You may need to read to extend your understanding of material covered in your
Learning Guides or during a Residential School (if applicable). This may include reading to fill
in some gaps in your knowledge, or to clarify various points. With this type
of reading you'll have quite specific questions in mind before you start. Keep
returning to these as you read.
Example
You may be doing a course on Wildlife Care and
Husbandry and realize
at the end of the study module that you are unclear about the new artificial
reproductive technique of cross fostering. To fill in these gaps in your
knowledge you could, for example, consult an article which examines this
technique as a means of increasing the breeding rate of brush-tailed
rock wallabies. You could then use the reference list at the end of the
article to extend your knowledge about this technique even further.
Questions you may ask yourself while reading include:
What sort of success rate has there been
with this new technique?
Has it been applied to any other species?
Are the results convincing?
How does this compare to the success rates
of other forms of artificial reproductive techniques used for captive species?
! A word of caution
The explosion of information now available with the development of the world
wide web has been fantastic. However, students need to be aware that they have
to be highly critical of this material if they intend to use it for academic
purposes. This is for the simple reason that anyone can post anything they
want on the web. In comparison, books and journals are usually peer reviewed.
When it comes to information on the web (and all information for that matter),
the most sensible approach is to adopt a critical attitude to what you read
and consult as wide a variety of sources as possible. That way you're more
likely to come in contact with a range of information and opinions.
As you can see from the above examples, reading at university does mean that
you'll need to go over a lot of material more than once. This is not
only because academic reading and writing can be complex, but also because
you need to immerse yourself in the material. This will involve tracing what
at times is conflicting evidence, as well as trying to understand many different opinions. All academic reading requires that you
concentrate deeply, follow the lines of an argument, and continually
ask yourself whether the evidence is sound and the arguments presented are
plausible.
This is not to say that academic reading can't be enjoyable, indeed it should
be. Your enjoyment should also increase with the confidence you gain from being
introduced to, and gradually understanding, new knowledge.
Useful links in this kit
Topic analysis
Note taking
Avoiding plagiarism
