Student perspective: Assessment deadlines – meeting and managing them

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Photo of Claudia, the author of the postby Claudia Raymond-Hayling, Second year Theatre and English (BA) student and Bristol Futures Advocate.

As the winter break approaches, many of us have upcoming deadlines and assessments. This can seem daunting, but there are some really simple ways that can help you manage them, ensuring your deadlines are met and completed to the best of your ability.

 

Establish how your modules are assessed

On blackboard, there’s usually an ‘assessment’ section to each module. This should help you find out how you are going to be assessed and how each assessment is weighted. This is really useful to know, as different methods of assessment require different skills. If you’re aware of anything you need to work on earlier, then you’ll have as much time as possible to work on these specific areas. If you regularly check your module information, you’ll also keep updated with any extra assessment information that will help you.

Find the dates of your deadlines and exams are as soon as possible

Write down these dates – I find it useful to write this on my calendar, so I can visualise the due dates in relation to other things I have going on. However, you could also write them down on a note somewhere that’s visible, so you are always aware of the due dates, and there’s no chance of you missing a deadline. If dates or assessment information have not been released yet, make a note of it and email your tutor to find out.

Look at the essay questions and exam topics in advance

This will give you a clear idea of what topics and information you’ll be covering in your assessments. When you’re in your seminars and lectures, it’ll help you think about the information to particularly focus on, making delegation of tasks easier during term time.

Email your tutors

Your tutors will always be happy to answer questions you may have, so make use of their expertise when thinking about any specific queries in terms of assessments. Alternatively, ask other people on your course for advice – you’re in the same boat!

Attend study-skills sessions

Study-skills will equip you with the skills needed that can be applied in exams, essays and coursework, through discussions with other members of your faculty. These sessions are very insightful and can be attended through workshops, drop-ins and ­bookable sessions.

Don’t be afraid to ask for extensions if you need to

Sometimes deadlines for certain assessments can feel quite overwhelming and extensions can be very helpful when needing to complete a piece of work. Whilst there are restrictions due to COVID, it is the upmost importance that your mental health is a priority, and extensions can be invaluable during times like this.

Take breaks

Whilst making lists and revision notes can be helpful, taking time away from your studies can be just as beneficial when managing deadlines. It’s important to have a balance and doing things you enjoy outside of your studies can boost your motivation!

I really hope these tips will help with managing your deadlines, and whilst different techniques of working help for different people, it’s worth trying to implement a couple of these and see how you go. Good luck!

Letter to my undergraduate self: Simon Gamble – ‘Don’t waste brain power on fears, spend the time studying’

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In a nod to the Big Issue’s regular feature Letter to My Younger Self, we’re asking staff to think back to their own experiences as a student and tell us what advice they would give to their undergraduate selves.

This month we present Simon Gamble, Head of Study Skills.

Did you experience a culture shock when you started University?

Completely. I had no idea what I was doing, plus I didn’t really know if I should be there because I got pretty bad grades at A’ level. It all had a huge psychological effect on me and I was very unsure of myself for a long time, which is why I spent the first term getting drunk, doing no work, lying in bed all day and making friends with some real idiots. One day I was so freaked out I just wandered round the whole city feeling lost, instead of doing a practical session about fungus. I genuinely had no idea what was happening to me. It took me about four months to get over it, well into Spring term. Luckily I’d also made friends with some really great people, not just idiots. Those good people really helped me.

What was your biggest failure and what did you learn from it?

I failed a unit in year two. It was my favourite subject and I loved all the lectures, but I spent all my time working on the subjects I found hard, just assumed I’d do well at this one and I tanked. That was when I had to relearn how to learn. It taught me that there are techniques and strategies for learning that I needed to apply, especially that testing myself was a huge help and that studying takes time and some organisation. In the retake I got a really good score, though it was capped at a pass grade. I didn’t care though, because the revision skills I gained were more important.

What are you most proud of about your time at university?

My time in France. There were two of us accepted to go to Université de Technologie de Compiègne on a placement year. We worked incredibly hard, but we had a brilliant time and we were trained very well. Some previous students hadn’t made much effort and we were going to be the last ones unless it went well, so we turned that placement around and even got our names on a research paper. When we got back the head of course knew our names, so obviously we’d made a good impression. I made some brilliant friends, learned to speak French really well, learned to cook, survived a car crash and kind of discovered myself. I came back transformed and it made the final year so much better.

What was the best bit of feedback you received?

“You’re enjoying yourself here aren’t you Simon? Well, if you want to keep enjoying yourself, do some work.” Head of School, January, year 1. I listened.

What advice would you give to your undergraduate self?

Don’t worry so much, just do your best. You have a perfect right to be here and to be doing this, so get on with it. Be kind, be helpful and friendly and say yes to anything that sounds interesting. All those things you’re scared of, they’re never going to happen because they’re extreme and life is mostly very mundane. Just don’t waste the brain power on fears, spend the time studying and talking to your fellow students about your subject instead. You’ve done really well to get here and that’s not going to stop, so just keep on at it.  And don’t move in with Gerry because he turns out to be racist and you end up really hating each other.

Student perspective: Staying motivated in the lead up to and during Winter Break

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Photo of Tiegan, author of this blog postby Tiegan Bingham-Roberts, Y3 BA English student & Bristol Futures Advocate

There are only three weeks left of TB1… congratulations on making it this far! I for one am certainly looking forward to a break, especially to spend some time doing activities that do not involve staring into the abyss of my laptop screen all day every day. I might do some baking, go for some walks in the countryside of my hometown (weather dependent of course, which does is not a great dependent if you live in the UK like me), read some books that are completely unrelated to my English degree, and catch up on the extra hours of sleep that ran away from me this term. I hope you are also planning on doing some relaxing activities, whatever they may be for you.

Before you can do those activities, though, you must get past the finish line. Especially with the recent updates that all teaching is going to be moved online gradually from the 3rd December, you might be feeling worried about how to stay motivated. If you are staying on-campus, the lack of in-person teaching may impact your motivation because you feel as though you are being held less accountable for how much work you put into your studies. If you really enjoyed the in-person teaching, you might be worried about being less engaged with your learning materials. In general, you may be feeling unmotivated purely for the fact that you are tired of 2020 and all the changes it continues to bring to our lives. If you are returning to your non-term time address, if you have one, you might struggle to stay motivated because you are no longer surrounded by other students and so it feels as if the Winter Break has started early, even though it has not.

However, and this is a big however, it is hard to escape from the reality that Winter Break is not truly a ‘break’, because unfortunately we cannot switch off our student status as soon as we leave the classroom. I know that every student, no matter what course they are studying or what year group they are in, will have tasks to complete over the Winter Break – whether that be essays, reports, research, exam revision, reading, proposals, job applications, internship applications, volunteering, part-time jobs, the list goes on and on…

Alongside these tasks, comes the big distraction of Winter Holiday Celebrations. During the final few weeks of term and in the month and a half that follows, you might be participating in one of the many festivals happening across the globe, perhaps in a different capacity this year due to coronavirus restrictions. Between the tasks you have been set to complete over the Winter Break, and the festivities of the season, it is understandable why many students get sucked into the intoxicating fun of it all only to soberly panic as our deadlines or exams quickly approach before our TB2 timetables start.

Here are some things you can do to stay motivated amidst all the chaos, excitement, and relaxation:

· Remind yourself of what you have achieved so far in such strange circumstances of a global pandemic, why you are here at University, and why you want to do well. Sometimes it is easy to forget how far you have come as you get wrapped up in deadlines and what can feel like aimless days of staring at your screen, but there is a point to all of it – to get your degree from a top University. This is very cliché, but the phrase ‘it will all be worth it in the end’ is apt here.

· Make sure your goals are realistic. Whether these are daily or weekly goals, have them noted down somewhere such as on a physical or virtual notepad or calendar. Make sure they do not completely fill your time, as often unexpected things come up or things may take longer to complete than you initially realised. Allowing flexibility means that you will be much more likely to achieve the goal by the end of the day or week. I get so much satisfaction from being able to tick things off my to do list and go to sleep each night knowing that I can truly relax and watch a bit of Netflix without feeling guilty for it.

· Create a study space. This is going to be easier for some students than others depending on your living situation, and my advice here is to work with what you have got to the best of your ability; try to get creative. It might be that you clear one area of the room you are staying in to be a blank canvas so that you are able to focus, it might mean stacking up a pile of academic books in your space to serve as a reminder that you are still a student!

· Check in with your peers on your course or other students you know who are studying different subjects – ask them how they are doing, what work they have managed to do, discuss deadlines, peer review each other’s work. I find that having somebody to hold you accountable for what you have been up to can be a great motivator, and even having a small conversation about University life can help to jog your memory and get you back into the right mindset of being a driven and determined student.

· Check out the Bristol Study Skills resource online about Studying From Home, which breaks down different ways of studying remotely which is what we will all be doing from between 3rd-9th December onwards until the end of January (if in-person teaching resumes of course).

I hope the rest of term goes well for you and that you have found this post useful for thinking about motivation over the Winter Break. What activities are you most looking forward to during your rest days?

Student perspective: Maintaining an asynchronous routine for synchronous students

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Note: This post was written during the covid-19 pandemic. While university teaching is no longer 100% online, online learning is here to stay… whether in the form of online lectures or simply a quick Teams/ Zoom/ Skype call with your project group. So we think this blog post is just as relevant as ever! Now read on…

Photo of Claudia, the author of the post

 

by Claudia Raymond-Hayling, Second year Theatre and English (BA) student and Bristol Futures Advocate.

During this very strange year, working from home or university accommodation is something we all are adjusting to. Since starting the first teaching block, I have learnt a few things about staying organised and keeping that daily routine in check.

1. Regularity with your timings of the day

Make sure you get up at a good time (before 10am). This will allow you to spread out your tasks across the day, so you use your time efficiently and effectively. Also, having a rough idea of the timings you eat your meals will make it easier to schedule your work around the break you might want to have at mealtimes. Exercise is a great way to help your mental and physical wellbeing, so you may also find it helpful to schedule this at regular times during the week.

2. Make a list of the work you need to do at the start of the week.

Writing down the things you need to get done can help so much in terms of visualising your goals. It can make tasks feel much more manageable and accomplishable. Even things that aren’t university-related, put them onto your list.

3. At the start of each day, choose things from your to-do list and make a schedule.

Making a daily schedule might seem excessive, but it allows you to organise your day and prioritise the things that need to be completed more urgently. It also can help you to feel motivated by having a smaller, more manageable list each day, rather than being daunted by your weekly to-do list. If you make a daily schedule, it will also mean that you can organise your tasks around other plans you might have – as unexpected things often come up!

4. Make your daily goals realistic.

It’s easy to overestimate the work you can achieve in a day, and how much time each task will take you. Sometimes 30-minute lectures can take up to 2 hours, simply because of the difficulty of the concepts being taught. Make sure your daily goals are realistic, as it can really help with your time management, but also your mindset and attitude towards a day’s work.

5. Vary the environment you’re working in.

Try working in a different room – ask your flatmate to swap rooms for the afternoon or maybe go to the library. You’d be surprised how much a change of scene can alter your approach and attitude towards your work.

6. Take breaks! Do things you enjoy.

Allow yourself to have breaks, don’t burn yourself out. Go for a walk with a friend, watch Netflix for an hour or do any hobby that you really enjoy. Breaks allow you to work more effectively, and if you schedule them, you’ll have a cut-off time. Sometimes, you might need to take a longer break, or have a day not working, which is also okay. It’s important to prioritise your own wellbeing during this time at home too – don’t be harsh on yourself if you need a breather. And remember, if you’re struggling to meet deadlines for this reason, extension requests are always available to you.

I’ve gradually been implementing these steps into my life and my work schedule, and my routine has felt much more structured. Different techniques work for different people, but these are what have made a profound difference to my life during lockdown. Since many aspects of life can feel so unstructured right now, taking steps to help yourself have more of a routine can be hugely beneficial in terms of wellbeing and completing those daily things that we need to do.

If you need any support in study skills, you are always welcome at the drop-in sessions run by the student advocates within each faculty. These sessions can help with the general skills that facilitate your learning in a way that can be really helpful to your academic progress, specifically through speaking to other members of your faculty – which can be very insightful! The university Study Skills also have many online resources that can be invaluable to many specific aspects of working effectively.

Wishing you all lots of luck, and perhaps have a think about the things that have helped you stay in a good routine during this time and post in the comments below!

Letter to my undergraduate self: Anna Wallace – ‘Making better choices got me back on track’

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In a nod to the Big Issue’s regular feature Letter to My Younger Self, we’re asking staff to think back to their own experiences as a student and tell us what advice they would give to their undergraduate selves.

This month we’re talking to Anna Wallace, Admin Assistant in Library Services.

What and where did you study? 

English and Philosophy at Leeds University. 

Did you experience a culture shock when you started University? 

Most definitely! Although I had had a year out after my A’Levels and lived abroad in a large city, I wasn’t used to finding my feet in big social groups, and this was a real challenge for me. Having grown up in a rural town with a tight-knit group of friends, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself at the time to make instant friendships. I’ve realised since that friendship usually comes in time and often when you don’t expect it. 

What was your biggest failure and what did you learn from it? 

My second year at Uni was a juggle of socialising, working and studying, possibly in that order, which certainly reflected in some of my marks! It meant that I pulled quite a few all-nighters, missed a couple of essay deadlines and received some late submission penalties. I also didn’t feel up to speed with the reading, or completely engaged with my subjects. But on the plus side I was able to pay for my University living costs and have a few memorable nights out! 

By my third year, I realised that I couldn’t juggle everything, and if I was going to leave Uni with a reasonable degree, then I would need to prioritise my time better and focus more on my studies. In doing that, I would say that my final year was my most enjoyable, I finally engaged with my course and felt all the happier and more content for it. No essays were late, I was up to date with the reading and felt more confident to contribute in my seminars. 

What are you most proud of about your time at university? 

For me, the fact that I stuck with it, pulled my socks up in my final year and made some better choices which got me back on track is probably what I feel proudest of. 

What was the best bit of feedback you received? 

I received a good solid first for an essay on American Literature in my final year. It was an essay that I remember grappling with during the Christmas holidays, with limited resources to use (this was in the days before Google and Wiki!!). I felt very unsure about what I submitted, as I had struggled so much, so to receive positive feedback made all the effort feel worthwhile and was a confidence boost in my ability to build an argument without relying heavily on secondary texts. 

What advice would you give to your undergraduate self? 

If I were to go back and do it all again, I would manage and prioritise my time, which is no easy feat for an Arts student with just a few contact hours each week. I would complete the reading, and (perhaps most importantly) I would find a thread in my unit choices, so that I was building on knowledge each year, and choosing the units that I enjoyed, not the ones that I thought I ought to be good at. 

Student perspective: Using feedback effectively and developing your academic resilience

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Photo of Tiegan, author of this blog postby Tiegan Bingham-Roberts, Bristol Futures Advocate

As the second half of TB1 approaches, there is one thing beginning to loom on our minds and creep up on us – the upcoming assessment periods in December and January. Whether those assessment deadlines are for essays, group projects, or exams, it is important to approach them with a sensible approach of incorporating feedback from previous assessments (at University, school or work) and a skill for academic resilience. Therefore, I hope this blog will help you think about how best to utilise feedback to help your future assessments.

When I was in my first year at University, I was terrified of having to complete my first assessment. I had taken a year out prior to starting University and felt like my academic reading and writing skills were a distant memory of the past, with little hope of being resurrected in time for the approaching deadline. I knew that most of the other students on my course felt the same way too, so this is completely normal.

If you are in your first year right now, you may not have had the opportunity to receive feedback on University work yet. If this applies to you, it might be worth considering ‘feedback’ as any information you have been given about something you have done in the past, and this feedback can be from friends, family, work colleagues, managers, teachers, etc. and is equally as valid as feedback from University tutors. If you think about feedback from general life, you can start to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Once you have a grasp on your general strengths and weaknesses in relation to academia, these can help to inform your approach to assessments. You can identify these by asking the following questions to yourself:

  • What are three words my friends or family would use to describe my approach to academia?
  • Why did I get a better grade in one subject at school over another?
  • How would my teachers describe me to my University tutors?

If you are in your second year upwards right now, you will have some form of feedback from your first year which is usually available on Blackboard. If you cannot find any feedback in the grades section of Blackboard, you can contact your School or Faculty asking them to locate these documents for you or to point you in the right direction. If the type of assessments you did meant you did not receive a great deal of feedback, it is worth remembering the smaller and more informal feedback that you might have received. Every time you communicate with a tutor, lecturer, or your peers is an opportunity for feedback – such as when people acknowledge your contributions during classes and agree or disagree with you. All of these incidents can be beneficial to approaching your future work, as you have a sense of what sorts of things you are doing well, and which things need improvement.

It is easy to fall into the trap of feedback avoidance – perhaps because you were not particularly proud of the piece of work so you do not want to go back and revisit it, perhaps because it just feels like too much effort to trapse through Blackboard to find the right document, or perhaps because you are worried it will confuse your new assessment topic. I have definitely been guilty of this in the past but over time I have learnt to develop my academic resilience, which makes looking at feedback a lot less daunting and a lot more productive.

What do I mean by academic resilience? I mean that when you receive negative feedback, you are able to digest it and work upon it within a reasonable amount of time, without allowing it to throw you off track to achieve your academic goals. You can develop this important skill by doing the following:

  • Try to remove your personal attachment to the piece of work you have received negative feedback on. Although you might have poured blood, sweat, and tears into the piece of work during the time leading up to the deadline, and you may have celebrated after pressing the bittersweet ‘submit’ button, those feelings should not act as a barrier after that point.
  • Try to turn the phrase ‘negative feedback’ into ‘constructive feedback’ – if you are able to use the feedback to better your grades and your academic development at University, to graduate having learnt something new which you did not know how to do perfectly at the beginning, then ‘negative feedback’ is not negative at all, it is actually something positive!
  • Try to be balanced in your response, there is almost always something positive amidst the sea of feedback that rushes towards you as you open the document. It is easy to focus on the negatives because you want to know what you did wrong, why you did not get a higher mark, but the positives are equally important in letting you know what you did right and should replicate in the next assessment.
  • Try to change your mindset from ‘fixed mindset’ to ‘growth mindset’. If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that your abilities, intelligence and talents are just fixed traits – that there is no point trying to get better at something because you simply cannot do it. If you have a growth mindset, you do not believe that your abilities, intelligence and talents are fixed entities – instead, you get better at something through effort and persistence.

After developing this academic resilience, you will be able to use your feedback more effectively. You could make a document with all of the feedback you have collated in your academic career so far, going back as far as you are able to gather information for. With this document, you can then draw connections between the feedback to highlight any common themes. If more than one person has given you feedback on a particular point, then it is clearly something you need to work on, such as by having a meeting with your personal tutor, attending a tutorial or a workshop with Bristol Study Skills, or going to your PASS sessions. Likewise, if there is something you are consistently being praised for, then you can categorise this as one of your strengths and feel confident about that aspect of your assessment.

If you want to speak to me or another Bristol Futures Advocate about how to use feedback effectively and develop your academic resilience, feel free to attend one of our student-led drop-in sessions by following the page here and finding the dates and times for your Faculty.

Best of luck!

Student perspective: Making lockdown happy, healthy and productive

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Photo of Alby, author of the blogby Alby Stevens, Bristol Futures Advocate

The biggest threat to our studies during the next few weeks is that posed by feeling isolated and unmotivated, so I wanted this blog post to focus on staying healthy through the rest of TB1 in spite of the national lockdown that has just begun. When the pandemic hit back in March I found that despite all the time I had available to study it was so much harder to be productive. I know I wasn’t alone in feeling like this. As lockdown begins again I believe it’s worth taking some time to reflect about how you can cultivate a positive working environment over the next month or so in spite of the unnatural circumstances.

The 5 tips below are proven ways to look after both mental wellbeing and your studies, particularly over lockdown, and would be a great place for you to start from in reflecting upon what works best for you. It would be fantastic if you posted what works for you in the comments below so that we can all get ideas from each other:

  • Get ahead – Whilst it may feel a little cliché to get into a routine right from the start it is a really healthy way for you to stay in control. With so much time in isolation ahead of us, the temptation is to push everything back: work, physical health, mental wellbeing. By staying on top of things while you feel fresh you should be able take some stress off of yourself when the novelty of lockdown wears off.

It’s worth taking a look at the Study Skills time management resources to help you with this one or you could procrastinate by watching this video about how to not procrastinate!

  • Don’t wear yourself out – Do things sustainably and tend to all the little parts of your life that are important to your happiness from cooking healthy meals to getting enough exercise. Trying new things is a great way to stimulate the mind but equally the next 28 days doesn’t have to be some sort of language learning, baking or early morning yoga boot camp! I’m always tempted to start off too fast and wear myself out within a week so this time around I’m focusing on doing what I can and doing the amount that makes me feel good.
  • Get outside – Humans are not designed to spend their lives indoors and so if you are able, make sure to get outside daily. It doesn’t have to be a 12 mile hike – I prefer wrapping up warm and taking a coffee to a new street in Bristol – but the benefits of fresh air, sunlight and new surroundings are so important. Take the time to notice the trees changing colour, the days getting shorter or the people wandering around doing the same as you!
  • Engage with online society events – Even if it’s not really your thing, keeping communities together whilst we’re apart could be so valuable to someone else. There is never a bad time to join a new society and you can always try something out in the knowledge that it doesn’t have to be forever if it turns out to not be for you.

Here is the link to the SU societies page.

  • Connect with people – This one is the most important but the easiest to forget. More than ever we must make the effort to make sure that the people around us are okay and to ask for help if we are struggling. In my opinion, no piece of university work is more important than a 10 minute chat in the kitchen with a housemate that might need it. Looking out for others is scientifically proven to make us feel good too.

I’ve taken some ideas for this from a website called Action for Happiness which is well worth taking a look at. Their ‘10 Keys to Happier Living’ are really easy to understand and are always a great reminder to me that often the things that make us happy are different to what we imagine them to be.

Here is the link to Bristol University’s wellbeing services for anyone that is struggling and would like to look through some resources or talk to someone. The right kind of help is there for everyone.

 

Letter to my undergraduate self: Jenny Norris – ‘Failure isn’t the end of the world’

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In a nod to the Big Issue’s regular feature Letter to My Younger Self, we’re asking staff to think back to their own experiences as a student and tell us what advice they would give to their undergraduate (or sometimes even postgraduate) selves.

First up is Jenny Norris, Study Skills Tutor.

What and where did you study?

Mathematics at Bath University.

Did you experience culture shock when you started university?

I felt very grown up when I started university because I’d taken a gap year and lived in Cape Town for 10 months. So I’d already experienced moving away from home and having to do my own cooking and laundry. Coming from south-east London via South Africa, the biggest culture shocks were the lack of cultural diversity and the fact that I could safely go out after dark on my own.

The teaching and learning culture was also very different to school. We were taught in massive lectures with 200 people, so there was very little interaction with lecturers. The most useful things were the weekly problem classes, where you went through the problem sheets in smaller groups. I think the culture has changed a lot even since I was studying. Bath now has a maths support centre and runs courses specifically for maths students transitioning to university. I think it’s much less ‘sink or swim’ than it used to be, which is definitely a good thing.

What was your biggest failure and what did you learn from it?

I once got 0% on an essay. As a maths student I managed to avoid essays completely until I took an optional unit called ‘Issues in Science Education’ in my final year, so it counted towards my overall grade. I duly handed in an essay about maths education. After much debate between the lecturers it was decided that maths didn’t count as a science, so it was deemed to be too unrelated to the course title to even be marked. I discovered afterwards that I could have gone and talked through my title with the course tutor before I wrote it and got some feedback on my essay plan. Because the culture in the maths department was just to get on with coursework on your own, it didn’t even cross my mind that that might be an option. I was pretty devastated at the time but I learnt that failure isn’t the end of the world (I still came out with a 2:1).

What are you most proud of about your time at university?

My work-life balance. I got involved with the Salsa Society and the Christian Union early on and had an absolute ball (sometimes literally). I did work hard but it never felt 24/7. I’ve lost touch with most of those people but I did come away with one or two friends for life.

What was the best bit of feedback you received?

I once got a bonus mark on a piece of computer programming coursework for “effort rather than understanding”. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know what I was doing at all so had just written down everything that could possibly be relevant.

What advice would you give to your undergraduate self?

I would tell my 19 year old self to ask for help at every opportunity, rather than trying to struggle through some pretty hefty mathematical concepts on my own. I’d tell myself not to be afraid to put my hand up in lectures to ask a really silly question (that everyone else was probably thinking) and to make a nuisance of myself by knocking on lecturer’s doors on a regular basis (because that’s that’s what they’re there for, and they probably weren’t as scary as I thought). Looking back I’m astonished that I didn’t ever make use of the careers service, or go talk to my personal tutor about module choices. I only realised after I graduated that I really enjoyed the probability side of maths and it was always my top mark. If I’d noticed sooner, maybe my career would have taken a whole different path.

Student perspective: How to generate creative and innovative ideas in group work

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by Beth Robinson, Bristol Futures AdvocatePhoto of Beth, author of the blog

For many people, challenging their assumptions about what it means to be creative can be difficult, especially for those who already define themselves as being either distinctly creative or decidedly not creative.

It can be easy to define yourself and your own level of success, but working creatively in a group is, in my experience, completely different. I’ve learned that it‘s so much more than ‘what the best and worst ideas are’, and ‘brainstorming creative ideas.’ Today I’d like to share some tips and links which I hope you might find useful when trying to generate new ideas and projects in a team. 

3 Key things I’ve learned  

1) ‘No ideas should be left behind’. Irrespective of how good, bad or even ridiculous you think an idea is, keep it written down. It may have had a detailed thought process behind it which wasn’t expressed more clearly, and/or could provide some inspiration later.

2) ‘There are no such thing as bad ideas, only opportunities for growth’. If you think someone has suggested a bad idea, consider it an opportunity for further innovation. Instead of saying ‘no’, say ‘yes – AND *suggest a way to further the idea*’

3) Have fun! In using some of these techniques, groups I work with have written some peculiar sounding words or suggestions to begin – often completely different from the brief. But these initial ideas are springboards and prompts, and don’t have to be perfect before you say them out loud. 

Some techniques 

These techniques are designed to help with idea generation and to boost creativity, and further information on them can be found by clicking on the links:

  • ‘Random Pictures’ – starting with a random picture, writing down random words associated with it, and then working on relating these to the subject matter (Random Images Technique).

  • ‘Out-and-out-reversal‘ – creating a statement which is the opposite of what you want to achieve and working out how to solve the problem to then apply it to the initial brief – this is my personal favourite! (Reversal)

  • ‘Bringing in time’ – when you start to build ideas, ask ‘how would I go about this if I had only one day to execute it? Or one month? A year, or century? This can be helpful in working out anything related to logistics in a project. 

There then, of course, needs to be a slightly more ‘down to earth’ selection, refinement, and structuring process of developing the idea fully. One way to approach this is to build on any ideas you’ve generated and then make them better by creating timelines, asking questions, and using the SWOT technique (SWOT) to critically analyse concepts.

I hope that some of these tips will help you as they’ve helped me in finding it easier to innovate in a group setting. Of course, different things work for different people, so leave any tips, problems, and solutions in the comments section, we’d love to hear from you! 

Student perspective: Overcoming the trials and tribulations of the group Zoom call

Posted on by study.skills

Note: This post was written during the covid-19 pandemic. While university teaching is no longer 100% online, online learning is here to stay… whether in the form of online lectures or simply a quick Teams/ Zoom/ Skype call with your project group. So we think this blog post is just as relevant as ever! Now read on…

by Beth Robinson, Bristol Futures Advocate

‘Group work’ gets mixed reviews at the best of times, let alone when everyone’s internet connection keeps dropping and the speakers aren’t working properly. For the most part, I’m really enjoying online meetings. But whether it be with a project supervisor, as part of a study group or yet another virtual quiz, something’s bound to go wrong at some point. In an academic sense, I’ve noticed that it can be hard to make online calls as productive as they could be. These are solutions others and I have found to the trials and tribulations of group Zoom (/Skype) calls.

When meetings are unproductive 

We’ve all been there. The calls where you speak for an hour or two without actually getting anywhere. So, ahead of group study or even 1:1 calls, make sure you set a clear agenda. Perhaps working on setting goals and/or time slots of exactly what you want to cover and when may work. Or, if you are not able to do this (or indeed don’t feel comfortable doing so), work out what it is you personally want to get out of the meeting. Because, no matter how unproductive a meeting may feel, it’s likely you’ll be able to find something valuable in it. For example, being able to empathise with what someone else is experiencing or thinking about any next steps you can take with respect to your personal development.  (One useful tool to help with PDP can be found here)

When the WiFi/video/microphones are being temperamental 

If quitting and rejoining doesn’t work, the student laptop and phone clinic at the University of Bristol is still running, so if you are having tech or connectivity problems then be sure to reach out to them. If you have very limited access to internet more generally, don’t be afraid to contact a unit or programme director – in such difficult times I doubt they’d want to see you experience an unfair disadvantage. 

When it’s hard to find the right space  

It can be difficult to find the right environment to be on a group call, especially if you’re somewhere with no desk and/or a house full of people. That being said, I’ve seen some great creative solutions out there! Pinterest has lots of cool ideas – for example ways to get creative with tabletop spaces if you don’t have a desk, and interesting lighting and sound solutions. Depending on the nature of the call, adding a green-screen background on Zoom or going around the group and sharing a ‘unique item’ from where you are living can be a nice icebreaker! 

Hope you’re all keeping safe and well, especially as we move forwards into exams! What have been your biggest annoyances and solutions to group video calls?