Hello everyone, and welcome to Adventures in Academia, the podcast for older-than-average university students. I'm your host, Kristie Bradfield.

Today, I am really excited because I'm going to be talking about all things tech. It's one of my favourite things to talk about in relation to studying, and I'll have a few episodes devoted to tech in the future, I'm sure. 

When I talk to people heading back to University or heading to University for the first time, I'm often asked questions about technology. What programs to use, what websites to visit, how to submit assignments, how to find journal articles, how to reference articles. I know there are many things to discover when you're starting out, and the tech side of things can seem overwhelming, but I promise you things do become easier as you go along. Hopefully, today, I'll answer some of the questions you have.

So today, I'm sharing my set-up with you. Now, this comes with a big caveat: It has taken me years to figure out a system that works for me. When I started Uni, I did all my notes by hand, which took me forever. I struggled to keep up with my studying due to the time-suck that was handwriting notes. This frustration led me to explore different workflow options to optimise my time and increase productivity. I watched a lot of YouTube videos about academic workflows. I've used every note-taking program out there. I've used dictation software. I've used handwriting recognition technology; if you can think of it, I have tried it. My system was borne out of a lot of trial and error, and while you may find some new ideas from this podcast, and I hope you do, I can't stress enough that your system and what you use will be something that you develop and you'll continue to tweak over the years that you study. The tech we use and the tech that becomes a part of our process is a really individual thing. Technology isn't something to be scared of. Technology and tools can withstand pretty much anything - making mistakes and learning how to use tech is a part of the way that we study now. Be open to learning, and you will be fine.

So, let's start with the foundation of my tech.

I'm an Apple fan, and I have been for many decades. I got my first Apple laptop in the mid-90s and have been obsessed ever since. I have a 27-inch iMac as my main desktop. It's about five years old now, but it's still working fine. I have an iPad Pro, and I have a MacBook Air. All of my Apple products work seamlessly with each other, which I love. I do the majority of my Uni work on my iMac. It has everything I need to watch lectures, make notes, write assignments, attend online video meetings, and research. I use my iPad to read research articles when I'm away from my desk using Zotero, which I'll chat about later. I also use my iPad to create mind maps or take handwritten notes while reading or watching lectures. I do this using an Apple Pencil and an app called GoodNotes. My MacBook Air is my on-campus computer. It's pretty light, fits into my backpack, is fast and holds everything I need while I'm out and about. The iPad and MacBook Air were purchased with an Apple educational discount, making them cheaper. 

Moving on. I use Notion to store all my course information and general notes. Notion is my second brain, which may sound weird, but it really is true. Everything related to my studies - from my current units of study to archived units, ideas about Honours research, reading lists, interesting articles and bookmarks and potential scholarships - is stored in Notion. So here's how I use it. At the start of each semester, I create a database containing all the units I'm studying. I break down each unit week by week and add in the Lecture focus and any required reading. This information is supplied to us on our University's CANVAS site, but your University may use something else. I download chapters or journal articles ahead of time and pop those into the database. I add all my assignments and when they are due and add reminders if needed. As I listen to each week's lecture, I create notes in that week's Lecture focus page. I link files and add bookmarks to sites that I use to help me understand content better. By the end of the semester, this one Notion database - my Master Schedule - contains all the work I've done that semester. I've been using Notion since 2020 and can easily search through all my notes from all my units. 

It took me a few years of going through other products like OneNote, EverNote, and GoodNotes to find a program that stores everything. I can't recommend Notion highly enough; it has absolutely changed the way I approach my study. It has saved me so much time, and I suggest you try it if you're looking for a tool to help you organise your academic life.

If you're interested in trying Notion, check out the show notes and follow the links to download a template of my Notion University dashboard.

Let's move on to writing assignments. In Psychology and Criminology, I have written a lot of essays, lab reports and research reports. I love any kind of written assignment, and I've improved at them over time. Early in my studies, a marker told me I had to remove all emotion from my work, which was really confusing for me at the time. As a freelance writer, my work was riddled with emotion. I relied on emotive language to set a scene, make a point, or convey a feeling, but you don't do that in academic writing. You remove emotion and replace it with research, with facts. I've come to love that. I use Microsoft Word to write my assignments. Many universities have access to Microsoft's Office 365 - some of them, like mine, offer Office 365 to students for free. Check with your University to see if you can get Office for free, too. 

When I save my assignments for submission, I save them in a .docx format. Again - it's super easy to do. 

When you're writing assignments, keep in mind that you'll likely have very strict formatting requirements. As a Psychology and Criminology student, I must format everything to APA7 standards. I recommend bookmarking the APA Style website https://apastyle.apa.org/ because it has all the information you'll need about formatting essays, lab reports and professional papers. If you're in a discipline that uses APA7, you can also purchase the APA Publication Manual - you will use it often, I promise you so it is well worth the investment.

Referencing

As we're talking about APA7 I might as well mention referencing here. Referencing is one of those things that can be really difficult to get the hang of. As we often reference the work of other scholars in our assignments, we need to cite them correctly. Referencing took a while for me to understand, and it's also an area where people lose easy marks in assignments. I used to do all of my referencing manually, and it used to take me a long time. I've also tried all the big reference managers - Endnote, Mendeley and Zotero - and I can say wholeheartedly that, for me, Zotero is the best and easiest to work with. Zotero works well with Word, has a convenient iPad app, and even lets you annotate sources and export your notes directly in the app. I've consistently found Zotero's generated citations accurate, although I always double-check my referencing before submitting an assignment, just in case. 

When I've finished drafting my assignment, I use Grammarly to double-check my grammar and look for any spelling mistakes. I've been using Grammarly for years, and it gives me extra comfort knowing that my work is as polished as possible. You can use Grammarly on the web or via their desktop app. Grammarly has free accounts, but I have a Premium account with extra features like tone suggestions and vocabulary ideas. While Grammarly won't write your text for you, it can assist you in improving your writing. 

Let's talk about AI.

You've probably heard about artificial intelligence or AI recently - there's been a lot of talk about ChatGPT, for example. I use AI, but I want to be super clear about this: I would not use AI to help me write an assignment. Every University has different policies about the use of AI in academic work. As technology progresses and AI checkers become more sophisticated, it is likely that if you use AI to produce any assessable work, you will be penalised. Some universities are already doing this. One of the most important skills you'll learn as you go through your degree is how to research, write, and edit your work. Using AI to do this work for you doesn't give you the foundation you need to continue learning. Also, remember that the generative AI models we have now are not 100% accurate, which means you can't rely on an AI model to generate factually correct text.

So, with this in mind, how do I use AI in my studies? Well, I think primarily I use AI to help me save some time. For example, I use AI to create multiple-choice questions and answers based on my lecture notes, chapter notes and exported highlights I've made in Zotero. I feed this information in and ask ChatGPT to create 20 multiple-choice questions and answers based on the supplied text. It takes ChatGPT less than twenty seconds to do something that would take me hours. I make sure to check every question because, as I said, ChatGPT doesn't always get it right. Out of 20 questions, it may get one or two answers wrong, so I read everything carefully.

Another way I use AI is to create summaries from my notes. Summaries help when I need to do literature reviews. I have a big database in Notion where I store all the journal articles and book chapters I read for each unit or just for general research. I use Notion AI to create summaries, which again saves me a lot of time. 

I also use sites like Research Rabbit, Elicit and SciSpace. I'll give you a brief rundown of each of these sites.

Research Rabbit is a site that has helped me find research. It's a citation-mapping tool, meaning it takes a seed article (essentially your starting point) and then finds other related articles. It has a handy visualisation tool so you can see other related articles connected to your seed article and add these related works to your library quickly and easily. I love Research Rabbit for the visual aspect - I tend to gravitate more towards visual representations of data - and its ease of use.

Elicit is another AI-assisted research tool. With Elicit, you pose a research question, and it finds relevant research articles. While Research Rabbit only uses citation mapping to find these connections, Elicit uses citation mapping and semantic similarity, which means it finds papers related to your question even if they don't use the same keyword. This is important because we sometimes miss out on finding valuable research because we use the wrong keyword when searching.

I use SciSpace when I'm having trouble understanding what a journal article is saying. You've probably experienced the absolute joy of reading a journal article that is really verbose or super technical - it can be hard to follow. If it's hard to follow, you can miss important information. SciSpace allows you to highlight the parts you're having difficulty with, and it can explain it. I've found SciSpace really useful for getting a better understanding of the articles I read. Again, a caveat: you need to read the article. Don't fall into the trap of having SciSpace summarise everything for you. You don't learn by taking shortcuts. Read the article first and then run it through SciSpace if you're having trouble understanding things.

There is no book review this month because I am busy doing a lot of reading for the very last assignment of my undergraduate degree. It's really hard to believe that I am just over a month away from finishing my double major. I've applied for Psychology Honours for next year, so keep your fingers crossed that I get accepted. I'll hopefully get word on that in mid-December. 

While I don't have a review this month, I am currently reading a really interesting book by Kerri Rawson called A Serial Killer's Daughter. Kerri's Dad is Dennis Radar, who is better known as the serial killer BTK. I'm about a quarter of the way through, and so far, it's a fascinating read, so I'll have a review for you in the next podcast.

Thank you so much for listening to this, the first of many technology-focused episodes on Adventures in Academia. I've left links to all of the apps that I've discussed today in the show notes, which you can find at adventuresinacademia.com

I would love to hear from you if you're an older-than-average student. You can send a voice memo about anything to do with university study to memos@adventuresinacademia.com. And while you're at it, remember to subscribe to the podcast. 

In the next episode of Adventures in Academia, I'll be talking about overcoming fear as a mature-aged student and what happens when you push yourself out of your comfort zone. I hope you consider listening in. Until then, happy studying!

Links

Notion (affiliate link) - https://affiliate.notion.so/e15uv5c7jslu
Zotero - https://www.zotero.org/
Grammarly - https://app.grammarly.com/
APA Style - https://apastyle.apa.org/
Research Rabbit - https://researchrabbitapp.com/
How to use Research Rabbit - https://www.jcu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1958831/Research-Rabbit-Overview.pdf
Elicit - https://elicit.org/
SciSpace - https://typeset.io/