This month I find myself approaching the day that every uni student must face: dissertation deadline day. As I (hastily) type, calculate, plot and reference my way to a finished final year report, I’ve been thinking a lot about how my assignment writing skills have developed during my time at uni. At first. writing university-style work felt a world away from any style of coursework I’d completed before, and I found it difficult to know where to start. However, the assignment styles at university are more familiar than you might think, and like most things, they’re a matter of practice. After a few nervous deadlines I quickly learned what was expected of me and where to focus my time effectively, so today I’d like to talk about the best way to tackle engineering assignments.
In materials engineering, you will generally face at least one major assignment per lecture module you study. They come in three main types: literature reviews, lab reports and tutorial sheets. You may have come across all of these already, but the format you will probably be most familiar with is the tutorial sheet, i.e. a list of problems for you to complete, with questions similar in style to an exam. Tutorial sheets, like exams, are generally designed to test how well you know the lecture content, so with these assignments the best thing is to start with the lecture slides and go from there. This is also a great chance to read those recommended texts your lecturer mentioned on day one: they put them there for a reason, so get to the library!
Another format you may also be familiar with is lab reports, which are exactly what they say on the tin. The key with lab reports is to ensure you take good notes during the lab – what you did, what equipment you used, what went wrong, and of course the lab results themselves. If something doesn’t make sense or your data comes back funky, don’t be afraid to ask lab demonstrators loads of questions, and then write that down too. That way when it comes to writing up you have all the tools you need to document the lab thoroughly.
Last is the format that was entirely new to me when I came to university: the literature review. A lit review is a review of the current “state of knowledge” of a topic. In the process of writing one you will read several papers on a topic, sum up the research efforts that have been made so far in that topic, and then review where there are any gaps or inconsistencies in the knowledge. The best way to get to grips with lit reviews is to read existing ones, so try asking academics if they can recommend any to you. The bulk of the work comes with reading papers, which is also something that takes a lot of practice – a good place to start is by reading abstracts, but remember that they are written very concisely, so don’t be put off by too much technical jargon. Once you’ve found some good papers, read their conclusions first, followed by the rest of the article, to help you decide what should be included in your review. Don’t be afraid to cut out any papers that aren’t relevant to your specific review, even if you’ve spent ages reading them!
Those are my top strategies for completing coursework at university. Like all things, assignments get easier over time, and then before you know it, you’re completing your final year dissertation! Speaking of which, I really need to get back to writing this report… wish me luck!