Postgraduate Student Learning

In the first week of the workshop on ‘writing the literature review’ I went through the importance of separating out the process from the product

Part of the difficulty especially for students in honours and postgraduate studies for the first time is that they are asked to write this document cryptically referred to as a lit review and hand in to their supervisor by such and such a date

“Is this an essay? a report ? a completely new sort of document?’ wonder the students.

But most importantly they wonder what should it contain?

Well, the answer to that question is that it needs to stop being thought of as a product and approached as a process.

The ‘lit review’ sounds like a thing , like a noun naming this document: ‘The Lit Review’,

when in fact it is a process and an action, a reviewing of what other people have published about this area issue question. We need to remember that this phrase we use so lightly ‘a lit review’ is a verb not a noun!

What does that mean then when we stop to think about the process of reviewing literature in an area?

we need to identify the area, (search techniques)

we need to read a great deal of literature in the area ( reading techniques)

we need to keep track of a great deal of reading (referencing and filing techniques)

we need to be able to say something about what we have read ( note taking techniques)

and these techniques are workshopped through the postgraduate writing seminar series as we also consider the writing of the document.

Welcome to this blog, in which you are invited to post your responses and thoughts; comments and ideas about the process of researching, reading and writing as a postgraduate student at Murdoch University. I look forward to reading them.