Things to do in week 10

Things to do
While we have emphasised the routine structure of papers that report a systematic review, it is useful to skim read reviews that are unrelated to your topic, paying attention to structure, sequence and the logic of the analysis. In this respect the review by de Jager et al.1 is well worth a read.

The other thing to make sure of is that you have made a contribution to each of the weekly discussion themes on Slack. Remember that 20% of your assessment is based upon your contribution each week. You can check whether or not you have done so by looking at the channel entries for each week.

Weekly discussion
A good deal of academic work involves working with text, the written word. This week you are going to do something a little different. You are going to draw. Drawing as thinking is a well known practice. It frees you from the urge to work with words in sentences. You may already have been doing some drawing in your notebooks.

This is not about representing as an artist might, it is about exploring your ideas, sketching your analysis. So it can be as messy as your thinking is. You can use any medium you like. If you are at the stage of synthesising and analysing the themes you have identified in the published literature then that is what you ought to draw. Don't draw a mind map. Just sketch how you are thinking about the concepts/themes you have identified.

If you are not ready to do that, you should have the ideas for your introduction sorted. So they can be what you draw.

When you are happy with your drawing you can either scan it or photograph it and post it in the week 10 channel.

If you'd like to hear the case for doodling, which is what you will be doing, you may find Sunni Brown's short TED presentation well worth a watch.

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