Academic Writing Blog

Access Courses: What are they?

Access courses are similar to bridging or pathways courses in that they offer a qualification that prepares students for tertiary education. Often access courses are most appealing to mature students, although the minimum age to be able to study for an access diploma will vary from place to place. Some access courses require a student to have been out of school for at least two years even if they are an adult.

Distance Learning Courses & the Importance of Backup

Distance learning courses are naturally dependent on the internet. If the internet goes down for whatever reason, it’s an inconvenience for many. For others, like students of distance learning courses, it is the very real possibility that assignments are late, work is unsubmitted or the integrity of the data going either way is possibly jeopardized.

Coping with Dissertation Proposal Anxiety

Arguing for a dissertation proposal may well be the scariest thing you ever have to do in your academic career. It may help to have strategies for how to cope with stress and fear while writing the proposal. If you have to present to a dissertation committee having some coping strategies becomes even more critical.

Research Papers

Research papers are all about original research so remembering that is key to creating killer content that profs will love. Many students struggle with the question of how to create original research from data that has already been researched and reviewed. It is a good question. The trick is to remember that by researching as comprehensively as possible one will naturally find unanswered questions or unexplored areas in a field of relevance to your research paper. These unanswered or unexplored questions are the gold nuggets of research. They are the areas in which the student can dig deeply to find information, statistics or case studies that show the research paper topic in a new or interesting light before unknown or unnoticed.

Online College Courses

An interesting thing about online college courses is the definition of college. This can make an investigation of possible online college courses confusing and occasionally can mislead the reader. The internet is a wonderful thing but it can also create confusion where the same word, like college, means something different around the world. College does mean education wherever you may browse in the English-speaking world but you may be surprised to find, when searching for online college courses, that you may be returning to high school if that course happens to be based in Australia.

Top 5 Postgraduate Courses

So you’ve finished you undergraduate work and it’s time to get serious about deciding which postgraduate course will steer the direction of the rest of your life. It may help you to know what everyone else is doing. The top 5 postgraduate courses based on popularity and future earning potential are:

Case Studies

Case studies are for many of us the most fun we can have with education. That is in large part undoubtedly due to the happy fact that case studies pull us off our bums and into offices, zoos, hospitals, jungles or wherever else our particular brand of research may take us. Not sure this is true? Check out these crazy cases studies from the British Psychological Society:

Definition of Essay

While on first sight the definition of the term essay seems fairly obvious and self-explanatory, once a student reaches tertiary level education the term can actually become quite confusing. At this level there are multiple uses of the term essay and each type carries a differing set of expectations. By far the greatest difference between different types of essays is the type of prose and presentation the teacher or professor will be looking for in the content. By style, we mean of course, the tone of the prose.

Descriptive Essay

Finely formed words that illuminate and inform are the foundation of the delightful descriptive essay. Seriously, that is a bit over the top but it is true that the descriptive essay wants more creative prose than other kinds of essays. The nature of the descriptive essay lends itself to essays about experience or case study rather than pure fact. As such successful descriptive essays frequently center on themes of personal drama or growth or a cathartic event.

TAFE NSW Courses

Leading the world in vocational education TAFE NSW are the pioneers in the field. The TAFE system was founded in Australia in the region of New South Wales (NSW) and since that time Australia has been leading the world in this innovative teaching system. This system works remarkably well with international students.