ONLINE ASSISTANCE FOR BUSINESS STUDIES DEPARTMENT

The English Language Centre and the Business Studies Department recently organised training on creating research material that abides with the regulations for online research, avoiding plagiarism and ensuring information consulted is appropriately referenced. The course was delivered by Mr Andries Oberholzer, a lecturer from the ELC, UTAS Ibri. 

The online session took place on Thursday, 5 November 2020 and was attended by a number of students as well as lecturers from the Business Studies Department. Due to the need to elaborate further on the training provided, it was decided that future demonstrations would be made available to students as pre-recorded video. The topics to be covered are: 

• Paraphrasing content taken from online sources or books so that the message of the original writer is maintained, but is rewritten in the student’s own words;
• Exercises in paraphrasing, based on the Level 4 Project and Presentation course, were covered to explain to students how to take text and rephrase it using a number of methods, such as using synonyms; changing from the first to the third person; changing from direct to reported speech; and changing the word order in sentences.

After this, the next phase is to demonstrate to students how proper referencing is done in MS Word, using its built-in functionality. The Harvard referencing style is used, and students are shown step by step how to insert a reference based on the type of source (online article, journal, book, and so on). The inserted citation is then automatically converted to a bibliography list. To date, five recordings have been made and are ready to be made available to students.

Overall, training of this type is vital so that we can move away from a manual system of compiling information and rely on technology to assist and perform mundane tasks for us. This reduces human errors and allows work done by students to conform with international standards.