UKC

I'm about to send the letter off,notifying the DWP of my change in circumstances re starting on my degree (Environmental Science) and coming off mental health sickness benefits, it has something of a pivotal air about it. I'm going to just notify them of the change in circumstances and see what they do.

Has anybody any tips for a mature student in these remote learning times? In some ways I'm fairly lucky, in having the university 20 mins downhill cycle away in my home city, and some family a scattering of friends to call on, so that's a plus for a support network. 

Does anybody know how easy may be to go about recording a remote lecture, potentially without that facility having been expressly given by the provider?

I've looked into the number of study hours per credit suggested, and am thinking of the amount of decent sleep and organisation I will need to make sure of success, and going into the site for using their library and resources.

Any and all helpful tips most welcome.

Thanks, Tim

Ideally the uni would record them and allow you to access that. 

There are a bunch of things that can record applications on Windows and Mac - either free or paid for. If you are using Windows 10 there's a built in Xbox Game Bar thing. Hold down Windows key and tap G. I've never tried to record Zoom or anything with it but you could try. 

Good luck!

At worst you could use a go-pro or similar to record your screen. quality won't be great, but should be good enough to go back over lectures etc

Most universities these days record lectures as a matter of course and make them available through a Virtual Learning Environnment. This year most universities will be pre-recording lectures and releasing them through VLEs - so delivering lectures asynchronously - rather than giving 'as live' lectures online. Very few universities are delivering live lectures.

You will probably find that there's info about recording teaching events yourself in your student disciplinary code / code of conduct. It's fairly normal to ban students making their own recordings of lectures unless they have reasonable adjustment, for reasons of copyright, potential abuse. Speak with your personal tutor / advisor of studies if you have a legitimate reason for needing to record something that isn't provided in electronic format as a matter of course.

I can't advise you about recording a remote lecture, however I came off sickness benefits roughly 7 years ago and I don't regret it. It was the catalyst I needed to develop - the proverbial rocket up the jacksie. They were a lifeline for a while but you'll instinctively know when to 'bite the bullet' (for want of a better expression). You've got this Timmd - you'll smash it, you'll find a way to make it work mate.

Yes, I think watching some people being more depressed due to not working set me thinking a little bit that I need 'an environment to grow within', I need an environmental degree or close (ie Goegraphy) to tick the box for certain cool jobs, so it seems like a good idea.

It turns out sessions will be playable backable, so I don't need to think about that. 

Can't advise on University stuff as I've never been, but congratulations on taking what must have been quite a scary decision. Bloody well done, thats a huge step.

Thanks. I was surprised that it took a couple of go's to write the letter and finally post it off. If I make sure my habits are helpful I should be fine, though, it's only really tiredness and a lack of organisation which should stymie my chances, I'm generally alright at figuring things out, and it's when stress looms that I'm less effective. A distance qualification I did was talked about on facebook by people already with degrees as being harder than their dissertation to do with making up the portfolio of work, so that's a plus, if I'm slept and organised that's probably more than half the battle.

The lady who did my Forest Schools course, and started the company, found that somebody had taken pictures of all her slides during the classroom sessions and used them within their own business doing the same thing, do that makes a lot of sense.

As Kate said, the lectures are likely to be made available in one form or another on the virtual learning environment.

Beware lecture capture though - there's something about the process of making notes (words and diagrams) during a lecture that activates deeper learning parts of your brain than just watching/listening does.  With lecture capture available, don't obsess over writing everything down every last detail, but do make notes from the key parts.  Reading those notes is likely to bring the best surrounding explanations from the lecturer back to mind - and a good explanation isn't just them talking, it's their body language and interaction with a board projected slide.

If you don't have express permission to record something, ask.  It's not uncommon in 1:1 meetings to have a student ask to make a mobile phone recording of the discussion.  I prefer them to develop a good note taking habit, but there are disability reasons why a mobile recording may be preferable.  I would start by not over-thinking it and only falling back to this sort of thing if you find yourself struggling.

Don't be afraid to email a lecturer if you don't understand something or want to check your understanding - it's incredibly frustrating how timid fresher students are about contacting staff.  If you make sure to address them properly with "Dear TITLE NAME," rather than "hey", and if you make sure your query is clear and what you are looking for is as clear as possible, you'll be ahead of 80% of the cohort, and they'll appreciate it.

Organisation is the key - not just of lecture and tutorial times, but of time around that so you can have a regular, structured cadence.  I think that will be all the more important, and all the harder, this year.  I can still visualise my first year timetable from 1997.

Keep in mind that most of the people teaching you will be doing lecturing, tutorials and seminars through online portals for the first time, and will still be finding their feet.   

Study this canonical reference -  youtube.com/watch?v=iRpUAdI_F_o&

Good luck!

Good luck to you.

From personal experience even thought it's distance learning, it's good to have somewhere that flips that study button on (possibly the uni library for you if/when it's available).

I did a distance learning Environmental Management HNC a couple of years ago, did a lot of my study/coursework at work after my working day was done. I found as my brain was still in work mode I was more productive.

Thanks. The 3 tutours held a little bit of an online question and answer session today, apparently we'll be able to interact in the sense of clicking emojis of different faces, and something which asks for things to go slower and to be able to ask a question, so it's somewhat interactive like an in person lecture is but not entirely, fortunately they'll be endlessly replayable.

I did a countryside management diploma which had one contact session a month for most of the day, and got into the habit of asking questions by email, and asking for things to be checked over to see if my work was on the right lines, that's a good idea about developing some kind of routine or order to things. I had the sense during my diploma that I wasn't allowed to fail, and that seemed to get me through. I plan on starting off like that and asking questions where I need to.

Hey Timmd.  What are you studying?  I'm really excited on your behalf.  

Not exactly the question you asked but in my experience mature students have a great amount going for them in terms of attitude, commitment, organisation and...uh...maturity.  You are there because you want to be there, not because it's the next stop on the education line.  You've made sacrifices in other parts of your life and have made a positive choice to be where you are and want to make the most of it and get your money's worth.

If a mature student can get over the initial academic hurdle of being back in full time education and get through the first year then they usually do really well, becoming respected and value members of the academic community, for instance taking roles in student staff liaison committees, getting paid research work over the summer that sort of thing.

However there are have challenges that your average undergraduate doesn't - financial or caring responsibilities.  If you encounter heavy weather of this kind then make sure you seek help from the staff sooner rather than later - they will give you good advice about your options, they want you to succeed.

My top piece of advice would be to find other mature students who are a couple of years further down the line to connect to who can mentor you a bit.  You are an eclectic and elite bunch and I am sure others who have trodden the same path will be very happy to share their wisdom and experience with you.  In an ideal world a university would have an academic staff member whose job it was to foster those kinds of connections but if your institution doesn't then ask someone if they can help you make those connections.

Good luck and enjoy it.  May try it myself one of these days : )

Edited to add - Oh and top lecture video tip- apparently the preferred speed to watch lectures back is 1 and 1/3rd or something!

I went to Sheffield Uni, failed and ended up on mental health sickness benefits for a decade. Hope it works out better for you buddy. 

I went back to uni as a mature student. Uni 3 days a week, working 2 days a week, kids, family etc.

What I learnt Is it’s amazing what you can fit in when you’re very organised. It became a way of life - to fit as much in as possible. COVID broke that habit and it was only then that I realised how tired my body/brain were. I’m not going back there. 
 

So don’t take too much on. Start slow. My biggest tip would be to make full use of the supportive services - study skills, essay writing, pastoral services etc etc. They are gold.

I never got to enjoy all the extras of uni life. I don’t mean beer. The societies and committees and enriching opportunities. I just couldn’t fit them in.

If it’s a subject you love then it’s such an amazing 3 years.
 

Most of all look after yourself and do what you need to do to enjoy it. 

Technically I was a muture student (23 at the start of the 1st year) when I was an undergrad for the second time (1st time lasted a year) & found I made friends with the postgrads as much as with my fellow undergrads - don't know about your university but many have a postgrad & mature student society/club which, if it exists, might be helpful.

As an aside, are you getting any field trips ?They were always good for an informal chat with staff.

You will almost certainly be able to view the lectures after the event, but I would encourage you to go at the time of delivery. The post lecture chat (Zoom and Teams) has been a distinct improvement over queuing at the front of a lecture theatre and is best done live!  COVID hasn’t been all bad for education, although it’s leaving the educators a bit frazzled 

I did an MSc as a mature student a couple of years ago. It was a brilliant experience, though I did find it intensely stressful and exhausting.

My main tip is to get some referencing software as early as possible and use it for your writing and for organising your reading/research. Otherwise you can find yourself wasting a lot of time trying to trawl back through your notes to figure out what you read that made point x, y or z that you now want to reference in your work. Endnote, Mendeley or Zotoro are the main ones - Endnote you have to pay for (though your uni may have a licence) but the other two are free. I use Zotoro because it has better note-making and organisational functions but ymmv. You can add a button to your browser that exports references and pdfs directly into the software when you're searching for and reading literature online and you can add a plug in to Word that lets you click to add references into your work and creates a bibliography at the end. And because they're all web-based as well as on your desktop you can access your library anywhere you have the internet. They basically make a lot of your academic life much easier!

My second tip is to try not to get too stressed out by things. Make sure you still give yourself time for sleep, exercise and stuff. I didn't really and found myself very close to being burned out at various times, though I have some pretty strong 'anxious over-achiever' personality traits so that doesn't help! Try to treat it like a job by having specific times for work/off work, though enjoy the flexibility of being able to organise your schedule around when you're most productive. And remember to enjoy the experience! It won't be the same at the moment with the restrictions but one of the things I loved was being in a cohort of bright people with similar interests to me, and being surrounded by a network of passionate academic staff who were always happy to chat. It's a wonderful environment!

another recomendation for Zotero, wish something similar had been around when I was a student - hate to think how many hours (days?) I've spent retyping references from one format to another. Worth noting that its possible to set up shared libraries if you are working on a project with others.

It's incredible, I can only imagine how tough it must be to write a dissertation, let alone a thesis, without having tools like Zotero.

It was a total lifesaver when I discovered, 20 minutes before the submission deadline, that I'd written one of my assignments using Harvard when the course notes stated it should be done using Nature-style citations. A quick click of a button and a few minutes reviewing the change was all it took, whereas if I'd been manually referencing there's no way it would've been in on time and I'd have lost 5 marks.

All spot on advice. 

My takeaways for the OP:

1. Never record a live lecture without permission
2. Most lecturers will post narrative slides beforehand
3. At the moment, it is likely all lectures in all institutions will be AV recorded for you to download on a device.
4. Do some wider reading, especially about topics you are interested in
5. Reading, reading and more reading! Learning about how academic texts are structured will help you to read more efficiently and think critically. But, most importantly, you need to read.
6. And writing! Taking notes is an important part of academic study.

Thanks for the tips, I think I actually did burn myself out in the past, which wasn't so handy at the time, but a learning curve in itself still. That's interesting about the referencing software, did you find that you basically have to reference everything which you wrote, which wasn't something you'd concluded yourself from looking at source material?

After teaching at Uni for 20 years, I'm now on the other side of the fence as an Undergrad student in a completely different field.

I can definitely concur with your comment to be there and make notes at the time. I'm a big fan of the Cornell notes system for me personally, and am using  it during/after classes. After having tried to encourage students to use it for many years, its nice to see a student actually using it ..

As with all these things, YMMV. or YKMMV if you are metric.

Have fun Tim, and hope you get everything you want out of it...

Thanks, at the most basic level I just want to tick the 'has a degree box' to go with my voluntary experience, and I get a year's work placement in the 3rd year before the final year, which is excellent. What is the Cornell notes system?

There are various explanations available if you google it. With all these paper based systems, such as bullet journals, I'd recommend you try them out a few times to see if you get on with them, and don't be afraid to make up your own hybrid system or notation symbols, rather than slavishly following 'the rules'.

I've started using a bullet journal for work to keep me organised, as I con't hold stuff in my head as well as I used to. Incorporating the Cornell method for meetings might work for me too.

At is heart Cornell is an attempt to get you to review and re-process any notes you make after the class where you took them originally .  The idea is that reprocessing and slightly deeper processing can lead to better memorisation. Just rereading is thought of as shallow processing and will not lead to as effective memorisation. 

You can also do other things to process information more deeply and help memory. E. G. Spider diagrams. 

As Ridge rightly says, have a look on YouTube and try other systems to process things more deeply and hence learn in more effectively. 

Yes, I did a lot of referencing! In fact, it was definitely a distinct step up from my undergrad, in which referencing was a much more cursory tick box exercise. I'd reference everything I used to build my arguments, often with multiple references if it was particularly crucial to the point I wanted to make. Obviously you don't need to reference the conclusions that you then draw from those data, though I lived in fear that I might accidentally think something was my own idea and then have it flagged for plagiarism when I submitted my work through the Turnitin software! My course was predominantly social science though, with only small amounts of actual science and the referencing requirements are quite different between the two. I definitely found I did a lot less referencing in my Climate Change Science and Terrestrial Biosphere modules than I did in, say, Environmental Policy & Governance, probably because there was so less subjectivity in the physical science modules at the level I was studying them.

Is it University of Sheffield?

All their Lectures/powerpoints were available online when I was there in 08-10 so I'd imagine they've upped their game since then regardless of COVID. 

All my Masters students got regular reminders about extensively revisiting their review in the discussions and conclusions sections in light of their results.

Software automatic plagiarism detectors, like Turnitin, spot copied text (even when the student tries to hide it by changing words),  it's almost impossible to generate that accidentally. Any decent piece of work will have a significant score due to references, standard definitions and useful quotes. My bigger concern in recent years was copied images and diagrams as students regularly forgot that is also plagiarism unless the source is acknowledged and referenced (and worse, most images have stronger legal protections)... some largescale modern sources have copyright free use of images if referenced (eg wikipedia).

In a PhD, where originality is vital, and there is a lot of work across the world on fashionable topics, similar work produced at the same time does happen but you can't fail someone for that where it's clear both parties were unaware.

Onto academics, I'd critisise their teaching if they deducted marks for using a different but appropriate standard referencing system (unless teaching specific systems of course!). I've heard too many academic appeals upheld on the subject that waste everyone's time. Another frustrating occasional idiocy is accusing a student of 'self plagiarism' where the appropriate standard rule is needing explicit permission to submit substantive similar work (from earlier submitted work).

Back to the OP, I'm convinced teaching works as well as it does because of interaction with the teacher otherwise we would have ditched the need for teachers long ago. Its a big worry of mine wrt covid changes. It's vital for any serious student to stay in regular contact and ask questions where something that looks important is unclear. Online teaching will only work well when it is blended with teacher interaction.

I logged into a question and answers Zoom session on Friday, and I found out that it's possible to ask questions during the lectures as they're live streamed, one can click a 'raised hand' emoji to get to ask a question, and click something else to ask for things to go more slowly. Once I start to get the bit between my teeth I can have to self regulate myself a little bit, in not bombarding my tutors with too many emails in a short time, and put more questions in fewer emails, sometimes one can email and then figure it out before a reply has come.

By undergrad do you mean when you were doing your degree? 

undergrad = first degree (BSc, BA, MA at some Scottish universities)

postgrad  = higher degrees (MSc, PhD, DPhil & others)

Thanks, yes there will be field trips BTW Doug, you're right to wonder about that, I've too found that informal chats can be good ways of finding things out, or networking potentially. 

I've just found a reading list approx ten books long, but they can't all be required to be read by the end of Tuesday I'm thinking. They're essential reading before the 1st seminar, but I'm figuring that's a different thing to a lecture - I can only read so much before then either way.

I realise that now but when I started my MSc I was shitting myself. Right at the start of term, in the first session during registration week, the academic integrity officer gave us a terrifying talk about how plagiarism can ruin your MSc and we all came out of it terrified of accidentally failing to cite something and getting booted off the course!

To be fair, the assignment was supposed to be a report in the style of a Nature paper and the instructions clearly stated the format and referencing system to use. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect MSc students to read and follow the instructions and to penalise them for not doing so. Though thinking back on it, I suspect I'd have lost fewer marks for submitting it on time using Harvard refs than submitting late (immediate 5 point deduction for being even a few minutes past the deadline) with the right referencing format.

It's a balance. Asking questions is good and to be encouraged but you won't enamour yourself to tutors if you bombard them. This is doubly true if it turns out the answers are in the module handbook already so make sure you read that first!

As Doug said, undergrad(uate) was doing my BA (a long time ago) and postgrad(uate) study was my MSc and now PhD. I was just highlighting that my recent experience was at MSc level, in which the requirements are somewhat higher than for an undergraduate degree, so some of what I've sad may not necessarily be applicable to your experience.

Depending on the lecturer, they may not expect you to read all the books on the list, just a reasonable selection. If you are doing environmental sciences its possible that you might have read some of them anyway - we had several New Naturalist books at various times & other classics such as Silent Spring, Sand country almanac, etc.

Worth remembering that (at least in the past when 2.1s were rare & 1sts were extremely rare (none in my year group, one in the year above) reading around the subject, especially in the relevant journals in the later part of the course, was often the difference between an average and a good student.

If it says do it in Harvard or whatever – just do it in that style. If you pick the style associated with the the Algerian Journal of Sand or something else expect to lose marks. These marks are easy pickings on most marking scheme rubrics. Interestingly undergraduates hardly ever complain about this, but part time postgraduates really object to getting citations correct.

It turns out I was having the kind of panic brought on by a lack of sleep and being new to something, there's a list of books marked 'essential', but he clarified it today as 'just pick one or two', so that's alright, I'll start there and see what else I can absorb.

Steve is right. If you submit to a journal or conference proceedings in the wrong format, don't expect the editor to be your friend. It could add 5-10 minutes per essay if someone used numbered Vancouver instead of author-date Harvard. 

After first year undergrad, and perhaps even at the tail end of that first year, it should be simply using a different setting in your citation tool. If your still doing it manually by then, you're doing it wrong.