Student Success

Six Steps To Confidently Complete Your Degree

De: Peter Alkema

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

This book will set you up for success as a postgraduate student at any stage of your studies. Learn practical tips and techniques for writing, thinking, reading, proposals, your dissertation and much more. The six steps set out a clear, actionable plan so that you confidently complete your qualification. The first step is to develop a habit of reading, thinking & writing. The most important part of this is writing, but these three all go together. In my experience of running postgraduate workshops, coaching students, doing weekly webinars and moderating a student group I've truly seen the importance of writing as a fundamental aspect of student success, but it must be done to improve your reading and thinking. The 2nd step is to set up your weekly status report. In my PHD this was the single biggest most important driver of my success. This regular, disciplined momentum is undoubtedly what got me through. In this step I’ll teach you how to set it for whatever your qualification; a one year diploma, undergraduate or postgraduate degree. The 3rd step is about planning and managing your tasks. I teach you the principles of Kanban to get organised and master your tasks from to-do to done. You will also need an overall plan for your degree and often this also goes in your research proposal. I’ll teach you how this works, and how to manage your tasks so that you break your work down into actions you can take each week which keeps you focused on what really matters. The 4th step is all about your proposal. Any postgraduate level qualification will have some form of research, which usually requires a proposal. Even if you are past this stage in your studies, its still incredibly useful to understand what a good proposal looks like and how it works to set up the foundation for your whole degree. If your proposal is weak, you will struggle, so this step also fixes that problem for you and ensures you have a good foundation for your research. The 5th step will extend what you learnt about writing in the 1st step. It’s absolutely crucial that you write well, write often and write early. You will learn how to improve your writing with practices like complexity last and old before new as well as principles like clear nouns and verbs. You’ll become your own editor so you avoid having loads of red pen all over your writing from your supervisors and examiners. Lastly; your final report. This is the 6th step and you will learn everything you need to know about what goes into your final report. Every research-based academic qualification will have a final writing project – even if its just a large assignment, At a Masters level and a PhD level you will be doing a final report, thesis or dissertation and this step is about getting you ready for those writing projects ahead of time. Reviews of Peter Alkema's online course "Double Your Academic Writing Quality": "Very good course; affirming the importance of writing with clarity and meaning to actively engage the reader. Also, I never thought of normalization in the way you explained it, but it is making sense. In my experience, the gold thread concept, if applied correctly, also adds to the flow of report." "Peter speaks with so much clarity, I learned a lot from his lessons. I am only starting my PhD journey and I will surely be revisiting Peter's lessons throughout my studies. Thank you very much Peter!" "Thank you for making this freely accessible to Wits students at this time! As a PhD student trying to write it has been very helpful in both providing new concepts to apply to my writing (eg. golden thread) and with practical steps in clarifying my writing ("old before new", avoiding nominalisation etc)."