The document provides instructions for students on starting work on their portfolio assessment. It discusses choosing a topic, conducting preliminary research, and creating a timeline to meet checkpoints. Students are asked to complete a library training, draft an initial work plan in a Google Doc with their topic and 4 sources by the end of the week, and submit 5 annotated sources by the end of week 4. The portfolio will involve independent research, drafting, and revision to create a final paper.

1. IFY Social Sciences – Semester 2 Week 2
Workshop I: Starting to work on your
portfolio

2. Effective from September 2015 | Name of PPT or Course here
Today’s lecture
This lecture will cover Assessment 2 – Portfolio:
• Instructions and marking criteria
• Independent research
• Planning how you will work throughout the semester
• How we will support you (+checkpoints)
• First steps

3. Exploring the assessment
At home, you were asked to read the instructions for Summative Assessment 2: Portfolio.
What can you tell us about it?
 What does it include?
 When is it due? How is it submitted?
 What weight does it carry from the total mark of the module?
 Are there any special requirements?
 How is it assessed?

4. The task
Let’s read this
closely together!

5. Independent research
The assessment requires to conduct ‘independent research’ –
What might that mean?
• Who is doing it?
• How?
• Why is this needed?
• What is that based on?

6. Independent research
• Conducting your own research
is a skill that you will need in
your studies, work and further
in life.
• Finding and evaluating
information is particularly
essential to your success.
• ‘Trial and error’ is a good way to
learn and improve!
• As an international student,
reading and writing in English is
key to improving your
vocabulary, speed and
confidence.
Finding
information
Sifting what is
relevant and
valid
Summarising
Evaluating
Deciding how
to use it
What is
missing?

7. Secondary research process
UNDERSTAND
YOUR
QUESTION
CREATE A
SEARCH PLAN
REVIEW
RESULTS
CREATE A
LITERATURE
REVIEW
REVIEW AND
REVISE

8. Secondary research process
Find
sources
•Read briefly
•Make initial
notes
•Use what
you found
to find other
texts
•Decide what
not to use!
Evaluate
•Reading in
detail
•Making
notes
•Thinking
about it
•Drafting
own ideas
about the
findings
/arguments
•Finding
more info.
•Many texts
will not be
relevant!
Organise
•Group into
themes.
•Think about
how to
connect
them: trying
different
things.
•Decide on
order (for
now)
•Search for
more, or
read again.
Draft
•Drafting one
segment at
a time
•Ordering
•Connecting
them to
create a
logic.
•Reordering?
•Might need
to go back
go previous
stages…
Make
coherent
•Describe the
whole text.
•Drafting
introduction
and
conclusion
•Read and
revise, as
many times
as you
need!

9. Planning your work
• To have enough time for each stage, you must plan your semester very carefully.
• A useful way to plan your time is by ‘reverse engineering’ the complete product.
For example (these times are up to you to decide).
• We know that the submission is by Week 12.
• You probably want to leave 1 week for revising it? That means that the full draft needs to be
ready by week 11. Alternatively, if you think that you will need more time, or have a lot of
work on other modules (or on the second text of the portfolio), you might want to decide to
have the draft ready by the week before? Make yourself a deadline, and note it in your plan
and calendars.
• Then, think: how much time do you need for the earlier stage (organising)? Again, note the
deadline you created.
• Repeat this with all earlier stages, until you have your own timeline plan.
• Finally, monitor your progress regularly!
Find
sources
Evaluate Organise Draft
Make
coherent

10. Planning your work
• To help you in the process, we will work with you on your first essay, but you
will need to repeat the planning stage for the second essay (once the topic is
revealed in week 8).
• For Essay 1, we will enforce the following timeline:
Find
sources
Evaluate Organise Draft
Make
coherent
Minimum progression Deadline
• Topic + Writing plan + 4 potential sources By end of week 2
• Submit 5 annotated items Formative 1: End of week 4
• Grouped 5-10 revised annotated notes Before week 8
• Introduction, structure and 1 main-body paragraph Formative 2: end of week 10
• Final submission End of week 12

11. Starting to work
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11
How to start?
First, you will need to choose a
topic. Rather than randomly, it
would be better to consider:
1. Which question seems more
interesting to you, or will be
useful for your studies later in
the university?
2. On which topic you might have
more to say (your own original
analysis and ideas).
3. On which topic you can find
more information that you think
might be useful for answering
the question?

12. Starting to work
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• To see if you can find information, or if it is interesting to you, you
will need to conduct a preliminary research, and look at a few
sources in a shallow way (e.g. read the abstract), to try and guess if
this topic will be both doable and interesting.
• To avoid having to read everything later again, make notes to
yourself as you read, highlighting things you think you might need
later, or that you not want to forget.

13. At home 1: Before the seminar
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1. Complete the training by the
University of Sheffield Library service
(if you haven’t already)
2. Think of keywords and try to find
relevant texts. Bring the keywords to
class, to share with others.
3. Try to narrow the search to peer-
reviewed text from the last 20 years.
4. Bring 1 source for each topic to
class.
5. Make a list of things that were
difficult, and things that you
managed to do.

14. At home 2: By the end of the week
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1. Create a new folder on your University of Sheffield
Google Drive, and name it ‘Portfolio.’
2. Right click the new folder and Share it with your
tutor.
3. Create a new Google Doc in that folder, and name it
‘Checkpoint 1’.
4. By the end of this week, this document must include:
a) Your topic of choice.
b) A week-by-week plan for meeting the deadlines.
c) A list 4 items for the topic (using APA) you have
chosen.
5. Where possible, please also upload to that folder the
reading items themselves (or links to them). You can
also put in that folder anything else you would like to
share with us.

15. At home 3: Planning ahead
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• By the end of week 4 you will need to submit Formative Assessment 3,
which includes:
• Your topic and reasons for choosing it;
• Your plan for meeting all the deadlines of essay 1;
• 5 annotated, relevant items you choose for the topic (using APA referencing).
• If you want to start getting ‘ahead of the game’ you can try to ‘reverse
engineer’ this deadline task, and make a your more-detailed study plan.

16. Conclusion
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Today we looked at:
1. The Portfolio assessment instructions;
2. The questions;
3. The importance of independent research;
4. The process and stages of secondary
research;
5. The plan and deadlines for Essay 1
development;
6. Making the first stages of research:
Conducting a preliminary research and
drafting a work plan.
7. What you need to do by:
a. Tomorrow (library training)
b. This weekend (Google document)
c. The end of week 4 (Formative assessment 1).