Hey guys,

I’m Carina and I’m the Peer Mentor Officer this year at DBS. In addition to the numerous fun events, DBS also has lots of great resources for us as students, from Library Workshops, PAL Sessions, and SESU Tea and Talk Sessions, to simple guides, access to Kanopy, an academic version of Netflix, and even more! However, we noticed that a large portion of the students don’t know of the resources freely available, which is why we as the Education Team (with support from the Peer Mentor Team) have made it our goal to promote these FREE resources and make them even more available to you throughout the academic year. Read my story and experience in full below.

When I arrived in Dublin last September, just a week before the start of the academic year, I was really excited about starting college, but quite honestly also worried at first, since I was in a new country where I didn’t know anybody. I had to adjust to speaking a language that isn’t my first language, and of course all of the aspects related to being new to third-level education. Today, I will tell you about my experience with the library workshops, a resource that I started availing of pretty early on. They helped me get more relaxed about the academic side of college life.

While most workshops run throughout the whole academic year, I would highly suggest completing them within your first few weeks if possible, not only because assignments will start after reading week for most of us, which in turn means you’ll have less free time, but also because the workshops are a valuable step in making sure to be best prepared to start your assignments. I completed all workshops within my first three weeks, which helped me to better understand the assignments and the grading system and criteria, as well as having a plan on where to start and know which resources are available to make assignments easier and how to use them. Primarily, but not exclusively, international students or students who are new to third-level assignments/education should at least watch the pre-recorded workshops or read the guides and ideally complete the workshops.

Here is my Workshop Experience at DBS:

The Library Workshops I went to were mostly held by Trevor, and some were also held by Debora, who I can say from experience are both very friendly and helpful librarians who will do the best they can to help or assist you with your issue. There are also some guides, handouts, slides, and pre-recorded videos available for some of the workshops, which I will link in the following paragraphs.

Virtual Six Steps to Assignment Success

Handout ; Arts Slides ; Business Slides ;Pre-Recorded Video ; Guide

This is probably the first workshop I would suggest if you only attended one of them. It breaks the assignment writing process up into 6 simple steps.

1. Understanding the assignment

2. Getting organised

3. Conducting research

4. Taking and making notes

5. Planning the structure

6. Writing, referencing and proofreading

This workshop will explain the importance of understanding your assignment before starting it and will give helpful tips on how to ensure that you know what you’re asked to do. It will stress the importance of getting organised and introduce you to the Assignment Planner , another tool provided by the library, which gives you a timeline of which steps you should have completed when and will send you reminder emails, thus allowing you to be on top of your assignment planning. This workshop also taught me how to conduct proper, quick and easy and successful research and how to take effective notes during the process. It provides a plan on the structure and highlights its importance, not only for the readability but also for your mark. Finally, I’ve learned the different steps to writing an assignment after having prepared it, in order to make it as understandable and qualitative as possible.

Cite Right for Success (Arts)

 Video; Slides 

This is (in my opinion) the second most important workshop, as it provides the essentials for referencing in APA style, which is the referencing style used by art students in DBS. (The library also provides a referencing class for business students.) The class also includes a demonstration on how to install and use Zotero, which is a referencing management software. You’ll learn why referencing is necessary, what can happen if you reference incorrectly, how to reference correctly and thus easily save up to 10% of your mark, and will show you some examples. It’ll explain and demonstrate when and why to paraphrase, summarise and use a direct quote; and will also introduce you to the three step process of making sure that 10% are yours. At the end, you will also learn how to decide when to cite and when not to cite in regards to common knowledge. 

Virtual Zotero Workshop

Handout ; Video (at the bottom) 

This is a class introducing you to and demonstrating Zotero, which is a Referencing Management Software. You must have attended a reference class if you wish to attend the Zotero Workshop. For those who, too, have trouble downloading Softwares onto your laptop, the librarian starts with a demonstration on how to download it for both Windows and macOS, and will provide help if necessary. Then you will learn how to actually use Zotero by setting up a Chrome Connector, how to make it use the correct referencing style, how to use it to save your references, and how to use it to reference in word. Zotero is a great tool that helps you keep an overview of all of the sources you’ve used, puts them into an alphabetically ordered reference list, and by adding a tab into your word software, allows you to reference (whether in-text citations or reference list) quite easily with a quick mouse click. This is a safe and simple way to ensure to always have proper referencing by not forgetting sources and having them correctly. 

Using Urkund / Ourginal to Enhance Academic Writing

Ourginal, previously known as Urkund, is a tool that is used by DBS to check for plagiarism in your assignments. Luckily, we as students can use Ourginal to submit drafts, in order to prevent plagiarism and lose marks, or even risk academic impropriety. You’ll learn how to submit drafts to Urkund and how to read and use the Urkund report to make sure you don’t plagiarise. This is important knowledge, which you’ll very likely use for each of your assignments, since it’s a quick and easy way to avoid plagiarism and thus save marks. 

Virtual Preparing for Online Exams

Just like last year, this year's exams will be fully online, which means they're different from regular exams. This class will inform you about what you can expect from online exams in terms of layout and style, how to best prepare for them and some useful tips on acing both the preparation process and the actual exam, to achieve good grades. Despite being new to third-level education exams, I was so much more relaxed about exams after this class since I knew where to start, what to expect and what to keep in mind.

How is my Essay Marked?

Handout 

This workshop is more interactive than the others. You’ll kind of get into the role of the lecturer, by being given an essay and explaining what you find good or bad and why and then you’ll get to hear the librarian’s opinion as an expert. I find that this is a good way of showing the students what to look out for when writing your own essay, since we often look for different things when writing our own essay, vs. when reading someone else’s essay, forgetting that our grade will be decided by someone else reading our essay. You will also be provided a general checklist on the criteria essays are marked on, which will come in handy every time you write an essay.

Conclusions

All in all I am confident in saying that the workshops are almost essential to do good on your assignments and what makes them even better is that they’re free. I can assure you that what I’ve learned during the workshops was a great help in acing my assignments and I’ve used my workshop notes throughout the whole academic year. Even if you think you know everything, I’d still suggest going to the workshops, it will at the very least work as a refresher and give you a good start into the academic year. Most classes are only 45 minutes long, and they’re all not longer than 90 minutes. You can even use your free time during the upcoming reading week to complete the workshops before starting your assignments.

There’s so much more the library has to offer (I suggest taking 30 minutes out of your evening to get familiar with the library website and find out about all their resources - I mean, you do pay the full amount of fees, why not also avail of as many resources as you need?), here are a few of their other resources:

I hope you don’t miss your chance to be prepared to ace your assignments and wish you all the best.

Carina :)