Introduction
Have you ever read through an assignment question and asked yourself how do I start answering this? You are not alone. Students sometimes find it challenging to start working on an assignment due to several reasons. Whatever the reasons are, a good approach is to develop a strategy that works and stick to it for every assignment.
With time, this becomes second nature to you. In this article, I will share a tried and tested approach that will help you start every assignment like a pro. If you think about it, the best way to start an assignment and be sure you are going in the right direction is to start from the question! This is exactly what we are going to do using the question below.
Identify the Key Words
The keywords are normally topic-area words and limiting words. Learn more about the topic area and limiting words here. In the assignment question above, these are the underlined words. We need to start from here to know what to look for when searching for materials to read for the assignment.
A common misconception that students have is that the more knowledge you have the easier it is to answer assignment questions. Although knowledge helps, this is far from the truth. Instead, the better you are at researching and finding the right materials the easier it is to answer assignment questions.
The good news is that research skills are learnt, we are not born with them. Think about it this way, if one learner searched and read two sources on a topic, say internet marketing and another learner searched and read ten sources on the same topic who do you think would know more?
As a university student, your knowledge doesn’t matter as much as the extent and standard of your research skills. The earlier you start learning how to research the better you become as you progress academically. These steps help develop initial research skills.
Determine Where to Search for Materials
Once the keywords have been identified, the next step is to find the topic-area words in the recommended books and other sources for the module. You will normally have access to these, if not, ask the tutor or lecturer. Access can be via an online library or via a brick-and-mortar library. This post focuses on online access only.
At level four (first year of undergraduate studies), you may find a good amount of information about the topic area in the recommended books and other sources to write most of your assignment. This is not the case for level five and beyond. If you are a level four learner, it is a good idea to start learning how to find sources online because that is the definite destination you are going to.
So, the earlier you start, the better in the long run. Your university/college online library would normally be linked to websites, databases and platforms where you can search for sources. Some examples of these are sciencedirect.com, bibliu.com, jstor.org, ebsco.com, eric.ed.gov, scopus.com, springer.com.
A broadly similar approach is used to search for sources on these online resources. Beyond what your university offers, scholar.google.com offers access to millions of academic sources. Put simply, as a student, Google Scholar is your friend. Use it. Let’s have a go
Link your University Library to Google Scholar
To avoid having to access all the different academic websites, databases or platforms that your university already subscribes to, link your university to Google Scholar. This will allow you to access all the available sources around your topic area in one go on Google Scholar. Follow the steps below to do this. Let’s link Arden University Library.
Open scholar.google.com and click the menu icon in the top left corner.
Click on Settings in the menu and go to Library Links
Type the name of your university in the search bar and click search. Your university will come up as it did for Arden University. Tick the box and save it below.
Ensure that you sign into your university library on the same browser before using Google Scholar. The materials that your university has subscribed to will appear as Pdf or other files on the right-hand side of the results. For example, before linking Arden University Library, besides the free materials which are available to everyone, the paid ones were not accessible below:
After linking, the ones that Arden University subscribes to become accessible as seen below:
Use the Keywords to Search for Materials
To get materials that you can start reading to answer your assignment questions, you can use a combination of the topic words and limiting words. For example, by using ‘internet marketing benefits’ the following materials come up:
Other combinations can be ‘internet marketing opportunities’ ‘internet marketing challenges’ ‘internet marketing principles’. Sometimes, because of the topic area, it may be challenging to find sources using these combinations. Or, you may have to sift through too many sources to find suitable ones. To avoid these issues, Boolean Operators can be used. See examples of Boolean Operators provided by the University of Oxford here.
Conclusion
A problem that students struggle with is how to find the right materials to do their assignments. Following these steps helps you solve this problem. The strength of these steps is in using them consistently and how well you adapt them to your individual style. Like every good thing, it takes practice to perfect these steps in a way that suits you.
Having the materials to use for your assignment is a major step towards doing it properly. However, using the right materials such as journal articles and book chapters positively contributes to your grades. These steps will help you get the right materials. Learn how to use the materials you find here.
Drop your questions (and thoughts) in the comment box below.
