The Skills Pod
Members of the University of Chester’s Academic Skills Team chat all things Academic Skills, sharing advice and anecdotes from their own experience in higher education. We have episodes on skills like referencing, critical thinking, maths and statistics, and time management.
Listening to The Skills Pod is a great way to learn hints and tips to help you during your academic journey while getting to know the Academic Skills Team.
The Skills Pod
Dissertation Suite: Top Tips for Literature Reviews
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Join the University of Chester's Academic Skills Team for The Skills Pod. In this episode of our Dissertation Suite, Alice, Lisa, Stefan, and Emma share their top tips for literature reviews from reading and note-making, to planning and writing.
You might also find it useful to listen to our full-length episode on Literature Reviews.
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Welcome And Topic Setup
EmmaHi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Skills Pod. I'm Emma and I am one of the academic skills advisors at the University of Chester. And today, as part of our dissertation suite of episodes, we are going to talk about top tips for writing your literature reviews for your dissertation. And I'm joined by my colleagues. Don't know why I sang that, just felt like I would.
AliceHello! I'm Alice. Also in the Academic Skills Team.
Speaker 3Speaker 3
I'm Lisa.
StefanAnd I'm Stefan.
EmmaOkay, so top tips for um literature reviews. Where shall we start?
Don’t Rush: Read Before You Write
LisaI think my top tip for writing your literature review would be to not jump into writing your literature review straight away. And I know that might sound either a weird thing or strange thing to say, but I think I don't know what to say. Like people are really keen to get started, but I think people really worry about writing their reviews. So it's that I've started reading, I just need to start getting some ideas down on paper. And actually, I think by doing that, there's the potential you miss the opportunity to see some of those broader topics, broader links between the literature that actually is what you want to capture in the review. So I think my top tip would actually be don't rush into writing. Take your time, read the literature. And when I was kind of thinking about, oh, what would my top tips be? What you know, what did I find useful? I wrote, get visual. I'm hoping it's gonna be unique. Like with with the literature, like find some way to help you work out how it all connects. Like whether that's colour coding things, like okay, everything that I've put a little red mark on talks about this topic, or and you'll find that some literature has loads of colours on it because it touches on loads of different things, and that's absolutely fine. But color coding it or mapping out ideas, find some way to help you work out what the literature is saying before you jump in to trying to work out what your structure's gonna be and actually writing it. So actually, I think there's probably more than one top tip in there. I wouldn't
Get Visual: Mapping Themes And Links
Lisasay top tip, just there was more than one tip in there is what I'm gonna finish with.
AliceThat's a really good point. And thinking about that, um that's perhaps you know, when we see students who are having difficulties with their lit reviewer, perhaps the kind of common um avenue that people go down is to describe their sources. So and and now that you've said that, Lisa, it makes me think that that's that's actually, you know, that that impulse to get going straight away. I've got to get something down on paper, so I'm gonna say what this article says. And then that's all I'm gonna include in my literature review. So it's that time kind of mapping and percolating, letting it percolate through your brain and and drawing out those connections and and just just seeing that that wider picture of the field. That that's that's the top tip for a literature review, isn't it? That's what that's what you're about. And and um after what you said, it struck me that a lot of that is actually about timing, about giving yourself time to see that that those wider connections.
LisaKind of like brewing a cup of tea, isn't it? Brewing a cup of tea, like you wouldn't put the like you know, you put your you wouldn't unless you like a really weak cup of tea, you like to leave the teabag in there a little while, let it brew like so and that's kind of what I would say. Don't rush to pull the tea back out and yeah, don't rush to take the teabag out and get, you know, get drinking the tea, just relax. Nice sit back.
StefanUm so just to pick up on what Lisa said, I think it yeah, it really makes me think that first and foremost, literature reviews are ultimately two things. They are an exercise in
Analysis Over Description
Stefanreading, right? Which I think is often something that can be forgotten. Um, and just like Lisa says, not to jump in, right? And uh not to jump in just to kind of writing because you think you have to. You have to do a whole wealth of reading in order to be able to fuel that writing. So don't shy away from that. Um, but also then when it does come to the writing, the literature review is first and foremost an exercise in analysis, right? And that's exactly what Lisa is saying here. Um, like there are entire dissertations that use a literature review as their analysis method. Um, and I think that's really, really important to remember that even when we are just writing our own sort of uh contextual literature literature review, um, that we need to be analyzing the literature, not just describing it, just like Alice and Lisa have been saying, and really to be thinking, okay, well, if I'm looking to analyze, then I'm looking to draw conclusions, et cetera, et cetera, draw connections, and yeah, to make sure that that's really kind of driving your literature review forward.
Let It Brew: Timing And Patience
StefanUm I think for me, probably my top tip for a literature review is well, one of my top tips would be to make sure that you don't forget what your research questions are. Um the research questions for your dissertation should be guiding your literature review. It can be really, really easy when you jump into a literature review to think, oh, there's this whole world of literature out there, and I've got to go into all of it that's on this very broad topic. That's not quite the case. Um, you should yeah, be guided by your research questions as to what kind of sections and subsections of the literature on a topic you should be covering. Um I think that can help to keep a literature review focused in what can be a kind of uh intimidating and potentially quite broad uh yeah, exercise or chat.
EmmaI feel like I should have gone first because everyone's stole my top tips.
AliceSorry, Emma. Have you got any left?
EmmaNo. Um yeah,
Anchor To Your Research Questions
EmmaI think I yeah, echo what Stefan's saying is keep that question in mind. You've got to know what you're looking for, particularly when you're searching for literature, because otherwise you will absolutely get lost in in what's out there. So make sure that you are being kind of specific in what you're looking for and what it is that your research question is. Because you're obviously, you know, particularly with a dissertation, you're trying to find the gap. You're trying to find the gap that your research is is seeking to fill. So always keep in mind, you know, obviously, what am I looking for? But is there a gap that I can that my study is kind of gonna fill in? Because you're trying to justify why your study is needed and the literature view is a key component in that. I feel like I just waffled that. Maybe it made sense. Maybe it didn't.
LisaMade perfect sense. And I feel like we've like smashed smashed the top tips.
AliceI've got one, but it it kind of it's kind of just a reiteration of what everyone's already said. I suppose mine was like um that this goes for your reading practice and as well as your writing practice was be ruthless. Um, and another way of saying that, I suppose, is is be selective, be focused, I suppose well, as everybody's been saying, you know, um it's easy to get overwhelmed, isn't it? By it depends on your search terms, obviously, but I don't know, but
Be Selective And Ruthless
Aliceby the number of hits, the volume of material that that you could look at under your kind of search terms. So um yeah, be ruthless, be selective, and with every source, um, I'm just gonna give a bit of a plug as well for uh we've got some really useful stuff on quick and effective reading techniques to to narrow down your um to narrow down your your um number of sources, but with every source, front for foremost of your mind should be your research question. And another question, which is kind of what's in this for me? What does this give me? Does this fit with what what I'm looking at? Does it expand it? Does it complicate it? Does it um underline my points? You know, always, always what what's in this for me?
Superstar Papers And Supporting Roles
StefanCompletely. And I think building on that, it's really important to be conscious of who, like who or what are your superstar papers, and then what are the kind of yeah, so like a bit of an acting uh metaphor. Um so you've got your superstars, and then you've got your supporting actors or your supporting roles, right? There'll be like uh a few papers that might really be shaping your thinking or might be the most um kind of significant ones in in the field that are particularly relevant to what you're doing, whatever it might be. But for whatever reason, they will be the ones that you will go into the most, right? They're probably the most relevant, they're the most helpful, they might be the ones that you are perhaps critiquing the most, right? They might not be the ones that are necessarily helping you, you might just be kind of responding to them. Um, and you'll have a few of those and you will go into them in great depth. And then you will have a whole host of other supporting papers which you will still include, but not to the same level, right? And so it's good to have a sense of which papers that you have in your entire pile of literature, right? It's good to have a sense of which ones are the really important ones, the superstar ones, and then the ones which are then just going to be playing a supporting role that you'll be including still but slightly less.
EmmaI like Lisa's point about kind of keeping a record of or kind of like somehow mapping it out so that you can see whether, you know, what papers are covering the same themes, things like that. Um, it is really, really useful because literature reviews are scary and they're an integral part of your dissertation. So yeah, making it is easy for yourself. Future you, I'm more I'm all about being kind to future you. So making sure that you are mapping, making those connections in a in a visual kind of easy to kind of follow way, um, is really, really important.
LisaAnd like doing that mapping exercise, whatever that looks like for you, whether it is little coloured dots or different coloured post-it notes, or just you know writing out these are the papers and the sort of topics they cover, sort of thing, that will help you identify those superstar papers that Stefan was talking about, because they'll be the ones that you're like, oh, actually, this also touches on this theme and it touches on this theme, and it concludes this and it has this. And whereas actually this paper, I say, only makes this contribution, it's only got that one colour on because that's it's only a supporting, a supporting role in the bigger picture. So um I really love that kind of superstar supporting role idea. I think that's a great way of thinking about it. Um yeah.
AliceAnd so a new academic skills metaphor was born. You are here, you witnessed its birth, people.
Visual Tracking To Spot Key Sources
EmmaOkay, so hopefully you found these top tips on literature reviews for dissertations useful. We do have a longer um episode of our podcast on literature reviews, and I will link to that in the show notes. Um, so thanks for listening, and we hope to speak to you again soon. Bye. Bye everyone.
StefanBye guys.
Support Services And How To Get Help
EmmaHi, if you're a University of Chester student. Here are the ways you can access
Wrap-Up And Further Resources
Emmasupport from your academic skills team.
AnthonyOn our Moodle pages, we've got lots of interactive resources for you to use. On our Literacies Moodle page, you'll find help with a range of skills from academic rating to revision. On our Maths and Statistics Moodle pages, you'll find help with different statistical tests, calculations, and formulas.
EmmaYou can also use our Feed Forward email assistance service. You can send 750 words, which is around three paragraphs, of your work, to ask at chester.ace.uk and we'll respond within three working days with generic and developmental advice on aspects such as paragraph structure, criticality and referencing.
AnthonyYou can also book a one-to-one with the Academic Skills Advisor via our Moodle pages. These appointments typically last 30 minutes and are available online and in person. Be able to see the campuses we're at by looking at our booking scheduler. You can send across an extract of your work for us to look at in preparation for the one-to-one. Or you can book a one-to-one to discuss a generic skill such as referencing or critical thinking.
EmmaIf you and a group of your course mates are struggling with the same academic skill, you can book an Ask Together session by emailing ask at chester.ac.uk with details of your availability, how many people are in your group, what skills you want to cover, and where you'd like the session to take place.
AnthonyYou can follow us on Instagram and Facebook using the handle AcadSkillsURC, where we post practical tips on a range of academic skills, and it's also a great way to see what the team are up to.
EmmaAnd of course, you've got the skills pod. If you have a topic that you'd like