Essential Skills for Academic Success

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Independent Learning

ELS International

Essential Skills

for academic success

© Dr Martin Sedgley 2020

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© Martin Sedgley 2020

First published 2020 by

ELS International Ltd.

All rights reserved. Please respect the extensive work involved

in the production of this guide. No reproduction, copy or

transmission of this publication may be made without written

permission.


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Essential skills for academic success

Why is independent learning so important at university ?

Higher education is characterised more than anything else by independent learning.

This means that the majority of your studies will be away from class. Whilst there

are some taught sessions in the form of lectures and tutorials, you are mostly

responsible for your own learning development. This can be stressful or confusing at

first when you do not yet fully understand what is expected of you academically.

The education system here is totally different. Maybe I’m feeling that burden

is on me because I’m put into a totally different atmosphere ... I was always

being spoon fed before, but here you have to do everything on your own.

(Ali, BSc International Business Management)

There are some questions that I don’t know anything about, I’m clueless.

Everyone in my family thinks I’m the smartest because of my previous

educational results. But I don’t know … I don’t think it counts for much here!

(Mary, BSc Accounting and Finance)

The current pandemic has also resulted in some university classes moving to online

delivery. Whilst the extent of this ‘blended learning’ approach varies across

institutions, you are likely to have even less tutor contact than students in previous

years. The impact of COVID-19 in reducing the amount of classroom-based learning

means that you will require even greater self-discipline as an independent learner.

You need to ensure that you can:

1. Manage your time efficiently

2. Select relevant research sources

3. Write assignments analytically


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Contents

Section Study guidance Page

1 Reflective learning

How you can use critical thinking and reflective writing for

personal growth throughout your university learning journey.

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2 The practical implications of independent learning

A quiz to assess your understanding of how UK university

study differs from your previous education.

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3 Essential skills for academic success

Students’ experiences of independent learning: The key

principles for you to ‘hit the ground running’ in the first term.

• Efficient time management

• Effective academic reading

• Analytical academic writing

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4 Achieving high-grade assignments

Learning from formative feedback and past students’

exemplar assessments.

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5 References and further reading 16

Learn through reflection

It is recommended that you make notes in a reflective journal to keep track of your

progress through the study guide. The are several benefits to this reflective process:

• A private opportunity to express your true thoughts and feelings honestly.

• This process of writing allows you to ‘step back’ from your reactions to

challenging situations. and see how those are blocking your progress.

• You recognise how to constructively respond to similar situations in future.


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A summary of the key characteristics of self-reflective writing include:

• Using first person, e.g. ‘This experience showed me that …’; ‘I found that …’;

‘As a group, we didn’t seem to …’

• Exploring how experiences affected you, i.e. emotionally as well as

practically.

• Not just describing what happened, or what you did, but more importantly,

analysing why you acted or reacted in these ways.

(Adapted from Bassot 2016)

Reflective writing can become a regular process that provides a reassuring ‘safety

blanket’ to refer back to in times of difficulty. However, your journal does not have to

become a daily routine. The best times may be when you realise you have reacted

strongly to particular life events. These could be positive or negative: from a thrilling

first ascent of the university climbing wall to a personality clash in a group project

meeting. One approach is suggested below as a framework for you to write

meaningfully about these kinds of rewarding or challenging situations:

A structured reflection on a life event

1. What happened?

2. How did I react (feel, think, behave …)?

3. What’s good about that?

4. What might I like to have done differently?

5. How can I best think and act in similar,

future situations?

For more guidance and examples of reflective writing see the new textbook:

Sedgley, M.T. (2020) Skills for Business and Management. London: Macmillan


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The practical implications of independent learning

Try this short quiz to guess what effective independent learning will mean for you on

your degree programme. Write your answers in your journal. Some questions may

have more than one answer.

1. What is the appropriate ratio of independent learning to classroom

study?

A. 1:1 B. 4:1 C. 3:1 D. 2:1

2. What is likely to be the biggest demand on your time for successful

study?

A. Group-work with others B. Academic writing

C. Socialising D. Academic reading

3. What is the most common cause of low grades in coursework?

A. Poor referencing B. English language

C. Not answering the question D. Confused structure

4. What is the most important skill for high marks in coursework?

A. Referencing B. Critical analysis

C. English fluency D. Essay structure

5. Which personal attribute will best enable academic achievement?

A. Self-management B. Motivation to study

C. Reflecting on your learning D. Self-confidence

After you have selected your choices for each question, consult the answer section

on the next page.


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Quiz answers

Q.1:

Answer C (most likely)

Many degree programmes involve between 9 and 15 hours per week in lectures

and tutorials (onsite and online). Tutors will expect you to engage in around

three times that much independent learning away from class, mostly on

academic reading. Universities typically recommend that students need to

spend 40-50 hours in total each week on their studies.

Q.2:

Answer D

Tutors in most of your subjects will expect you to ‘read widely and deeply’.

There are so many potential texts for each subject, and the volume of this

research can easily become overwhelming until you learn how to read selectively

and efficiently.

Q.3:

Answer C

Academic tutors deliberately set specific, focussed questions. They expect you

to directly address only that particular topic throughout your assignment. Every

paragraph of your writing must consistently answer the question.

Q.4: Answer B

Critical analysis is perhaps the most important skill that must be developed for

achieving high grades in assignments. Depending on your programme

discipline, this typically involves some or all of the following processes:

• Comparing and contrasting different authors’ research findings on your topic.

• Arguing why some of those ideas are more convincing than others.

• Examining how academic theory or data help explain a real-life situation.

• Exploring how theoretical models offer strategies for a certain situation.

• Critiquing academic claims, i.e. why there are limitations to their utility.

Check what your tutors expect as critical analysis in their module assignments.

Q.5:

‘All of these’

How you manage your work-life balance, reflect on your achievements, improve

from your setbacks, and maintain your belief in your capabilities (self-efficacy) …

all of these are vital factors in getting the most from your university experience.


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Students’ experience of independent learning

Sometimes I’m anxious. I look at the short

time frame, with too much information … I

wonder whether my brain can take so

much, and it gets me all worked up. And

sometimes I’m excited about OK, let’s

learn something new.

(Claire, MSc HRM)

In the first academic term, typical student concerns include:

• Will I be able to manage the workload ?

• Will I understand lectures and all the reading ?

• Will I write assignments and exams in the way that tutors expect ?

• How well can I handle all this on my own ?

Pause for Thought

These students’ challenges concerns with independent learning stem

from a perceived lack of at least three major skills.

What do you think those essential skills are that will lead you to

academic success ? Note your guesses in your journal.


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Essential skills for academic success

INDEPENDENT LEARNING

Time management Academic Research Analytical Writing

Your academic performance will be determined by how effectively you develop

these essential skills. The following sections provide an introduction to some

key principles that are vital to managing your studies effectively in your first

academic term.

Efficient time management

I can’t relax because you don’t have the time to do that

here. There’s coursework and you’re thinking of your

exams and twelve hours lectures a week. Each topic

has about 50 pages to read in one book, but you can’t

get enough from just one. I’m still overwhelmed with

this system. How long should it take to get used to it ?

(Nkem, MSc HRM)

Pause for Thought

What do you think Nkem could do to alleviate her stressful situation ?


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Nkem could:

• Recognise what is important to her in the first year of university – what

she really wants to experience, achieve and enjoy.

• Keep sight of these personal values each day to ensure a healthy

balance between study, social and personal time.

• Write out these aims and keep them in a prominent place as a visual

reminder that she will see each day.

• Schedule short blocks of time for study tasks, other activities and

‘me time’ that all support the fulfilment of her aims and values.

• Find a ‘study buddy’ to share the academic reading and then discuss

what they have learned about their assignment topics.

• Aim for ‘good enough’, not ‘perfect’. This is important in the early

stages of adapting to university study when she is already beginning to

feel overwhelmed.

The apparently liberating experience of becoming a university student can create

unconscious work avoidance mechanisms. Ironically, this may well be because

of the undisciplined freedom that you encounter there as a more independent

adult. This means it is even more important to develop a rigorous self-discipline

and learn techniques to organise your studies efficiently.

TOP TIP

There are masses of online resources prescribing the ‘best’ techniques for

effective time management. Many of these could be useful, but for such a

subjective issue, you will need to find the system that works best for you. As

most people eventually discover, you must engage in a process of trial and

error over several weeks or months to become consistently well organised.


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Effective academic reading

Academic reading may actually be the biggest problem of all for degree level

study. Why do you think this is?

Pause for Thought

What do you think are the main reasons cited by students for finding

academic reading so difficult? Take a few moments to reflect on your

own challenges in this respect, and write your thoughts in your journal.

The high volume of reading can soon become overwhelming as students try to

prepare for classes, learn module materials and research for assignments – all

across multiple subjects. Academic research for the various reading purposes is

published in journals, business reports, government documents et al., requiring

you to extend your reading well beyond the course textbooks. This pressure can

be compounded by minimal direction from tutors on how to prioritise the most

relevant texts from their long reading lists.

There’s too much information from

a lecture, and we have to keep

reading. But sometimes it’s too

much and we have to focus on the

important things…

(Andreas, BSc International Business Management)


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You’re supposed to read not just your

textbook, but look at journals and other

people’s research. And all the six

courses expect me to do it. I go to the

library to try to catch up, but I spend the

whole day reading one course, and still

don’t really understand it. You see how

frightening that course is.

(Claire, MBA)

Here are some students’ discoveries as they progressed through the

academic year that could address Andreas’ and Claire’s challenges:

I don’t miss lectures, I try as much as possible to be in class. Attending

classes goes a long way in helping my reading. What guides my

reading is what the lecture emphasises in class, and if that relates to the

learning objectives [in the module handbook].

It’s all about time management: If you have read the tutor’s slides,

and perhaps textbook chapter in advance of their lecture, then

you’re able to understand more. Then you go back home and think

that, OK I have some ideas to explore more about that.

Well, yes… when I began to reading, I tried to study everything, word

for word, but now I’m scanning … I don’t need to understand all of the

text, I only look for the important information. Otherwise it’s impossible.

Isolate the key concepts in the assignment question. This helps to

narrow your research down to a more manageable set of texts.


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TOP TIP

Read and write in parallel so that you feed ideas and data from your research

directly into your draft writing without making notes. As well as saving time,

this means that you learn from the process of writing as well as the reading.

In addition to being highly selective in your search for the ‘right’ texts, you then

need to carefully target the most relevant sections of those texts. The

forthcoming ELS study guide, Smarter Academic Reading will help you learn

how to quickly scan each source to find the ‘nuggets of gold’ that you need for

an assignment. This saves you a great deal of time and effort in both your

reading and writing for degree study. See elsinternational.co.uk

Analytical academic writing

You have to consider both sides of every

academic argument, and create your own

summary of that here. I was used to, ‘You teach

me, I’ll go back, read it, understand it … then give

me an exam and I’ll write that’. Also, in this

course work, you have to criticise the research

papers. This researcher was obviously good,

that’s why their paper got published - how am I

going to start criticising that ?

(Geoff, MSc Finance)


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The pathway to success at university lies in critical thinking - the foremost

requirement for achieving high grades on most degree programmes. A major

characteristic of this critical style of writing is objectivity. Tutors expect you to

put aside your existing opinions as you conduct research into a topic so that you

can build a reasoned, impartial argument.

Critical analysis in assignment writing

Build your arguments by

integrating ideas and information

from multiple academic sources.

Compare and contrast those data to

show your understanding of the

current debate on your topic.

Explain the significance of the

emerging ideas from that debate for

your set question.

In the case of Geoff’s concerns above, he could:

• Start building his assignment by taking ideas from the reading of

each text directly into a draft essay template – by summarising

what each author has to say on the topic in question.

• In this way, he is developing a critique of the theory in question

by comparing and contrasting different researchers’ views on that

rather than relying on his own opinion.

• Critical analysis emerges through that synthesis of multiple

authors’ research findings, and his subsequent interpretation of

them to the set assignment question.

• Give more time to writing so that he can draft, read, edit and redraft

before submitting – all the time coming to understand the

topic more clearly and critically.


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Formative feedback:

The Assignment Review service from ELS International offers comprehensive

feedback on your assignment drafts. This personalised guidance provides

detailed suggestions for improvements that your business and management

tutors do not have the time to provide for individual students.

The ELS specialist experience in business and management programmes

provides far more in-depth guidance than is likely to be available from university

learning support advisors. Comments on each paragraph of your draft writing

give you clear, detailed guidance on how to improve those in line with business

and management tutors’ expectations of high-grade academic writing:

ELS Assignment Reviews provide formative feedback on your draft writing with

suggested improvements for your final submission. You receive comments on

each paragraph of your draft essay or report, covering all the following issues:

• How well this directly and consistently addresses the set question.

• Where and how you need to move beyond description into analysis.

• Where that analysis requires further academic sources of evidence.

• Accuracy of referencing format.

• Logical coherence of the essay structure.

• Academic writing style.

• English expression – the clarity of sentence and paragraph construction.

A major purpose of the draft feedback service is to enable students to become

increasingly independent learners. After one or two of these extensively detailed

reviews, you will understand how to improve later module assignments yourself.

See Assignment Reviews


The next page illustrates a sample extract of ELS feedback on a paragraph from

a student’s draft HRM essay with their subsequently revised version.


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MBA assignment title: Critically analyse the utility and potential negative

consequences of socialisation and behaviour modification techniques. How ethical

is it for the transformational manager to utilise these techniques?

‘Before’ - Sample paragraph from student’s first draft:

Maanen and Schein (1979) argue socialisation is important for the longevity of the

organisation by ensuring new employees see the organisation in the same way as

existing staff so they can then survive and prosper. The idea of providing the new

employee the induction process and going through what can and can’t be done

and then getting the employee to standardize their behaviour so the senior

management can feel at ease as the behaviour would be predictable and can be

seen as being manipulative which can be ethically questionable.

ELS feedback:

I found the last sentence hard to follow – too many ideas. Make this concise or

separate into two. Keep to two or three ideas per sentence, usually 15-25 words.

The confusion also arises because you move from a quick point on utility to the

second part of the question about problems and ethics. Each of these is much

too brief and needs its own section of the essay with much fuller development.

Each paragraph must address a single topic within one area of the essay. The

structure of this question (and therefore your answer) can be distilled down to:

1. Description of the two people management techniques

2. Analysis of the utility (value) of each technique

3. Negative consequences (problems) of each technique

4. Ethics of these techniques

‘After’ - Student’s revised version from applying ELS suggestions:

Maanen and Schein (1979) argue socialisation is important for the longevity of the

organisation by ensuring new employees see the organisation in the same way as

existing staff so they can then survive and prosper. They go further by explaining

that from the time the employee enters the workplace to the time they leave, they

will experience and commit themselves to the way of life and relationships and

demands and potentials of the organisation. They also mention the process by

which the newcomer is taught to see the organisational world as the existing

employees do is called the ‘organisational socialisation process’.

The student’s final submission of the full essay received 70%

compared to a grade of 45 % from the tutor on the first draft.


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References

Bandura, A. (1997) Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman.

Bassot, B. (2016) The Reflective Journal (2 nd edition). London: Palgrave

Macmillan.

Collins (2018) English Dictionary (13 th edition). Glasgow: Harper Collins.

Dweck, C. (2006) Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random

House.

Rico, G. (2000) Writing the Natural Way (2 nd edition). Los Angeles: Tarcher.

Sedgley, M.T. (2013) Learning journeys with international Masters students in

UK higher education. PhD thesis, University of Bradford.

Further Reading

For detailed guidance on academic skills and self-management,

see the new textbook:

Sedgley, M.T. (2020) Skills for Business and Management.

London: Macmillan

ELS International will soon be publishing separate Study Guides

on each of the Essential Skills for Academic Success:

See elsinternational.co.uk

To reference this study guide, please use the following format:

In-text citation: (Sedgley 2020)

Reference: Sedgley, M.T. (2020) Essential skills for academic success.

Available at: elsinternational.co.uk


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