Interpersonal Communications Assignment

Task 1: Developing ICT skills

Discussion forum post and evaluation I submitted the following two posts to the BESC1011 discussion forum for Activity 2: (N. B. I have edited the post for typographical errors).

Activity 2

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finding ACAP's online resources Monday, 24 September 2012, 03:56 PM Well, I've just had a pleasant afternoon finding my way around the maze that's called Myacap. Wow. I've found I've ended up with a myriad of browser pages open, and got lost thinking I was finding things. I did find it, I'm sure I found it...

Now where was it?? Anyway, I'll get there, I’m sure, and so will you. The Grail? Not yet, but I'm sure it's in there somewhere. Incidentally, folks, if you're having trouble finding the link to the Counselling and Therapy in Video resource, and you only get a 404 error, there's a broken link on the site. Your browser will be trying to point to http://elibrary. acap. edu. au/http%3A%2F%2Fctiv. alexanderstreet. com and the link is broken. Instead, just try removing everything after edu. au -so you have http://elibrary. acap. edu. u and you'll get to the elibrary homepage where the link to the videos works. Good Luck! Post 2.

Activity 3.

Managing Stress Wednesday, 10 October 2012, 05:00 PM I've played sport in the past as a stress management tool - I was planning and then running a major community festival, and they were long days - it was a full-on, and if I wasn't working on it I was thinking about it. Baseball season started right in the middle of the planning and I nearly didn't play, but I did and found the focus on the game a real relief - Nothing else mattered for those three hours except me and the ball.

My sleep patterns returned and though tired from the games, I was thoroughly relaxed. But I like this one. You may have heard of Gangnam style - dancing like you're riding a horse - well sort of... It's come out of South Korea and it's big around the world right now. Anyway here's a bunch of Uni students who set up a flashmob in between classes. I reckon it did their stress levels no end of good! http://www. youtube. com/watch? NR=1;v=OAXiUmh-KBg;feature=fvwp Hey Lynda, maybe we could do this for one of our video teletutorials!

Task 2: Study plan covering three weeks including strategies The study guide for Activity Three of BESC1011 referred me to RMIT. (2007). Learning styles: Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic Learning Preferences. Retrieved from https://www. dlsweb. rmit. edu. au/lsu/content/1_StudySkills/study_tuts/learning%20styles/vak. html I undertook the VAK test. The results showed I am a visual learner with a kinaesthetic inclination. This concurs with my own understanding of my learning style. I have developed a study plan incorporating this style, and provide a three week example below.

Three of the learning strategies I have incorporated in this plan and my study efforts are:

•  to create a wall planner highlighting critical assignment dates and also non-academic activities that might either clash or be a much needed relief.
• to use mind maps.
• to take frequent breaks.

I have found it necessary for me to tackle each session in bites. I have allocated specific time to open up the week’s session, do the reading, then at a later time go through the session material. In thinking or planning out, I just love Mind Maps – they categorise wonderfully. I can get heavily focussed, so taking breaks stops me working till I drop.

The five stress management strategies I have determined to remember to practice are:

• to create a comfortable pattern of studying that fits into my life.
• to set a regular schedule for study.
• to break tasks apart so they don’t daunt by being ‘too big’.
• resolve to do it now, when now is now. To not procrastinate.
• to make sure I have down-time when other activities come before studying.

 Task 3: Academic resources

Literature search and evaluation of quality I chose to attempt the task focussing on the question: The importance of academic referencing I undertook a brainstorming session with the following results: Academic referencing: Gives academic credibility of presented/published work.  Is a key part of the overall process of building a knowledge base in the field of study.  Better enables justification of assertions/ hypotheses. Is recognition of others work.  Shows the way through the knowledge-base to others.  Demonstrates competence in the field of study.  Engenders confidence in your work’s credibility Means one’s chain of reasoning to the resultant postulations are verifiable or challengeable. The three key words or phrases I selected to use to undertake literature search are:  Verification (confirmation of theoretical base)

Recognition (acknowledgement)

Knowledge-building (evolution of theoretical thinking) Keyword search 1. For my first search I used ACAP’s e-journal search engine focussing on The Psychinfo database and after several unsatisfactory attempts, tried the Boolean phrase ‘( academic verification) AND referencing’. Results offered ten articles, one of particular but contrarian relevance. In the journal article, Westwood, T. 2005) writes: “I’ve not yet heard a real and convincing argument about why referencing is necessary; and it can’t be right that we do it like a reflex, a compulsion, Academic’s dynamics 171 because we’ve had it drummed into us from way back when we were taught to march our way through essays and exams can it? Left, right, left, right, left, right left. . . ” And, “References shouldn’t be used to justify a position we’re taking – in the sense of using them as a precedent (the characters can’t justify the author) – only to loosely accompany our position in that we (as authors) are leading the way and not hiding behind anything or anyone that we’ve written into our text. ”

Summary: Westwood appears to be quite a disestablishmentarian, which of itself provides a relevant perspective on the subject matter. However, because of the position the author takes and asserts by his actions - or inactions - the journal article is consciously not referenced. It would be useful to an essay on the topic in providing an academically valid and contrarian position, but most probably would not be regarded as fully reliable under close academic scrutiny. Reference: Westwood, T. (2005). Academics’ dynamics: re-writing referencing, Psychodynamic Practice 11(2), 165-176. Keyword search 2. I then utilised Google scholar for the key word, Recognition. I again used a Boolean phrase, ‘recognition AND (academic referencing)’.

This search received over 40,000 possible webpage hits, but the first page of the search results provided a link to a peer reviewed article by Gray, Thompson, Clerehan and Sheard (2008), addressing the topic of referencing the internet for academic integrity. It proffers a contemporary analysis of the challenges surrounding formal academic referencing in regard to internet based information and opinion sources such as blogs, facebook , wikis and audio and video podcasting. Summary: I feel this webpage would be a highly useful and relevant reference source for an academic essay on the chosen topic.

Reference:

Gray, K. , Thompson, C. , Clerehan, R. , Sheard, J. (2008) Web 2. 0 authorship: Issues of referencing and citation for academic integrity. The Internet and Higher Education,11(2), 112-118. doi. org/10. 1016/j. iheduc. 2008. 03. 01 Keyword search 3. For the third key word search I used www. google. com. au with the search-phrase ‘(academic knowledge building) AND references’ This provided two potentially useful sites. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Knowledge_building Summary: This website site fulfilled good purpose in that it contained numerous references of relevant academic works on the topic. However, despite its authorship obviously being of academic origin, it was offered anonymously and without chronology.

While the site could be referenced and the quotes used, the source is not transparent, making it dubious for direct academic purposes. And http://www. csu. edu. u/division/studserv/my-studies/learning/guides/referencing Again the material on this web page provided useful information and even a highly relevant and appropriately referenced quotation (see below), but its usefulness for the purposes of academic quotation was curtailed by its anonymity and absence of chronology. The author writes: “The academic world is all about knowledge building and the primary reason for citation, therefore, is that it encourages and supports the collective construction of academic knowledge (Walker ; Taylor, 2006, pp. 29-30).

The paragraph continued, “Referencing also forms an essential part in avoiding any tendency towards plagiarism. While the quotation in this paragraph from Walker and Taylor (2006) is highly pertinent to the literature search, it itself would have to be searched to establish its credibility, and as the second sentence could not be attributed, it is therefore of limited use in an academic essay, however true. Summary: This webpage provided relevant information for further literature search but itself is not a useful referencing tool for academic purposes as it is undated and anonymous, and perhaps without objectivity. Task 4: Referencing using the APA style

Reference List

1. Campbell, T. , Campbell, D. , (1997)
2. Faculty/student mentor program: effects on academic performance and retention.
3. Research in Higher Education 38(6), 727-742. Hounsell, D. , Entwistle, N. , (2005)
4. Enhancing teaching-learning environments in undergraduate courses. Final report to the Economic and Social Research Council on TLRP Project LI39251009.

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