module specification

This module aims to enable students to:

- Apply prior knowledge and relate specific knowledge and skills to continuing development of academic literacy and skills

This module builds on knowledge and skills acquired in the first year of the course and specifically on the academic skills acquired in SH4053 Academic skills/literacy: finding & presenting information. In this, the second of three academic skills and literacy modules in the course, students will extend their academic literacy and skills to encompass obtaining increasingly specialised sources, identifying key aspects of information, establishing validity and processing information to create argument.

Some of the key areas include:
- Developing and refining search techniques
- Critiquing information
- What makes evidence good?
- Identifying opinion, bias and distortion
- Comparing information
- Identifying assumptions
- Identifying uncertainties and ambiguities
- Identifying limits of information
- Avoiding your own assumptions
- Synthesising information

Learning Outcomes LO1 - 5

The module will be delivered using activities based on work required to complete assessments in year two modules. Seminars and workshops will provide students with opportunities to practice specific academic techniques and approaches in a supported and supportive environment.  Sessions will also provide opportunities for students to discuss their knowledge and previous experience, helping them to make links between practical and theoretical understanding, as they further develop their academic skills and literacy.  Opportunities are provided for individual sessions with tutors to discuss, appraise and plan student’s personal and professional development.

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

1. Undertake research to provide new information and detailed knowledge of well-established theories and concepts
2. Utilise a range of approaches to analyse information collected
3. Utilise a range of approaches to evaluate the relevance and significance of information collected
4. Collect and synthesise information to inform a choice of solutions to problems
5. Demonstrate an awareness of the contested nature of knowledge within health and social care

Students will demonstrate that they have met the learning outcomes through:

Submission of individual portfolio. This will include examples of work undertaken over the course of the module [based on session activities]. For example, an annotated bibliography indicating reasons why individual sources constitute ‘good’ evidence and commentary on extracts from assessments for concurrent modules highlighting the use of key academic skills [i.e. identification of bias]. This will also include a brief reflection. Required elements of the portfolio are as follows:

1. Detailed summary of content of one published academic paper [chosen from a number of sources provided by other L5 modules] identifying key principles and concepts set out in the source. [1000 words]
2. Reflection on small group presentation utilising selected framework to provide a critique of academic paper. [500 words]
3. Detailed written critique of one academic paper using selected framework.

https://rl.talis.com/3/londonmet/lists/76AD8B52-C478-EF1F-0A3D-46E5250B542B.html?lang=en-gb