Learning about research and information from the Covid-19 pandemic. No.2. The most current information is found online.

For the most current and up-to-date information, look online.

While books and journals are useful and valuable for background reading, they are not the best resources for keeping up to date where new discoveries are being made and communicated everyday as is the case with the fight against the Covid-19 virus.

The last few weeks have seen universities and research institutes create new websites, twitter feeds and blogs to help share information as quickly as possible so others working on the virus can benefit from what they have learned. Together by sharing information they hope to build on each other's research and create tests, treatments and vaccines as quickly as possible. They can also be share the information quickly globally. An example of  scientists and academics from different institutions working together in the UK is the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium. 

The Cambridge Fighting COVID website is sharing information through a weekly update (via zoom and then the recording is made available afterwards). It may be considered by some to be raw and unpolished communication in this form (it is not edited with revisions like a book) but it is current, useful and credible (i.e. provided by the scientists and researchers themselves).

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
https://pixabay.com/illustrations/covid-19-virus-coronavirus-pandemic-4922384/

How does this apply to student research?

When researching a topic for an assignment, even if you use books and journal articles, it is always useful to refer to the most up to date developments too. Look online for trustworthy websites and social media.

In order to keep up to date whilst pulling together resources for your research, you may want to consider:-

• following key twitter feeds, blogs or Instagram accounts etc. 
• setting up alerts in library/ LRC databases so you are emailed when something new appears in the database on your chosen topic. 
• setting up saved searches you can re- run at intervals to pick up anything new.
  In order to do the last 2 options, you will usually need to set up an account within the database (this may be a further step to your OpenAthens login).

For recent events, newspaper articles and reputable news websites will be the best place to look. Websites like the BBC will even have some analysis on how things are understood at the time as events unfold but be aware time may prove that analysis to be wrong. (A historian would find this useful in itself as evidence of how people were interpreting the events at the time).

Over time more and more research on Covid-19 will probably be published formally in journals and books by the experts involved but I suspect at the moment there isn't time!

Time Management

Introducing Time management

At the latest Staff Student Liaison Committee some of the student reps requested some help with time management. This is a life skill relevant to everyone whatever their role. We all seem so busy and have trouble fitting everything in to our week. We've put together some tips and resources you might find useful.


First of all how about finding out how good you are at managing your time using this short quiz? This will help you reflect on how/ whether you manage your time.

Tips and online resources

Plan your week - work out how you typically use your time in a standard week using ARU's weekly time tracker. You can then also use their weekly and termly planners (go to the bottom of the webpage) to plan ahead. See also their time management guide on the Getting Organised page of their Study Skills Plus section.


List your activities - there can be a satisfaction in listing jobs and ticking them off. In an ideal world you do your thinking and planning now and then next week you just do what you've scheduled (or at least you don't spend so much time thinking about what you should be doing). In your time tracker you will have identified how much time is needed for which activity so you can spread your activities out over a week realistically in your planner.


Prioritise your activities/ tasks -Identify which tasks are urgent, which are important, which are optional and which aren't important. If something is difficult (perhaps you just don't want to do it) or needs more attention, allocate time when you are freshest or have the most energy not when you are likely to be tired. See Skills you Need's Priority Matrix.


Don't procrastinate or get distracted - go to the labels on the right and choose study skills and you should find a post we did on procrastination in June 2017. Turn your phone off, work somewhere where there aren't things around to distract you (you may find working in the LRC may be a suitable environment for you to work in with less distractions).

Other resources

The Learn Higher website has various short activities you can do to help with time management.


If you prefer watching videos to learn see the BBC Skillswise video on time management.

Alternatively, you may find this video useful:

There are various TED talks you can watch too of course (but do you have the time?).

Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and we are launching our new guide to mental health resources in the LRC. In this, we highlight some of our books on topics such as anxiety, confidence and self-esteem, depression, eating disorders and stress which may be of help. We also recommend a list of moodboosting books and some titles about mindfulness. See a quick preview below.

If you would like a copy of the leaflet, please come in to the LRC and pick one up. We will also make this available on our moodle pages as a pdf.

Mental Health Awareness Week display (with new guide)
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

Some organisations with useful resources

BBC3's Things not to say to someone with depression video features young people who suffer with depression talking about responses they don't find helpful.
Rethink.org (Rethink Mental Illness charity) has a student toolkit to help young people look after their mental health.
Student Minds is a mental health charity for University students and has it's own blog.
Mindfulness for Students may be useful for those of you wanting to find out more about this technique to help with stress and building resilience.
Mind is a mental health charity for all ages with lots of online support and advice. You can read stories and experiences here of people who have battled with mental illness and what has helped them.

Finally for those of you studying mental health as part of your course, our e-resource Issues Online (available from our electronic resources page using your network login details) has a range of e-books and articles on issues such as self harm and suicide, body confidence, anxiety and stress and understanding depression.

Exam stress and Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week - Stress: are we coping?

Next week is Mental Health Awareness Week and as part of this the LRC will be hosting a meditation session on Tuesday 15th May. There are limited spaces so it is on a first come first served basis.

Stress and Exams

It's that time of year again and for many students doing exams it can be a difficult and stressful time. While stress can't be avoided, there are things we can all do to help manage our stress. Here are some resources available on the internet from reputable organisations which might be of help.

Teenmentalhealth.org has a useful factsheet on stress generally. It explains that

• stress isn't the same as anxiety, 
• most stress isn't bad for you (whilst avoiding it may well be) and
• the key to managing it is to learn how best to deal with it.

It explains that you can change how your body feels by

• changing how you think about your stressful experience
• focusing on the problem and thinking of solutions
• using proven techniques to reduce your body's stress response

Online Resources

Student Minds - the student mental health charity - has five main themes to help with exam stress. 

The BBC website has plenty of advice here and here.

The Student Room gives some practical tips.

Have a look at this light-hearted page on how NOT to cope with exam stress.
If you are a lecturer you may find this newspaper article from the Guardian 2 years ago useful, but the links at the bottom of the article do not lead anywhere.

If you want to try some different ways to revise to make it more enjoyable, have a look at our blog entry 4 weeks ago or click on the revision label on the right hand side of the screen.

Stress: are we coping? book display in the LRC
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

Health and Safety at Work and finding trustworthy organisation websites

World Day for Safety and Health at Work

On the 28th April, it is World Day for Safety and Health at Work so we thought we would take a look at resources which may help when learning about health and safety. It is something which affects the workplace but is also relevant to the home, for example.

Most  (if not all) vocational courses at College cover this topic and everyone who works needs to know about it. You may even be asked about it in an interview. Health and Safety covers anything from use of computers and manual handling to fire safety to working with chemicals, food or specific tools.

Finding quality websites on health and safety

When using the internet to help with research, it is best to concentrate on information from trusted organisations. For example:

Government departments - identify these by the .gov at the end of the URL e.g. www.hse.gov.uk is the Health and Safety Executive website and www.food.gov deals with food hygiene. The Health and Safety Act  itself (plus other legislation) can be found at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37 .

Charities and other trusted organisations - identify these by the .org at the end of the URL e.g. e.g. http://www.safetygroupsuk.org.uk (Safety Groups UK - a  charity that promotes health and safety).
You may find a .com website useful like The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (https://www.rospa.com/) but as a rule you need to treat these sites with care as anyone can set up a .co.uk or .com website whereas organisations and government departments can only register to use the .org and .gov websites.

Hospitals and NHS websites - identify these by the .nhs.uk at the end of the URL. The NHS patient safety website has all sorts of interesting information for those of you working in/ studying Health and Social Care particularly.

Academic websites, identified by the .ac.uk web extension, can also be trusted but perhaps not so relevant here. The College's moodle site (including your course page) has .ac.uk at the end of the main URL and includes information and resources created by your Lecturers.

If you are not sure, take a look at the About Us section of the website (if there isn't one, think twice about using it). Who are they? Who writes the website? What is their experience/ qualifications?

Google tip: To restrict your search to just government websites, for example, use site:.gov.uk in your search (Others would be site:.nhs.uk or site.ac.uk or site:.org.uk). You can also do this site:.uk to just find UK sites - something that is very important with anything to do with legislation. Other countries do not have the same standards and laws for health and safety as the UK although much may be the same.

Other online resources

The Health and Safety Executive website has a list of the ten worst Health and Safety myths. They also have a collection of videos on their website and a related YouTube channel. These include case studies and examples where health and safety has gone wrong.

They also have an e-learning package Slips and Trips which is free to use.

The Jisc Hairdressing Training resource (available from our Electronic Resources page on Moodle) has an activity where hairdressing students can test their knowledge of Health and Safety when blow-drying hair. It includes particular hazards in a salon environment like turning heating tongs off and not leaving them unattended, safety with perm solutions and keeping the salon clean.

Use Infotrac to find examples in the news or in magazines which demonstrate what happens if health and safety good practice isn't followed or where accidents have happened.

Remember also, that we have books too. The general books are at 363.11 with other subjects having specialised books in their own areas (e.g. construction 692.9 or 624.0684).

Finding different ways to revise

Finding different ways to revise for exams

It's that time of year again with lots of students both at PRC and UCP doing exams in the near future.

Over Easter one expert reported that students should have been revising for 7 hours a day during the holidays. If this is something you didn't do (and not everyone agrees that this is wise), don't despair, concentrate on what you can achieve from now on and work hard. However, it doesn't have to be boring.

Here are 3 tips from the websites mentioned later in the blog.

• Break your revision up in to manageable chunks and plan a timetable.
• Find different ways to revise - use flash cards or mind maps, watch a video or make up useful mnemonics etc
• It is important to revise actively - this means concentrating and focusing. Creating your own resources like flash cards or mind maps, for example, will involve your brain and force you to think about what you are revising and therefore be more effective than staring at words on a page.

The student room website has lots of advice and tools which you can use to help you revise. Just creating them may be a different way to revise initially. You can also access resources already created by other students (but you may want to be sure they are correct first).

For example, create your own revision timetable.
Create your own flashcards.
Create mindmaps.
Create your own crosswords and quizzes.

The site also provides revision tips and tools for university students including a Uni revision app.

You will need to sign up to use the resources but the tools are free to use otherwise.

Have a look at the following TEDx talk about  how using drawing can help you remember more - even if you don't think you can draw.

The BBC website also has lots of  revision  advice and resources (e.g. how to remain motivated). These are aimed at GCSE and A level but the principles remain the same. They also have a revision app.

Electronic resources provide revision activities.

If you are a Health and Social Care student or Hair and Beauty student, there are quizzes and videos as part of the online resources available from our Electronic Resources page. Primal also has quizzes and case studies if you need to remember human anatomy for your exams.

Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green

Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green event

This week the LRC had a stand at the College's second Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green this year. This time we went green with planters and piggy banks made out of old plastic bottles. Thank you to everyone who donated these and the seeds we planted.

LRC's Be Healthy Stay Safe Be Green stand
Photo: Peterborough Regional College

We also had a tree of encouragement. On the leaves were written some words of encouragement. Students were asked to take one from the tree and replace with a leaf of their own (with their encouraging words). This proved a popular idea with students.

Some of the words left on the tree at the end were:

• Spring is just around the corner.
• You need to be in the darkness to see the stars
• If everything goes not right, go left!
• Never give up!
• Get a goal in life and never let it go until you have achieved it.
• Today is a good day to smile.
• Keep trying your best.
• Always stay positive, fight the demons.

Trusting Health Information on the Internet

BBC's Trust Me I'm a Doctor recently did some features on using the internet to find health information and whether we should trust health apps. The links are here if you want to find out more.

Can you trust any of the health information found online?

Do the health apps on your phone really work?

Why are health headlines so confusing and how can you know which to trust?

National Student Money Week

National Student Money Week

This week is National Student Money Week and the theme chosen by the National Association of Student Money Advisers  this year is "Where I live". Their website has a selection of resources  to help students manage their rent and bills.

These include a cost of rent calculator which is an Excel spreadsheet which helps you to budget for rent and bills and a video on understanding your energy bills.

Budgeting

Budgeting is a skills everyone needs to understand and most of us have to do it ourselves. See the video below from the Money Charity on making a budget and using it to manage your money.

Other websites which you may useful (but note some take payment from advertising) are

The Money Saving Expert website student guide

Save the Student website was started by a student and has been developed as a student money guide since he left.

The Money Charity has a student guide which you can download for free (or pay to order).

Nationwide (other Building Societies are available and we are not giving Nationwide any endorsement by linking to this!) has an educational game for 16+ based on a spy mission which aims to teach about finance - interesting as an e-learning tool if nothing else. They also have other budgeting games for younger ages. ESOL or Inclusive learning students may find these useful (eg. shopping to a shopping list within a budget).

18th January - Thesaurus Day

Thesaurus Day (18th January 2018)

This week we look briefly at how a thesaurus can help you in your college work and show you where to find one.

What is a thesaurus?

Oxford Dictionaries define a thesaurus as a book that lists words in groups of synonyms and related concepts.

The most famous thesaurus is probably Roget's Thesaurus.

A thesaurus will help you find words that mean the same (synonyms) or similar as a particular word. (You may also find opposites). This can help when you are trying not to repeat the same word in a sentence, an essay or presentation and you want a different word to make the sentence read better.

A thesaurus will help you with similar keywords when using a search engine or looking for information in a library catalogue or online resource. (In this example "look for" would be found alongside "search").

A thesaurus can help you build your vocabulary as it will teach you new words, but in this case it is best to look at examples of how the word is used in sentences and to check a dictionary definition first before you use it (see pitfalls below).

How to use a thesaurus

If using a printed thesaurus, you need to find the word for which you want alternatives at the back of the book first (a sort of index). This gives you a page number where you find the group of similar and related words. The LRC has some thesauri at shelfmark 424.

The LRC provides access to the Oxford Paperback Thesaurus (4th edition) as part of it's subscription to Oxford Reference Online (a collection of online specialist Dictionaries). You will need to log in with your network login and password and search for the thesaurus. Then use the box on the left hand side to search for the word within the publication or alternatively use the letters A- Z across the screen to navigate. LRC staff can also help you.

Microsoft Word also has a built in thesaurus feature which may be useful (but is not extensive). Just right click on the word for which you want an alternative and select "synonyms" to see a list of possible words.

A free online thesaurus you can trust is
Collins Thesaurus  (www.roget.org does not appear to be the genuine publication online!).

The pifalls of using a thesaurus

There can be problems with using alternative words from a thesaurus especially if they are words you have not heard of before. Some words have more than one meaning and you need to make sure you use the right one.
The video below explains (albeit simply) the layout of a thesaurus entry and how to use it wisely and make sure you choose the right words.

Evaluating information - celebrity endorsements and advertising

Evaluating information

In the LRC we are always keen to encourage students (and staff) to be careful when using the internet for finding information. We want everyone to look critically at the information they find before deciding whether it can be used as a source for an assignment.

Advertising and celebrity endorsements

Be aware of websites - especially company websites - which are selling something. If hairdressing and beauty students are looking for information on the human skin, for example, they may find plenty of websites from companies selling skin products which also have pages explaining how the skin works. Much of this information may be correct and they may have consulted with dermatologists but they will probably have paid them to give information that helps sell their product (and perhaps leave out other information), for example. We would recommend using our Primal anatomy online resource, for example, as an alternative.

With the royal engagement this week, some magazines are talking about Meghan Markle the brand and what products she uses. Companies search for high profile people to say they use their products as this can make a lot of difference. Do you look at a celebrity social media account, for example, and decide a product must be good if favourite celebrity uses it?This is called influencer marketing and can be very subtle. Companies can even dress adverts up as news stories. See the South Park video below for a humorous take on this.

 However, Celebrity endorsements do not mean that the products are necessarily the best and the Advertising Standards Authority have ruled that it is now illegal for a celebrity to endorse a product without indicating this in any posts they make on social media.

Listen to a BBC podcast here about why you cannot always trust adverts online.

How do I know if what I read online is an advert?

All celebrity social media accounts (twitter, vlogs, blogs etc) must now by law indicate whether any content is a result of a commercial relationship - i.e. the celebrity is being paid to endorse a product by the company which makes it (i.e. there is a commercial relationship). You will also notice that Google indicates where it's results (usually first in the list) are adverts - so you know they have been paid to put these results first rather than that they are necessarily most relevant to your search. So, think twice where there is #ad  or #adfeature in an online post or website and avoid using the content in an assignment. Smilarly you might also notice the phrases "sponsored content" or "ad or promotion". Avoid this content and instead look for information from recognised organisations (charities, government departments, authorities, associations) or academic institutions. Look for the About link to find out about the organisation/ person behind the website.

The Advertising Standards Authority have more information on this on their website.
Have a look at their advice on identifying when something is an advert.
If you are a marketing student, you may like to read about the Oreo lick race case which led to this standard being introduced or even better read the article through our Infotrac resource.

Fake Social Media and How will you vote in the General Election?

Fake social media

In this blog, we have covered the topic of being aware of fake news and fake social media several times and this week this has never been more relevant. As the events of Monday night in Manchester unfolded, the internet was flooded with false reports of missing children and photos of the scene. This only added confusion to the whole situation and was not helpful to anyone.

This should prove a warning to us all not to trust everything we read and to think twice about sharing something we cannot be sure is true.

For more information read http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/05/23/manchester-attack-social-media-trolls-spread-fake-posts-missing/

General Election and how will you vote?

Polling Station at Glinton Village Hall by Paul Bryan reproduced under Creative Commons licence CC BY-SA 2.0
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5377045

Whilst the political parties have taken a break over the last few days out of respect for the victims of the Manchester attack, canvassing is slowly starting again ready for the election on the 8th June 2017. If you are 18 you can vote - but only if you have registered to do so. The deadline for doing so is now past but for future reference you can register on the Peterborough City Council website.

So, how will you vote? The Times Educational Supplement (we subscribe to this in Library+) ran an article last week about how important it is for young people to vote. They write that at the Brexit decision, if 16 and 17 year olds had been able to vote, there would have been a different result. Many of those young people are now old enough to vote and can make a difference.

So, how do you decide what to vote? The Complete University Guide has information aimed at students. 

Also you may like to try an online quiz which takes you through the main issues asking you to choose your viewpoint and then at the end it tells you which party you match with most. Take the quiz here.

Easter baking and finding recipes that work!

Happy Easter!

Easter is one of those times of the year when people like to bake. It can be very relaxing and you know which ingredients have gone into your creations.

CC0 Photo from www.pixabay.com

Finding trustworthy recipes which work and have UK measurements

If you want to learn how to make some Easter cakes and bakes, how do you know which recipes to trust?

Instead of just searching using Google which will bring up all sorts of websites, try these tips:

• Search for a famous chef’s website and then search for a recipe (e.g. Nigella, Jamie Oliver)
• Most supermarket websites have recipe databases.
• Well-known magazines often have recipe sections where the recipes have been tried and tested (e.g. BBC Good Food, Good Housekeeping).
• Brands of ingredients (eg Stork, Allinsons, Whitworths, Philadelphia – other brands available) often provide a collection of recipes to promote their products.
• Some food items have associations or boards which support those who work within the industry but also help promote the products to the public. E.g www.seafish.org supports the fishing industry but also has its own recipe site for fish http://www.seafish.org/eating-seafood/fish-is-the-dish
• Instead of searching online, why not use a book. We have a collection of recipe books to support our Hospitality students in Library+ which anyone in College can borrow.

Limiting Google results to UK sites only

One problem with recipe sites is that if you find an American site, the measurements are in cups which is not useful for those of us in the UK. How do you make sure when you search for a recipe in Google, you only get UK results?

You need to put in your search site:.uk and this will restrict the search to UK sites.

So, in Google you might write “Easter biscuits” recipes site:.uk

(I have put speech marks round Easter biscuits to keep this as a phrase). Have a try!

To finish, here is a video recipe for Hot Cross Buns from Mary Berry (which because it is hers, we know we can trust it).

National No Smoking Day - and how do I know which websites to trust?

National No Smoking Day

Yesterday was National No Smoking Day. Several courses include looking at smoking as a topic in their courses and many use websites. I am often asked by students how to tell which websites can be trusted so I thought I’d use this topic as an example.

Smoking and tobacco websites

So…. if you were doing a project on smoking and tobacco, which of the following websites would you trust and use as a good source of information for your assignment? Not all of these are ideal.

www.ash.org.uk  (Action on Smoking and Health – charity)

www.gov.uk/government/policies/smoking   (UK Government website)

www.bmj.com/specialities/smoking  (British Medical Journal)

www.nicorette.co.uk  (company selling products to help give up smoking)

www.niquitin.co.uk  (company selling products to help give up smoking)

www.bhf.org.uk/smoking   (British Heart Foundation)

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/adultsmokinghabitsingreatbritain/2015  (Office of National Statistics)

www.blf.org.uk  (British Lung Foundation)

http://www.givingupsmoking.co.uk/  (E-cigarette company)

https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree   (NHS site)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoking  (Online wiki)

How to decide which smoking websites to trust and which can I use in my assignments?

I often ask students if they had a choice between using the NHS site or the Nicorette site, for example, which would they use? 

Most would reply the NHS site and when asked why, would say that Nicorette site want to sell their own products. Therefore they won't give an unbiased or objective view of how to give up smoking. Therefore, I would probably not use this site, even though some of the information may be correct.

www.givingupsmoking.co.uk  is another example where author of the website (which is not very obvious) is promoting e-cigarettes rather than giving a balanced view on smoking and giving up. 

Public domain photo
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=126056&picture=cigarette-butts

Web extensions

Did you know that .co and .com sites can be set up by anyone. That doesn't mean they can't be trusted but there are no checks. You know you can trust .nhs sites. They are British and must be from an NHS institution. Other trustworthy website extensions are .gov (as in Office Of National Statistics), .org (as in British Heart Foundation) and .ac (a school, college or University like PRC) as these extensions can only be registered to genuine government departments, charities and organisations or academic institutions.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is never a good option for your college work, because anyone can write Wikipedia articles and therefore you cannot tell if the information is trustworthy.

Journal sites

British Medical Journal is a professional journal with articles written for and by GPs, consultants and other medically trained staff.  The content is checked and only qualified people contribute. This site can be trusted – but you might have problems understanding it!

Quitting smoking projects - use the About section

There are lots of different sites for projects promoting giving up smoking and you will notice that a lot of them have a NHS logo on them. This would suggest that the site is approved by the NHS or that they have been working in partnership with them. They can probably be trusted. Read the About section of any website to see who the author of the website is.

With so many good quality sites available, why would you bother with those which may not be so trustworthy or objective? For College work I would concentrate on organisations like charities, the NHS and government websites. PRC Library+also have an e-book on Issues Online about smoking and tobacco - accessible from our Moodle pages.

Whatever you use, remember to put the details of the website in your reference list at the end of your work.