HOWTOTACKLETHE DREADEDFYP

WRITES CONOR O'DRISCOLL | SKILLS CENTRE

coherent piece; all these obstacles will present themselves in some shape or form But there are ways around them The Skills Centre provides a space in which class groups can get together and, mediated by an experienced tutor, address some of these topics early-on and provide you with ideas on how to work effectively in your groups

Everyone will have to do a presentation at some point, if not in university, then in a job setting. Good presentations always have a few things in common: 1) Strong communication skills and body language, 2) effective slides (not filled with essays), 3) a convincing argument, and 4) an engaging narrative Here, little things go a long way For instance, a pet peeve of mine is when people read directly off the slides for their entire presentation and when these slides are full of essays The Skills Centre provides dedicated workshops to improve presentation skills and often participate in practice presentations whereby experienced tutors evaluate these skills and provide instructions on how you might sharpen them in the future

Implicit in all these services, is that the Skills Centre is providing a space for you to develop desirable professional skills For instance, being able to create, and convincingly answer, questions requires critical and analytical thinking; being able to work effectively in teams requires strong communication and collaboration skills; and strong presentation skills require excellent public speaking abilities. These skills are highly attractive to employers in every sector, illustrating how the Skills Centre can help you excel academically and professionally beyond UCC

More information on any of these topics can be found on our website You can drop in for a chat if you have a specific query, such as a request for workshops/seminars for specific class groups We are based in Q-1 in the Boole Library

Just follow the yellow footsteps.

As the semester rolls on, some of you may have major deadlines coming up In general, most mid-term assessments are due in-and-around the same time each semester (between weeks 8-10) Not only does this illustrate the importance of good time/project management, but it also highlights how training in academic writing and reasoning can be of immediate benefit to you – a topic addressed in my previous columns More information on how The Skills Centre can help you improve on these skills, and others, can be found on our website Just Google UCC Skills Centre

Somewhat unique to Semester 2 is the type of assignments which can emerge Specifically, research projects (such as Final Year Projects [FYP]), group assignments, and major presentations tend to crop up around now These types of assessments can be daunting because they require you to use your literary and academic skills in different, challenging environments and contexts

The dreaded FYP for instance, requires a consistent effort over long periods You cannot write a good one last minute When constructing an FYP, good academic reasoning and writing is the benchmark Here, you also must display a clear ability to undertake a full research project lifecycle, which involves creating a unique research question, comprehensively analysing this question and its wider implications, as well as answering the research question convincingly A deceptively simple sounding task

Surprisingly, these tasks are often not executed properly Elements of this problem stem from a lack of clarity regarding where your work fits within existing literature, how it differs, and importantly, how it contributes to this field The Skills Centre offer workshops on these topics, whereby we provide you with the scaffolding to develop these skills independently. Particularly relevant may be our Planning Your Dissertation and Answering The Question workshops Or we also host more discipline-specific workshops relating to business/lab reports, reflective writing, and scientific writing

Group projects can also be tricky to navigate Learning how to work with people you do not know personally, delegating work, merging different written pieces into one