Approaching assignments at university

University assignments come in many forms, from essays and reports to delivering presentations. Watch the video to hear from students sharing their experiences of presenting their university work.

Transcript

How do you approach assignments at university?

My approach to written work at university is just plan everything before you do it. I think the biggest mistake I made is I just jumped into things, and I think that can also be really daunting because it makes you want to put it off and put it off because there's like 3,000 words maybe to do.

So, I think the important thing is to chunk it. And then once you've done that, you realise it's actually not that big or it's actually not that different from what you're used to doing.

I definitely do use mind maps. I think it's a useful way to kind of brainstorm ideas and, plan what you want to write.

And sometimes a group of us just sit down and we talk about what we want to write, and it's really helpful.

So, usually I would go about writing the question out, breaking down each word, finding out what it means, and many different meanings within the text I've read or just in general. I like to do that quite a lot. And then what I would normally do also is I'll pick apart the question and then maybe talk to my lecturer about “what do you want from me? What are your thoughts about this question?”

And that way you get from the person marking it or for the people releasing the question what they think, what they want. And that's a really good thing, I think as well about university is directing the work to someone and making sure it works for them, as you would do in later life.

For my degree in Neuroscience, we use scientific reports to summarise what we've studied. So, through our specific lab study, it's a way to present our results.

With my written work I have a mix of exams and assignments. So, with exams is it's about making sure that you're staying on top of all of that reading, because it kind of cumulates to one moment where you just kind of write.

Whereas with assignments, I have a lot more flexibility to plan my schedule a little bit more so I can revolve around other social activities and things like that. And I can plan a couple of hours a week and then it will eventually get done.