem, I've really enjoyed it. It's great to be able to talk it through and think it through. 

Aimee: Thanks for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. Don’t forget, you can get in touch with us to recommend topics for future episodes so, whatever the study matter, you can head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our show. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and we hope you'll join us again for our next episode.

Resources for episode 12

• Academic Online Reading Project  
• How to focus on reading in a digital world 
• How collaborative reading can work for you 
• 5 things students wish they’d done differently when reading 
• Putting the Joy Back into Reading 
• Overcoming Barriers to Digital Reading 

Transcript for episode 13

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, a practical podcast hosted by the Keele University Library Team about academic skills and why they matter for students success in higher education. Each episode we’ll interview an educator about an area of academic practice in which students typically struggle from reading to writing and all things in between. And what's more, we'll share top tips to help you study and complete your work more effectively. 

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Study Matters Podcast. I’m Aimee Merrydew and today I’ll be talking with Annabel Roberts about assignment feedback, why it matters, and how you can use the feedback to develop your skills for success in your next assignment or work project. Annabel is a Teaching Fellow in Psychology at Keele University with a special interest in academic skills and the value of feedback, so she’s the perfect person chat with us about today’s topic, so thanks for joining us and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Thank you so much for coming along today to chat to us today all about feedback and why it matters for people's learning and their assessments at university. Let's kick off with the first question then why does assessment feedback matter? 

Annabel Roberts: I think ultimately, it's a lot more than a grade. Assessment feedback can help to give you a bit of direction going forward. It helps you develop numerous skills as well as those that are academic skills like academic reading, referencing, but also those that are content specific as well. It helps to deepen that learning and skill development and equips students with the tools they need to succeed going forward. Another reason why it matters is because it clarifies expectations in terms of what we expect within a specific school, or course. For example, what is the level of academic English that's required? This ultimately allows students to kind of align their efforts to the course or future assignments as well. 

It also promotes accountability. Students are encouraged to use the feedback to take ownership of their own learning and their own development. For example, using that as a basis of self-assessment, reflection, and goal setting going forward. It also hopefully gives students motivation to recognise what they've accomplished so far and strive for further excellence, but it also matters to us as academics. It gives us a better idea of what's working within a module, what's not working, how we can change some aspects of the assessment, teaching, or learning to ultimately help students further with their assessments and course. 

Aimee: I love that, it’s centring learning and using the assessments to encourage people to think differently about their ideas, to allow those ideas to grow, but also to promote agency and dialogue with that feedback to use it to think about what people are doing really well and if there's anything they want to work on to take forward into their next assignments and work generally.  

Annabel: It's a continual process as well. It's not just something that starts and ends when you get a piece of feedback. It should be something that's evolving and ongoing throughout your entire degree and beyond and even with us as academics as well.  

Aimee: I think that's such an excellent point for listeners to hear about the fact we have feedback too. Feedback helps students with their learning and their growth, but it also helps the lecturers or markers to make improvements to the courses, which I think is can often be forgotten. Thank you for raising that.  

What do you think the common issues are that people tend to experience when it comes to feedback? Why do you think these issues are so common?
 
Annabel: I think one of the main ones is that it's so emotional. Students put so much time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears into their assessments whether big or small and having that feedback often feels personal. We know as academics that it's not personal, but it's about overcoming that idea that it is super emotional. It might be because of this over-emphasis on that big grade in the corner, that 72 or 42 or whatever it might be. But ultimately, this over-focus on the grades can mean students miss those opportunities for growth and development because they're taken away by that number, rather than looking at the text comments at the side, which are the most important for development. This may also lead to kind of a very superficial understanding of the feedback that's being given as well, and a tendency to sort of prioritise achievement to numbers and grades over true understanding of a subject matter or over mastery of a subject. 

I think another issue is feedback literacy more generally, just understanding the feedback and what the marker is trying to say with that feedback. Often students say to me: ‘oh well, I've not had a lot of feedback. It's quite limited’. It might feel brief, superficial, or minimal on how students can improve going forward and this can leave a lot of students feeling quite frustrated. Students may find that feedback is also a bit too general or vague as well, and maybe not see how to put that feedback into action, ultimately, that lack of actionable suggestions. 

Another one is inconsistency. If you've got a marking team that's quite big on a specific module (for example, a big course-wide module) you might find that between you and your course mates when you talk about a piece of assignment you may receive different or conflicting advice or have ideas around the feedback. This can make it difficult for students to know exactly what to focus on and how to improve. But just for reassurance, we do have moderation for that reason, so we don't just completely mark things to our own discretion.  

Lastly, I would say there are limited opportunities for dialogue between us as markers and students. Ultimately, because we operate within that system of the KLE and Turnitin. That lack of opportunity may make it feel like the process is not very transparent or that there's a big barrier between us and students and that can hinder some of those ways to fully understand your feedback which you would get, for example, if you approached your marker. 

Aimee: The emotional side of feedback is something I imagine most, if not all, of us have experienced at one point in time. When I receive feedback on my doctoral work, I make sure I'm aware of the emotional tie I have to this piece of work and I make sure I read the feedback and then leave it alone for a few days because, regardless of how fantastic the feedback is. If there's still quite a lot of work that needs to be done, it can feel quite emotional for me and I might panic or feel overwhelmed. 

I want to pick up on what you were saying about feedback literacy and the language used in marking rubrics or written feedback. As the Academic Skills Team, we spend a lot of time busting the jargon that operates within higher education. My advice for any Keele students who are unsure about their feedback is to come to us in the Academic Skills Team or contact your course tutor to seek clarification on that terminology to ensure you can get the most out of that feedback by understanding it.  

Annabel: It's there for you to use, right? Is not there to just sit there and be this static energy that you don't want to face or be too reactive. 

Aimee: Thank you for sharing some of those reasons why assessment feedback matters and some of the common issues people encounter when engaging with this feedback.
 
Do you have 2 or 3 strategies you could recommend to our listeners today to help them understand and use that feedback effectively? While you're sharing these strategies, if you could tell us why you think they're useful and maybe any resources that you know of that would be wonderful. 

Annabel: Amazing. I mean, you've already picked up on one which is waiting to approach feedback until you are emotionally able to receive whatever it is that's written there. This means that you're in a better space to receive that feedback and you can actually do something with it when the time comes. Looking at it too early might mean you don't provide yourself with that opportunity to fully digest it and use it for your development, so take a step back and revisit when you feel able to. A place to start might be when you are around your peers and you've got that support network. 

I'd also say use it as a time for reflection. Think about how you thought the assessment went. You might want to note these down, keep them to yourself, or discuss them with others, and compare that with the feedback you've received because a lot of it is about managing expectations. If you didn’t do as well as you thought, can you break that down as to why you feel that way? Have you got any misunderstandings about academic writing or reading that you need to push into your development going forward? You might also think about your own assumptions and approaches to feedback as well. Open yourself up to different techniques and ways of approaching feedback can help inform that strategy going forward and create action plans as well.  

My last strategy is to create that action plan, or pro-forma, to log your feedback for future use. You can do this by using a table, mind map, or list, whatever works for you. You would do this mainly to keep a note of all of those strengths, weaknesses, and ways to improve going forward. It might be that a marker said that you need to improve your referencing, for example. At least you've got a note of that going forward, and you don't have to keep going back into specific Turnitin pages. After logging these actions by module or assessment, you develop that pro-forma and collate those themes that continually occur within that feedback and it can allow you to develop that bigger picture of how you can improve.
 
You can use that action plan as a checklist when you're planning pieces of assignments, preparing, reviewing, or writing your future work. Don't be stagnant with what you're doing. If you find that action plan doesn't work for you, you might consider other things like the SNOB analysis: Strengths, Needs, Opportunities and Barriers. Try different approaches if you find something doesn't work for you. 

Aimee: I love absolutely everything you've just said. The thing that's really stood out to me is moving beyond that mindset of completing an assessment, getting feedback on it, and then moving on without ever thinking about it again, which can sometimes happen when we're so focussed on the grade we get.  

By creating an action plan, you can use your feedback to identify what you're doing really well and what you want to work on. You're taking that feedback and using it to help your continual growth, which I think is really important and comes back to agency. Sometimes that process of receiving feedback can feel quite passive, but if you're constructing your own action plan from it you're actively engaging with it and using your agency. By putting that feedback into concrete actions, you're also making sure you understand what that feedback is recommending because you've got to be able to understand it in order to action it. 

Annabel: And write it in your own way. It also allows you to have a log to look back on to consider: where have I come from and where am I now? It allows you to feel a bit more boosted in yourself that you have achieved something. It's not just the same bits of feedback over and over again. You're continually developing yourself. 

Aimee: Yeah, and for anyone listening to this episode, Annabel made a fantastic study guide and which we've got on our Academic Skills Study Guides webpage, so I'll link that in the show notes.  

That brings us to our final question for this episode, which I always ask guests on the show. What is your top tip for listeners when it comes to feedback? 

Annabel: I think ultimately it is to talk to people. You're not isolated or alone when taking apart the feedback or trying to use it. Seek help and guidance wherever you can. If you have a piece of feedback, ask yourself: Do I understand the feedback? Is anything unclear? Do I understand how to feed this forward and improve? If you don't know an answer to any one of those questions, that's your sign to ask for help. It might be that you approach the marker who's marked that assignment. It might be a module leader, your academic mentor, the Academic Skills team, or your peers who could use their experiences and feedback to guide you. You could ask if they've received similar feedback or if they can help you understand the feedback a little bit more or what they think markers mean by particular comment. They may have had the same feedback, but phrased a bit differently and they may also give you some information about the standard of your own work and how it compares. We often get choked up with comparing ourselves to others, but I think with feedback it can be a productive and useful exercise.  

Ultimately, I would suggest trying your marker first as they are the ones that have the most experience with marking your exact piece of work. Remember to try and contact them in respectful ways, so emailing them nicely about wanting to seek clarification. I would recommend asking for an appointment to see them and meet in person, as you've got a screen in front of you and can point out specific instances you want clarification on.  

Press gently for this clarification and point out specifics you would want more feedback on within your work. You might come to that meeting with specific questions in mind to make sure that that's a productive setting. You might ask things like: what do you think was the best thing I did here? What was the most useful change I should make next time or what should I do similarly next time? Remember your marker, your mentor, or module lead is a person as well so try to approach them with some understanding and open mindedness, rather than asking them for higher marks or challenging their judgement. Frame it as a learning process for the both of you rather than interrogation between the two of you. 

Aimee: I love that. I have been thinking about the action plan people can make from their feedback. They can also try to answer some of those questions themselves beforehand. Where do I think I did well? where do I think I can improve? You can use the feedback to help that, but you can also revisit that assignment and almost mark it yourself in a way.  

Annabel: Against the rubric or with the learning outcomes or whatever it might be. 

Aimee: Exactly and think about the extent to which you met these learning outcomes. I have just been thinking back to my undergraduate days. I had one assignment due in after Christmas. It was a longer essay, which was quite unusual because we usually had multiple shorter assignments at once, so I put all my effort into this one essay and I worked really hard on it. I was really proud of it and I think it achieved a mark of 62. The feedback I got on it was along the lines of ‘this is a fantastic essay. It would have been a first if you'd answered question seven’. It was it was a good essay and the person that gave the feedback was really constructive and supportive, but I got so focussed on one of the learning outcomes and forgot the other ones. I did an excellent job, but I didn't quite do everything I needed to do. Going back to your assignment and putting yourself in the marker’s shoes can really help you to understand what you've done well and what you could do differently next time.
 
Annabel: But also imagine showing up to a meeting with your marker, having that little table filled out with that action plan. It shows that you're not in an argumentative or questioning of their academic judgement, but that you've made work and you've tried to rewrite some of that narrative about how you've constructed an essay, for example, and that you're doing something rather than being passive.
 
Aimee: It can be quite vulnerable receiving feedback. I think that no matter how experienced you are, it can feel like quite a vulnerable thing. By taking a bit of control there and, approaching that feedback in the work critically and being prepared I think that can help with that vulnerability.  

Annabel: It lessens it over time. It makes you a bit more resilient if you've got all of those different ways you can engage that's not just reading and storing it away. 

Aimee: Is there anything final you want to say before we finish up? 

Annabel: No, I think that's everything.  

Aimee: Well, thank you for coming on the show. I was really looking forward to speaking to you. I know we've been planning this episode for a little while and I've been so excited to meet up with you again.  

Annabel: You too. 

Aimee: I miss working with you, but I'm happy you're happy in your role, so thank you for taking the time to come onto the podcast.  

Annabel: Thank you so much for inviting me. 

Aimee: Thanks for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and we hope you'll join us again for our next episode.

Resources for episode 13

• Assignment Feedback Action Plan
• Study Guide: Understanding Assignment Feedback

Time Stamps for episode 14

01:43: What is Generative AI? How would you define it? 
04.12: Why does generative AI matter for education and students’ learning? 
09:58: What common issues do you think people tend to experience when it comes to generative AI? 
15:48: Can you briefly recommend 2-3 strategies/uses of these tools that can help listeners understand and use the tools effectively and ethically as part of their learning and academic practice. It would be really helpful if you could share the reasons why you think they're useful and what you're sort of rationale is for recommending it. 
24:15: What would your top tip be for listeners when it comes to generative AI and their learning at university?

Transcript for episode 14

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, a practical podcast hosted by the Keele University Library Team about academic skills and why they matter for student success in higher education. Each episode we’ll interview an educator about an area of academic practice in which students typically struggle from reading to writing and all things in between and what's more, we'll share top tips to help you study and complete your work more effectively.  
 
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Study Matters Podcast. I'm Aimee Merrydew, and today we're joined by Dr Kieran Brayford to talk about generative AI and how it can be used for your learning. Kieran is a student, academic, and digital skills adviser at Keele University with a PhD in the philosophy of AI. He recently produced our university student guidance on using generative AI for academic skills development and is my go-to guy for anything AI. So, he really is the perfect person to join us for today's episode. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Let's dive in. 
 
Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. I've been really looking forward to recording this episode with you. 
 
Dr Kieran Brayford: You're very welcome. I’m glad to be here.  
 
Aimee: So, let's kick off with the first question then. Broadly speaking, what is generative AI in a nutshell? How would you define it?  
 
Kieran: Generative AI is a form of AI, effectively. AI is a tool that can autonomously change elements of its own programming. Generative AI is a subtype of that AI that can transform text, images, audio, video, that kind of thing in response to prompts entered by the user. Now all AI requires training data, and for different AI tools that training data will be different. For text-based things it will be text-based for video-based it will be video-based and so on, and what that AI does at that point is perform the statistical analysis that is used to inform the outputs of that particular tool in combination with the input that you give it as well. What it's effectively doing at that point is pattern spotting. Sometimes we can make a guess of what might come next by looking at things that have been before. We can guess that the sun will rise tomorrow, because it did yesterday, and it did the day before. If I give you a sequence of numbers. If I say to you 2, 4, 6, 8. 
 
Aimee: 10. 
 
Kieran: Exactly, you can guess what the next one was going to be and that's effectively what generative AI is doing, is it's guessing what might come next off the back of what's already been. 
 
Aimee: It's really interesting because I know from our conversations that the thing that you've really taught me is that it's all about maths. I'll be completely honest, a few years ago I had not really given AI much thought, certainly not generative AI. It's become something that I've become much more aware of over the last few years, as I imagine is the same for a lot of people. But if you were to ask me how it functions I wouldn’t, maybe this is just me being a little bit naive, but I'd never think it was maths. I didn't see how it was functioning or how it had been programmed so that's really interesting to dispel some of those myths which I know will come on to later on but dispel some of those myths about how these tools actually are programmed in function, and then, in turn, how they can operate and the outputs that they produce. 
 
Kieran: Yeah, that's it. At their core they are just maths, they are maths all the way down effectively. 
 
Aimee: That actually brings us onto our next question then. So, why does generative AI matter for education and students learning or does it? 
 
Kieran: Oh yeah, it definitely does. I think the first thing to really realise is that predictions based off past data are always very useful. In certain circumstances they are and in other circumstances they are not necessarily useful. If we go back to that number sequence 2,4,6,8 and think about it, there's not actually anything in that sequence that tells us that 10 is the next number along. We only assume that 10 is next because we can look at that and sort of glean that it's following some sort of rule, but it is only the next number provided that rule holds, and we've got no evidence for that rule holding other than the sequence itself. We think that 10 is the next number because effectively it's been decontextualised, and that's what AI is really good at doing is decontextualising things. 
 
Now, because we assume that rule holds, if we add context in then that can change what the things are. Let's go back to that 2,4,6,8 and I said to you instead that they are the ages of the children in a large family, going from youngest to oldest, we're not quite as confident that 10 is the next number anymore.  
 
Aimee: Of course. Yeah.  
 
Kieran: Because there is that interface between decontextualised data and the context that gives that data its meaning, an AI is not fantastic at dealing with that context because it naturally, the way that it works, deals with decontextualised data.  
 
There's also a second thing that sort of impacts on education and student learning, and really that's about learning itself. If we look at learning, learning is all about experience in one way or another. All experiences are effectively doing things in one way or another, whether we're reading, thinking, doing some maths, loading samples into an LC-MS, doing some literature review, whatever it is, we're always doing something. Now, some of those things, writing, producing images, that kind of thing, are things the generative AI claims it can do. But that leads to another couple of issues that sort of interface with that a little bit.  
 
The way that we do these things is completely different from the way that an AI would do them. Because AI is maths all the all the way down, the way that it does these things is through that statistical analysis and that guessing of the next word that's going to be coming along based on what's been, based on the training data, that kind of thing. Whereas we do things using our skills or understanding of things. If we use producing a text as an example, generative AI as I have said will do it by guessing what's going to come next by looking at what's been, looking at what's been generated, that kind of thing. But we don't do that. If we are writing something, at no point do we go ‘okay, then I've got to do some calculus now to work out what the rest of the sentence is going to be’ but AI is doing that effectively. It is doing that calculus; it is working out what's going to be coming up through that process.  
 
What we do when we are writing is very different because we are not doing that calculus because we're not doing the maths that underpins that. We write to build up our understanding. We read, we write to build up an understanding, and then we communicate that understanding through that writing. But, because the AI is ultimately based on maths, the AI doesn't have any understanding, so effectively what it is communicating is something really different. Whereas we are communicating our understanding through text, effectively what AI is communicating is this is the most likely thing to follow based off this training data, based on this algorithm, so on and so forth.  
 
It's not always all that useful, that isn’t, because probability comes in and the lack of understanding and lack of aim of what we're trying to do with that writing is just a lost a little bit when it comes to AI. And to pick up on that thread of doing things as well, whenever we use an AI to do something that we could do, we deny yourselves an opportunity to practice those skills that go into performing that task well and we offset that by learning AI using skills instead. We lose the whatever it is, we lose the writing skills, we gain the AI using skills. Now we can sit down all day and generate paintings using an AI tool, we can do all day long but that won't make us a better painter, and the same thing comes through with sort of academic things as well. If we offload that thinking, that writing, reading, anything to an AI, we don't get better at it ourselves. If we don't use it carefully and we don't use it appropriately, it can really impede a learning effectively.  
 
Aimee: Yeah, so I think the message that I have taken there from you is that it can be appropriate to use AI tools in some contexts, which I know we're going to go on to talk about in a few questions time, but it's developing that critical understanding of where it's appropriate and where it's not appropriate. 
 
What common issues do you think people tend to experience when it comes to generative AI? 
 
Kieran: Yes, so this echoes this idea of sort of inappropriate and appropriate use. The most common issue is misunderstanding what the tools are capable of. Misunderstanding what they're actually doing, misunderstanding the nuts and bolts of how they operate, and how that makes them appropriate for different things effectively, and that then leads to inappropriate uses of the AI because we see it as a tool that is sort of universal whereas in reality it is good at quite discrete things instead. Anything that requires a uniquely human capability – creativity, understanding, and interpretation – it is just not equipped to do because these things ultimately can't be translated into maths.  
 
While maths is a tool for helping us to understand, it isn't the understanding itself. That maths really comes through because as you mentioned earlier, AI is fantastic at hiding the fact that it is maths. Now we don't see that maths when we interact with it, that maths, more often than not, is kept secret because it's very valuable information what that maths actually is. Of course, there is a huge amount of money being made off these tools and that then feeds into a sense of sort of misinformation and that kind of thing as well. But because that mass is hidden, because we can't see that maths, we don't necessarily realise that that's what it's doing. We don't necessarily realise that it's effectively doing loads of statistical analyses all the time, and then we risk using that tool for everything and there'll be some of those things that it's just not appropriate to use it for, for all kinds of different reasons.  
 
But because it's really good at hiding that maths, we don't necessarily realise that we effectively try and do the equivalent of sort of painting a fence with a hammer. We don't realise that the tool isn't perhaps the appropriate one for us at that particular time. I would say that misunderstanding is a really common issue. There's a lot of hype about these tools and there's a lot of, as I have mentioned, misinformation. We tend to not have a really great grasp of what they are and what they're doing, because they are complicated. They are complex things, especially when you do deep dive into the algorithms, and form them and stuff, they are really complex and that's something that sort of feeds into this next issue which is hallucinations. 
 
Hallucinations are a huge issue, but it's one that we might not always notice, which kind of makes it a bigger issue because we can't notice it. Hallucinations in a nutshell are when an AI tool will just make something up. It will just present something that it's gleaned from its training data as fact, and because it doesn't understand it doesn't necessarily know that it isn't fact, it will just be presented as if it was fact. There’s a good chance the hallucinations are down to the sort of nuts and bolts of how these things work, the statistical analysis, elements of the training data, that kind of thing, but we don't know why yet because, this is something that really comes through with AI, the maths is so complex and because it's doing huge amounts of maths, we're talking billions of calculations. No one person, no group of people, no team of people can sit down and really pore over what the AI is actually doing. We can't work out how it's doing what it is doing, why it's doing what it's doing, and all of those things that really we need to know to be able to combat the hallucinations.  
 
We can't step in because effectively it's a black box. We can't step in and go ‘oh no, you shouldn't be doing this, you should be doing this instead’ in the same way as we wouldn’t be able to with other software tools because it's just completely opaque to us what's going on, and that opacity means that we can't necessarily combat those hallucinations. These hallucinations, as I mentioned, are not something that we might always notice and that's because we need a certain standard of expertise before we can notice them. Someone who's an expert in a field can play around with an AI for a bit, and then notice what these hallucinations are. They can go ‘okay, that's not right. This bit's right. This bit’s not right’, so on and so forth, but if we are a learner coming to a subject, a discipline, an idea for the first time, we might not be in a position to evaluate that information that the AI is producing. We might not notice that it is hallucinated. We might not notice that effectively the things that it's telling us just aren't true, and we really risk learning things that are false as a consequence of that. 
 
Aimee: I know there has been an issue with made up references, for example, completely making up a journal article or a book that just doesn't exist or incorrect contextual information that's been hallucinated, which then would require people to do a bit of research to fact-check it, like we would with other research. We need to treat these tools in the same way and know when it's appropriate to use them and also engage critically with the outputs and not just accept it at face value. 
 
That leads us really nicely to our next question. Can you briefly recommend 2–3 strategies or uses of these tools that can help listeners understand and use the tools effectively and ethically as part of their learning and academic practice?  
 
Kieran: Yeah, of course. So, one strategy and use of AI that I would recommend, and it's one that sort of negates a lot of the issues surrounding AI when it comes to hallucinations and not being appropriately aware of context and being a very specific kind of tool that's always sort of trying to guess the future, is to use the AI as a tool to quiz yourself about particular things, about a particular topic. If we think about that idea of quizzing, the person who is quizzing us or the AI that is quizzing us doesn't really need to know anything about the subject that they are talking about. It just needs to be able to ask questions that seem reasonable about that topic. What you can do is go into the AI, things like ChatGPT that kind of thing, and you can go in and ask it effectively to ‘ask me questions about XYZ’ that kind of thing, ‘ask me questions about subatomic particles’, ‘ask me questions about Jane Eyre’ or whatever.  
 
You can use it to ask you questions, and when you engage with the technology in that way, you're not using that technology as a source of information because as a source of information it's fallible. What you're doing instead is you're using it to prompt you to explore your own understanding of these things and to explore your own knowledge, your own understanding, your own ability to grapple with these ideas, and that's really useful for a few different reasons. Firstly, knowing what we don't know is more often than not more important than knowing what we do know because it allows us to see areas in which we can develop and then we can then move away from the AI into the more traditional way of studying by going into going into journal articles, reading around topics, reading text books, doing that sort of independent study and research. It can guide you to these things because if it asks you a question that you don't necessarily have an answer to you can then go away and research that to get an answer to that question, go back to answer the question, then the AI will give you another question off the back of it. That can be really useful for, let's say, identifying those areas that need that development and that's a really sort of useful way into using AI to support learning, but in a way that also negates a lot of the downsides of AI as well, including not being a reliable source of information and not always being an appropriate tool. 
 
Aimee: I'm just thinking as you have been talking about that, it would always be quite good practice for an exam, whether that's a written exam or an oral exam, because of course you put in the prompt, but then based on the it will generate different questions that you might not expect, so as an exam preparation technique that could be quite useful for getting comfortable answering questions and sharing your ideas and your knowledge on-the-spot as well in some contexts could be quite useful.  
 
Kieran: Yeah, completely, and because of that hallucination factor that is at play with these things it can also hallucinate questions, which all of a sudden can throw up something that you've not thought about before. It can be really useful for finding those blind spots within your current knowledge that you can then move into adapting with, so questions that you may have surprised you during an exam, you may have already dealt with before because you have already got that “conversation” with the AI at that point. 
 
It's also really useful to have some rules to guide the use of AI. I'd say there's three rules that are really important when using AI for learning or to be honest more broadly any use of AI.  
 
The first rule is to always make sure that you know the real strengths and limitations of that tool before you use it. There's a lot of misinformation about AI around at the moment and it's really important to have that critical engagement, not only with the AI as we will get on to, but with the claims made about AI as well because a lot of those claims that are made about AI aren’t necessarily the complete truth, aren't necessarily a source of great understanding of these tools because effectively a lot of those claims are marketing. It's really important to know the real strengths and limitations of an AI tool before it's being used to make sure that it's appropriate for what you want to do with it, effectively.  
 
The second rule that I think is really important is to use those generative AI tools critically as well. What that involves is to really maintain a sceptical stance towards them and to recognise that they're perhaps not reliable sources of information, so that you have a role of fact checking. You have to take on some of that responsibility of going out and verifying bits of information, to draw on understandings from other views, and to really use those AI tools critically. Taking that critical stance, not just towards the tool itself, but the outputs and all of the different sort of factors that may feed into using AI. Doing that will really guard against some of the sort of inherent shortcomings that AI has and also helps you to avoid some of those more hyperbolic claims that are being made about AI as well. 
 
And the third rule I'd recommend is to always use any generative AI tool actively. By actively I mean two things. First is the negative sense of using the tool actively is not using it to do things that you could otherwise do, so not using it to replace yourself to do thing, but instead using it to augment, to build on, to develop skills that you want to develop. The second use of ‘actively’ is in a positive sense is using the tools in such a way where you break up large tasks into smaller tasks, evaluate the outputs as you go along. Instead of just saying ‘do x, y, z thing for me’ and then thinking ‘fantastic it has produced this thing for me’, really go into it and break it down and evaluate those things as they come along. What this allows you to do is to maximise the amount of deliberate control over generative AI, which really helps you to get the most from the tool, but it does so in a way that you can develop other skills as well. Rather than just using AI skills, you can develop critical analysis, you can develop reading skills, writing skills, and all those things as well.  
 
Aimee: You're using AI as an opportunity to build more than one skill through these activities and the engagement with these tools. One thing we've suggested but maybe not focussed on explicitly is this idea of the ethical use as well as the critical use of AI and ensuring that, for anyone that's listening to this episode, please do explore these tools, see what they're useful for and see what they're not so useful for, but do it in a way where you're responsible and make sure you are aware of your University’s policy on these tools, as you don’t want to use these tools as part of your assessed work if that’s not allowed. 
 
Let’s finish up with a top tip then. What would your top tip be for listeners when it comes to generative AI and their learning at university? 
 
Kieran: Okay, so my top tip is quite straightforward. Don’t believe the hype. Trust yourself because you're smarter than the tools are.  
 
Aimee: I like that. That's a nice one to end on. Well, thank you so much for coming along. I know we've had lots of conversations outside of this episode on generative AI, so I was really looking forward to recording this episode. I knew you'd have some really useful insights to add to the conversations that are going on in and beyond universities, so thank you for taking the time to come and share your wisdom with us. 
 
Kieran: You're very welcome.  
 
Aimee: Thanks for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and we hope you'll join us again for our next episode.

Time Stamps for episode 15

1:30: What is critical thinking?
3:50: Why does critical thinking matter?
5:40: What are the common issues people tend to experience when it comes to critical thinking? Why do you think those issues are so common?
12:38: Can you recommend 2 or 3 strategies that can help listeners learn how to think critically and to act critically? Why do you think these strategies are useful for people to put into practice?
22:36: What is your top tip for the people listening to this episode in terms of critical thinking, what would you like them to take away from this episode, and think critically about?

Transcript for episode 15

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, a practical podcast hosted by the Keele University Library Team about academic skills and why they matter for student success in higher education. Each episode we’ll interview an educator about an area of academic practice in which students typically struggle. We'll also share top tips to help you study and complete your work more effectively.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Study Matters Podcast. I'm Aimee Merrydew and today's episode is all about critical thinking. I'm joined by my colleague, Dr Kieran Brayford, who has helped hundreds of students to develop their critical thinking skills through his work as an Academic and Digital Skills Advisor here at Keele University. He's the perfect guest for today's episode. Without further ado, let's jump in.

Hi Kieran, thank you for coming along to think about critical thinking and why you think it matters and how we can build these skills. Thank you for taking the time to come and chat with us.

Kieran Brayford: You're very welcome. I am glad to be here. 

Aimee: Let's jump into the first question then. Broadly speaking, what is critical thinking? How would you define ‘critical thinking’ for someone if they’ve never heard of it before?

Kieran: There's a quote in a book written by a man called Alfred Korzybski in the 1920s that says: there's two ways to slide easily through life, namely, to believe everything or to doubt everything. Critical thinking is the third option. It is the process of working out what we should believe, by looking at the reasons that support the holding of that belief in order to work out whether or not we can justify that belief. I suppose on an abstract level, it’s taking active ownership of our own beliefs, our own knowledge and our own practices rather than passively receiving them from forces beyond ourselves. On a practical level, thinking critically is often a kind of question-based language game that involves asking questions that try to get beneath our beliefs, so we can work out why they are held and whether they should be held. This might hook into other things, like experimenting with doing things in different ways, reflecting on practice, and seeing what the impacts of those changes and of that reflection are. But that too is ultimately rooted in a question based language game and usually that question is ‘what if?’

3.30 Aimee: I guess the key thing for me there is not just accepting things at face value but engaging critically, to use that word. Engaging actively with that information, not just accepting that it’s right, or that it's true.

Kieran: Yeah, effectively yeah. It has got to pass the ‘you’ test before you believe it. You are not just accepting it because you've heard it, but really working out whether that belief is justified and whether there are good grounds for holding that belief or - in some cases - not holding that belief.

Aimee: It’s whether there is evidence for it. Why does this matter then? Why does critical thinking matter when we're thinking about learning and university work? But I guess also beyond university and through life in general, why does it matter?

Kieran: I think the really key thing that makes critical thinking useful is the fact that what we hold to be knowledge isn't actually static. Although there are some ideas that hang around longer than others, ultimately, there isn’t any knowledge that isn’t able to be revised with new evidence. We can see that process happening. The ideas that we have and the things that we believe to be knowledge are in a constant state of flux. If we were having this conversation in the 1600s, we'd be talking about how the earth was the centre of the solar system. We'd be talking about how the last time we went to the GP they were applying leeches to us to balance our humours, all of that kind of thing. You don't even need to go so far back as the 1600s. Just five years ago, we couldn’t have had a conversation, there were no facts, no knowledge about things like Covid, ChatGPT, and those kinds of things. What we know and what we hold to be knowledge is in this constant state of flux, and thinking critically helps us to navigate that constant state of flux, by working out what ideas and practices are worth keeping, and those ideas and practices that perhaps aren't worth keeping so that we can then bracket those off and separate them away from what we currently hold to be knowledge and good practice.

Aimee: It makes complete sense, but it is also a very complex thing to be able to learn to do. What common issues do people tend to experience when it comes to critical thinking and why do you think these issues are so common?

Kieran: There are three super common issues that haunt people when it comes to critical thinking. One is not knowing what it is. Second is not knowing how to do it. The third is not feeling confident enough to do it.

I think those issues are common for a couple of reasons. I think we can look at the first two reasons - not knowing what it is, not knowing how to do it - and we can put that down, at least in part to language. I'm a firm believer that all of us every day, do some form of critical thinking by virtue of just being humans going around the world. If you've ever had a bad experience in a shop and said ‘I'm never going there again’ you’ve done that critical thinking. If we've ever looked outside the window and worked out whether it's worth taking umbrella with us when we set out for the day, we've done that critical thinking. We've even. for hundreds of years, had April Fool's Day, which is an entire day dedicated to try and catch people out for not thinking critically. We're used to these things. We see these ideas and the things that we deal with every day, but we never call those things critical thinking. Usually, we'll call them something along the lines of common sense, but that is a nebulous term. But because we don't call those things critical thinking, we don't realise that critical thinking in an academic context is ultimately drawing upon a skill set that we've practised every day, it's just dressed up in a slightly different way. I think that goes some way to also explain in the third issue, that lack of confidence that we sometimes feel, but I also think there's something else at play when it comes to that one as well. We have this tendency to think of critical thinking of something that comes after learning. That's something that we can bracket off from the learning experience and treat as its own sort of standalone thing. We sometimes operate with this idea that we go away, we learn a load of stuff, and only then can we begin to think critically about the stuff that we that we've learned. To some extent, there's a grain of truth in there as far as the more that we know the easier it is to be critical, because we've got more resources that we can draw upon.

Aimee: More evidence.

Kieran: Exactly. But it isn't necessarily accurate. Rather, it is important to understand that critical thinking plays a role in accruing that body of knowledge. Because we ask ourselves the questions ‘is this worth knowing?’, ‘do I have to focus on this?’, ‘is it worth spending two hours trying to work out what this journal article is saying? because it might not necessarily be relevant’. It's part of that learning process, and because we do have that sort of idea of ‘learn first, think later’ we sometimes feel that our voice lacks the gravity that's necessary for critical thinking, that it lacks a bit of that authority because we feel as though we don't know enough. None of us ever know enough, really the authority comes from knowledge and critical thinking together. Knowledge on its own is useful for pub quizzes. Knowledge and critical thinking are the things that really build up that authority, the two working in tandem.

Aimee: I'm thinking about, not only that active engagement with knowledge and ideas as we are encountering them, for the first time or in a in another context, but I'm thinking about how that is really relevant when people are thinking about approaching their assessments because they're not just passively presenting this information. Whatever that assessment is, they are engaging with it in a way where they are usually putting forward some kind of claim about it, that can be disagreed with or agreed with. In a way, the reader of that assessment has to start putting on their ‘critical thinking hat’ because they have to assess the evidence that that person has presented to them. It's really a conversation as well, isn't it, both with the knowledge and the idea, but also with yourself and the other people that you're engaging in that discussion with. It's a conversation about these ideas and not just an acceptance that it's right.

Kieran: I agree completely, and it comes back to this sort of linguistic idea that is at play when it comes to that critical thought that language is necessarily social. It's always about other people, what other people believe in, and what other people are trying to communicate. Because critical thinking is effectively furnished in linguistic terms, when we do that thought, we think in language, internally we think in that language. It ultimately hooks into all of those different things that language has of that social aspect and that conversation that's going on between perhaps authors from 200 years ago and people from the present day on the other side of the globe, that kind of thing as well. It's always about that communication. It's always about that discussion that's going on. It's just so happens that it's usually at a slower pace than a discussion in person.

Aimee: Yeah, and before we move on to the next question, you have just mentioned there about that discussion or that conversation between people, but also critical thinking can be a case of having that conversation with yourself and how your views have shifted. I’m just thinking about when people are doing reflective writing or reflective practice as part of their work, you are engaging with your own ideas and maybe how your approach or perspective has changed over time or stayed the same. There's that engagement with yourself as well. You may be having that conversation internally or on a piece of paper, but it's with yourself.

Kieran: Yeah. I would agree entirely. Critical thinking is one of those things that we can turn on ourselves. By turning critical thought on ourselves, it is a really useful life skill because it allows us to grow, it allows us to flourish into the people that we want to become. Whether we want to improve our academic performance, whether we want to become a more effective public speaker, whether we want to get better at crochet or something. The ability to be able to look at ourselves and apply that critical thought is the way that we can move through and improve those things. So critical thinking and that reflective process are best friends, really.

Aimee: How do people do that? Can you recommend 2 or 3 strategies that can help listeners learn how to think critically and to act critically? And why do you think these strategies are useful for people to put into practice?

Kieran: The first strategy I recommend is developing a critical mindset and there's two ideas that are really important for that critical mindset. The first is scepticism. The second is objectivity.

Scepticism, and we sort of hit upon this idea earlier, involves not believing anything unless we've got a decent reason to believe it. Not just believing things because we have been told them, because we've heard them, because we've read them, but really working out whether it's worth holding that belief. 

Aimee: Being curious, really.

Kieran: Exactly, yeah, inquisitiveness is a key factor in working out whether we should believe that thing. The reasons that might provide that evidence and that might convince us one way or another, will be different in different circumstances and they are different across disciplines as well. So perhaps we've got some circumstances where we'll be convinced by some really good empirical evidence. There will be other circumstances where we are convinced by a really well-thought-out argument, or perhaps an artefact that's been uncovered from some archive somewhere, or something. Different contexts require different evidence, but ultimately that idea of being a sceptic is about whether that evidence justifies believing that thing, effectively.

The second thing, the objectivity, involves not letting anything distort our perspective on an issue. These could be beliefs that we currently hold, they could be wider things as well, but ultimately objectivity is about having clean hands before we enter into a situation. We put what we were beforehand on the doorstep, and we move into these things with fresh eyes. The good critical thinker is moved really only by the quality of the evidence that's put before them and that echoes these ideas of scepticism and objectivity. How you get into being moved appropriately by the evidence that's been put before you.

Aimee: We often find, don’t we, if people go into something with an answer already and they only find evidence that supports that argument, then that can stifle the critical thinking. Now, of course, there are some things where most of us would agree that something is wrong, or behaviours are not acceptable. But when we're thinking about assessments, where people are being tasked to demonstrate their critical thinking skills, it's about going in with a set of questions and then exploring answers through keeping an open mind about the evidence that we encounter for our research. Not just sort of pigeonholing our thinking and going into a dissertation or an essay or even an exam answer with just one thing that you want to communicate and you're going to completely overlook anything that challenges that idea, anything that challenges you to think about in another way. So, that came into my mind as you were speaking.

Kieran: Yeah. I think that's really important, to avoid that pigeonholing as much as possible. Quite often those beliefs that we hold, we don't necessarily have a good justification for holding those beliefs. We don't have that good justification because there isn't a good justification. It’s really worth pouring through these things and as you say, questions become a really important part of that and so too does critical analysis. Critical analysis and critical thinking are best friends.

Unfortunately, critical analysis is one of those terms that sort of gets bandied around quite a lot in university settings, but it's really rare to get a decent definition of it. What we most commonly hear are things like: looking at both sides of an argument, or its about comparing the good and the bad. Those kinds of things and those definitions, lay critical thought low really. It's a bit like describing an aeroplane as somewhere where you can have a nap.

<Aimee and Kieran chat briefly about difficulties of taking a nap or sleeping on planes>

It is not an incorrect definition. It's just one that really sort of misses out on the important bits. I think it's important to have a really good definition of what critical analysis is, to help us to get into how it's done and what it is. The key to getting into critical analysis, and really understanding what is, is by looking at what the words mean We've got critical, and we've got analysis.

We’ll start with ‘analysis’. Analysis comes from ancient Greece and what it meant there was ‘I unravel’.  So, it's this idea of disassembling something. It's this idea of pulling something apart, taking something apart, so you can get a really good look at whatever it is that you want to find out more about, understand better, and think critically about.

On the other hand, we've got this term ‘critical’, which again comes from ancient Greece and what I meant was ‘to pass judgement upon’. In everyday uses of the term critical it often carries negative connotations. Usually, we see the term critical in reference to ‘critical incidents’.

Aimee: They were too ‘critical’.

Kieran: Yeah, when referring to someone being critical for picking faults, often unnecessarily. We usually see it as having those real negative connotations.

Aimee: that can filter through, can’t it, into people’s understanding.

Kieran: Exactly. Yeah. Now, if we look at the Ancient Greek sense of the term of reaching a judgement that's entirely open, there's a whole range of judgements that we can have. We can say that something's good, bad, fantastic on Monday, not quite so good on Tuesday. There's a whole range of different positions that we can have.

Aimee: The rain is good for growing crops, but too much rain at particular times of the year could prevent those crops from growing.

Kieran: Exactly. Yeah. That judgement is open, effectively. There isn't that negative connotation with that, and I think that's something that's really important to be aware of. Being critical isn't just poking holes in things, but rather it's about looking at it and thinking ‘this is good in this context’, ‘this isn't quite so good here, but it would be really useful here’ and it's that way of engaging with these things. Ultimately, all of that process comes together when we take that idea of unravelling, and we take that idea of reaching some sort of reasonable judgement about it. We'll take those two ideas and stick them together. We get that critical analysis, which is the process of decomposing something, taking something apart to help us make a reasoned judgement about that particular thing.

Aimee: This podcast is wonderful for getting things to pop into my mind, based on some clever things that people say when I'm talking to them, so thank you firstly for that. As you've been talking now, it was making me think about the work that we do with people to sort of navigate this concept of finding a gap in knowledge and trying to move people away from that standpoint, because actually it can often lead to taking a very negative approach and really tearing down someone's contribution to that knowledge because it doesn't work in your context. It's about thinking, ‘yes, there are limitations with this evidence I'm engaging with but perhaps the context is slightly different. Perhaps they looked at a different sample size or they had different parameters for that research. But in my context, that's a little bit limited because…’ and you justify that reason. Then perhaps explain your approach and what that has to offer to the conversation. I like your point about people often only focusing on the negative things: it is worthwhile thinking about what's effective and why it's effective as well. Not glossing over that and seeing it as something that doesn't demonstrate criticality.

Kieran: I would personally go one step further as well and I’d include the neutral. Knowing the perhaps something doesn't change between those contexts can be valuable as well, because it's something that you might not necessarily have to think about. I'd go one step further and entertain what is sort of neutral between these things as well, what might not have an impact or might not necessarily matter all that much, because that's still ultimately a form of judgement ad that's really what we are aiming for with critical thinking.

Aimee: Yes. There's lots we could talk about, but in the interest of time I'll bring it to our final question, which I always ask in these episodes: what is your top tip for the people listening to this episode in terms of critical thinking, what would you like them to take away from this episode and think critically about?

Kieran: I think the top tip that I would recommend is to get into the habit of asking difficult questions about ideas.

There are few questions that are particularly useful for critical thinking. ‘How?’ is really useful, so too are ‘Why?’, and ‘So what?’. Those three questions are really useful for getting into that critical mindset and beginning to evaluate the value of evidence and that kind of thing. Perhaps the most important of those questions, or at least the most sort of generally useful, is ‘Why?’, ask it about everything. The majority of the time you won't have an immediate answer but that's good. It's important that you don't have that immediate answer, because it then gives you an opportunity to read around things and be playful with that thinking, and then eventually you'll find an answer to it that passes the ‘you test’, that is a justifiable bit of information, that is justifiable to incorporate into your understanding. The more that you do that (having questions that you can't necessarily answer, going and finding the answer, thinking about whether it's worth holding that thought/view/position) the quicker you'll get at it and the better you'll get at it. Then you'll be able to find future answers to ‘Why?’ questions much more straightforward, much more quickly, and building that habit of inquiry through asking those hard questions. It is really, really useful for that. Because ultimately, critical thinking is a skill and, as with all skills, when you start doing it you won't be quite as good at it as you will be once you've been doing it for 10, 20, 50 years or whatever. It's really worth thinking about building that habit of inquiry through asking those difficult questions of ‘Why?’, ‘How?’, and ‘So What?’.

Aimee: Get comfortable not knowing things at first and embrace curiosity and commitment to explore things and not necessarily having an answer straight away. That is my takeaway from this episode.

Thank you very much for coming along and sharing your thoughts about critical thinking. I know it's something that you think about a lot, which sounds a little bit funny when you say it like that, but it’s always good chatting with you so thanks for coming along and sharing your ideas with us today.

Kieran: You're welcome.

Aimee: Thanks for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and we hope you'll join us again for our next episode.

Time Stamps for episode 16

01:54: What is maths anxiety?
02:45: What common issues do you think maths anxiety causes students and why do you think these issues are so common?
05:37: Could you briefly recommend 2 or 3 strategies that can help listeners to manage maths anxiety? If it's something that they experience, and how will these strategies develop their numeracy skills? Also, why do you think the strategies are useful?
12:13: What is your top tip when it comes to overcoming maths anxiety?

Transcript for episode 16

Aimee Merrydew: Welcome to Study Matters, a practical podcast hosted by the Keele University Library team about academic skills and why they matter for student success in higher education. Each episode we’ll interview an educator about an area of academic practice in which students typically struggle from reading to writing and all things in between and what's more, we'll share top tips to help you study and complete your work more effectively.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Steady Matters Podcast. I'm Aimee Merrydew and today I'm joined by Dr Lizzie Harling to chat about maths anxiety. Lizzie is a Student Learning and Development Support Officer based in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Keele University. Her role is to support nursing and midwifery students to develop their academic and professional skills for success in their courses and careers. Not only is Lizzie a fan of numbers, but she's also undertaken courses on maths anxiety and dyscalculia, so she's the perfect person to come and chat to us all today. Whatever your course, this episode will help you to understand maths anxiety and how to overcome it by developing your numeracy skills. I hope you enjoy the episode. Let's dive in.

Thank you so much for coming along today, Lizzie, to talk to us all about maths anxiety.

Lizzie Harling: It's lovely to be here.

Aimee: So, are you ready to kick off with the first question?

Lizzie: Ready to go!

Aimee: What is maths anxiety?

Lizzie: Maths anxiety is when an individual worries, is anxious, or is fearful about performing mathematical calculations or tasks. It's more than just being slightly worried you're not going to get the answer right. It's like a paralysing fear of numbers. It is very common and it can result from lots of different causes, but it has no relation whatsoever to your mathematical ability. You could be brilliant at maths and have maths anxiety. You could really struggle with maths and have maths anxiety, so it bears no relation to your ability to be able to perform mathematical tasks.

Aimee: I can see how that can map on to other academic skills, but I won't get too distracted because I know we're here to talk about maths anxiety, so what common issues do you think maths anxiety causes students and why do you think these issues are so common?

Lizzie: I'll do the second bit first, if I may. Maths anxiety is really common, and it can result from several things. It can result from, dare I say, poor teaching or teaching in a way that doesn't make sense to the individual. Um, maths is a subject that has right or wrong, there's no grey area. But there are lots of different methods and different ways of getting the right answer and if you have a teacher at school or someone that you're doing maths with that can't explain it in a way that makes sense to you, there is the tendency to feel like it's your problem, it's your fault, and that can build up maths anxiety. But there's also having difficulty in understanding kind of mathematical concepts due to dyslexia or dyscalculia (diagnosed or undiagnosed). You can also have potentially inherited low expectations about maths, so some parents say, ‘oh, well, you know, I was never good at maths at school, so it's not a problem if you're not good at maths’. There's not a genetic ability to be able to do maths. So those are the main, common, reasons why we find students have had maths anxiety.

Maths anxiety can show itself in different ways, there are physical signs and psychological signs as well. Physically, when you are faced with a mathematical problem in front of you, someone with maths anxiety may feel their heartbeat or breathing increase, they may have butterflies in their stomach or a knot in the stomach, sweaty hands, quicker breathing, muscle tension, headaches, all of those things. These are all part of our fight or flight response. Then on the psychological side, you might feel panic, you might feel the kind of the freeze response, feeling helpless, lack of motivation and, quite commonly, avoidant behaviour. So doing literally anything to delay it, procrastinate, get someone else to do it for you, or just avoid it at all costs until you actually have to do it. Those are just a few of the different impacts that maths anxiety can have.

Aimee: I can see how that would be an issue because obviously a lot of people will have to do maths in their day to day, but if it's for your course and all of a sudden, you've got all of these scary things that you're navigating and delaying, you're not doing the work that you need to do. I can see how that can then feed in and kind of spiral.

Lizzie: It is very easy if you have maths anxiety to spiral, so it's then important to recognise it. A lot of people worry about maths, but it's a little bit like ‘well, I'm gonna have to spend a bit of time working on this’ but maths anxiety is that deeper fight or flight response when faced with numbers or a problem.

Aimee: Well, I think you've actually led us really nicely into our next question. Please, could you briefly recommend 2 or 3 strategies that can help listeners to manage maths anxiety? If it's something that they experience, and how will these strategies develop their numeracy skills? Also, why do you think the strategies are useful?

Lizzie: Well, that is that is a that is a very long but very good question. So, my top tips really include, developing really positive study habits so little and often with lots of regular breaks. So, if you have a very big problem, so our nursing and midwifery students have to pass a maths exam for giving out medications and calculating medications. So, it's incredibly important, and they are told they need 100% to be able to pass, they cannot make any mistakes so, it's a lot of pressure. What I encourage them to do is to develop positive study habits. So, take one question and do that. Then take a break to do something you enjoy. Come back and then do the next question.

Linked to this is positive reinforcement, rewarding yourself or sharing your success no matter how small. It's really important with maths anxiety e.g.  ‘I did the subtraction question correct’, fabulous, tell everyone about it. It's brilliant. That helps you to build your self-talk in a really positive way. Maths anxiety, like we said, can spiral. So, if you can stop that spiraling by thinking ‘do you know what, I did this question really well and I feel confident that I've got the right answer’ then you can take that forward to the next question that you're doing, therefore reframing your anxiety. So, rewording your worries and remembering the power of the word “yet” so not ‘I can't do it’, but ‘I can't do it yet’. It's not an excuse, it's not reason why you can't do it, but you can't do it yet. So, you need more practice.

Lastly, the one that always makes people cringe, and I feel as an ex-teacher that that makes people cringe, make maths fun. Make it a very applied to your role or your job or your program and reach out for help. If you can make it fun and you can speak to others and ask for their support, that anxiety level will drop.

Aimee: That's really important, isn't it? The idea of practice, and the more that you do things, often the more confident you become. That does feed into one additional strategy I'd like to add, if you don't mind, which is ensuring that you have enough time. If you know maths is something that makes you feel quite anxious, when you come in to start the new year or a new module, look at what you're going to need to do in that module to do with maths, and ensure that you can build back from that deadline. Whether it's an exam, so that you've got that time to practice, you've got that time to make it fun, and also you've got that time to ask for some help if it is something that you need to talk for with someone, for example.

Lizzie: I think also you can use prompts or tools, which is something that you may have done at school and then it's kind of viewed as ‘your two grown up, you are at university, and you don't need these things now’ but you could create for yourself a glossary of mathematical terms that are relevant to what you're doing. Just to remind you what they mean, ‘what these what do these words mean? What do these symbols mean?’, you could use a digital clock to help you with your time management, you can use manipulatives. So, counters, blocks, coins, anything that is in front of you like drinks, bottles, whatever it may be to physically manipulate your mathematical calculation. Now, whilst that might seem almost a little childish, if you have maths anxiety, it's really important that you can actually see and have that multi-sensory learning, which will mean you'll understand it better. Then if you are in an exam, there's no reason why you can't draw some dots on the side of your paper and remind yourself of the process so that you can get the right answer in the exam.

Aimee: Especially the ones that you struggle with, quickly jot them down at the start so that allow you to keep worrying about keeping it in your mind.

Lizzie: Absolutely.

Aimee: You've just reminded me about the prompts. There's a TikTok account and, I can't remember the creator, they do dances, a dance move for mathematical symbols.

Lizzie: My case and point, make maths fun.

Aimee: Have you seen that?

Lizzie: I have not, but now I am going to have to go away and find it.

Aimee: I will have to find it because it made me laugh, because I'm one of those people I have had maths anxiety in the past. I remember my maths teacher always getting quite frustrated because I couldn't just accept that something was the answer. I needed to know why and how to get there. Maybe that's the sort of humanities person coming out in me, I don't know.

Lizzie: I think there are two types of mathematicians. There are the people who can look at an equation and instantly, seemingly without any effort, know the answer is 2. Then there's the rest of us, who make the majority, who have to sit for hours through sweat and tears to try and work out how the number is 2. If you are someone who's in that latter category, and you've got a teacher who is in that first category who can just go ‘well, clearly the answer is 2’and you are wondering ‘how? Wat kind of magic have you done in order to make that answer 2?’. Um, and I've had a bit of maths anxiety myself with a teacher like that, and it took a couple of teachers who understood how my brain worked for maths to be able to change their explanations in a way that made sense. Then it was fine, my maths anxiety was much less, and I did really well. So, maths anxiety is not curse forever,  you can get better at maths, you can lessen your anxiety. Now, you may never like maths, as a bit of a geek like me I do love a bit of maths, but you can learn to work within it. You can use tools to help you, and it's being brave enough to use those tools, and if someone asks ‘why are you doing it like that?’ respond ‘because this helps me understand that this ensures I get it right’. That's really important, don't cave to kind of any kind of judgement about it. You're doing something to help yourself, to make sure you succeed. You're investing in yourself. So that's really important as well.

Aimee: Yeah, I dare say there's probably YouTube videos as well isn't there, or demos, that people could look up as well.

Lizzie: There are all sorts of things, certainly for nursing and midwifery students the kind of maths that they are required to do is predominantly found in the upper end of the primary school curriculum. So, you may find it helpful to go back to a primary school level where a lot of people have misconceptions and basic understanding of maths. Whilst those kind of videos on YouTube, they may seem a bit young for you, the concepts and how they're explained may be very different from when you were taught and there's very much more of an emphasis on the practicality of maths and making it applied. So, it may actually make more sense now as you come back than when you were a child.

Aimee: So, that leads me on to the last question then, which is: what is your top tip when it comes to overcoming maths anxiety?

Lizzie: It's very simple, feel the fear and do it anyway. Acknowledge that you find maths challenging, but the numbers themselves can't hurt you. Fundamentally, you can only really do two things with numbers, you can make them bigger, or you can make them smaller. It doesn't matter what operation you do, that's all you're really doing. So, feel the fear, understand it, acknowledge it, and then use those practical tools to help you e.g. glossaries or some manipulatives where you're moving things around, planning your time effectively, talking to others, and giving yourself that positive self-talk.

Aimee: Well, I feel less anxious about maths so thank you so much for coming along today. It's been really great to talk to you. I've been looking forward to this episode. I think it's going to be a really great addition to the show, because we don't actually have anything on maths at the moment, so I do appreciate you taking the time to come and chat with us all today.

Lizzie: Brilliant, well thank you very much. I've really enjoyed it.

Aimee: Thanks for listening to the Study Matters Podcast. We'd love to hear from you about your thoughts and any ideas you have for future episodes, so head to our show notes to find us on social media and email. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to help more people find out about us and share the podcast with anyone you think could benefit from our episodes. Thanks for listening to Study Matters and we hope you'll join us again for our next episode.