The Lighthouse

1. Start by reading and making notes on the relevant study materials in your Stream
2. Check your assignment instructions regarding extra/additional/outside sources. Sometimes you may be asked to use a minimum of one or more outside sources (i.e. outside your Stream site).
3. If you are asked to use outside sources, you can find appropriate academic sources on the Discover database (it contains lots of peer review journals and academic books, and many are available electronically).
4. Use the keywords in your assignment question to guide your selection of relevant extra readings.
5. Gist read/skim your selected readings (read the introduction, the first line of each paragraph and the conclusion) to get a good idea of main points or argument in the article/book.
6. Gist reading will help you identify if an article/book isn’t relevant and thus save you time, as you won’t waste time reading things that aren’t relevant. In addition, gist reading will help you identify which sections of a book/article are relevant and again this will save you time, as you won’t read parts that aren’t relevant.
7. Read the relevant sections of your selected books/articles closely and make notes.
8. When making notes have a clear purpose regarding what you want to get out of the reading (e.g. a definition or background information). Having a purpose will help you take more focused (and thus useful!) notes.

For more information see:

• http://owll.massey.ac.nz/study-skills/reading.php
• http://owll.massey.ac.nz/study-skills/note-taking-methods.php
• http://owll.massey.ac.nz/academic-writing/assignment-planning-calculator.php
• http://owll.massey.ac.nz/academic-writing/assignment-planning.php