Teaching Academic Skills: Designing the Content Outline

How to make the class more interesting and less technical and dry?
Introduction - knowing what are the students initial academic qualification before undertaking the degree course, where do they come from, and what are they working as.
Explain how the study of degree level may differ from diploma
Understand about Higher Order Level thinking; differentiate among Knowledge, Understanding, Analysis, and Evaluation criteria in assessment (Next day: Have students refer to the Bloom's taxonomy*) - get students to create questions that reflects these criteria

Understand the different learning styles and the approach to optimize learning
Understand there is no such things as learning styles as there are merely myth; relate this to critical thinking 

Plagiarism and academic dishonesty - know the different types of plagiarism; know the consequences of plagiarism; talk about unintentional plagiarism; show examples of "copy and paste" work; display some of the Turnitin report
References and Citations - state that despite giving proper citations and referencing like putting the quotation signs on a large parts of another author's writing you have used to present your report may fail to show originality in writing; include explanation on the sources of information and their respective quality
Paraphrasing and Summary - do an exercise on paraphrasing and summary; give students the sample answer; make reference to the Success of Starbucks in China
How to become a better students  refer to Tedx Video
Time Management - personal "kanban" system; talk about include activities that you enjoy doing and to slot in time for rest and leisure



Note Taking - different method of note taking; mind-mapping; concept-mapping; explain how mind mapping can also be used for planning purposes; know that your mind-map is a personal thing (others will have difficulty to comprehend); talk about building mental hook; show how mind-map can exercise your brain to analyse better

*For myself, understand how Bloom's taxonomy is applied to the setting of examination question

Knowledge
Understanding - explain how students can have knowledge and no understanding; make reference to marketing example of the "Kitchen Utensil Manufacturer"
Analysis - what does it mean by going "deep"? how can we facilitate our thought process to analyse (ask more questions?); show how analysis is made through the display of mind map and the different branch level; finding similarities and differences - do the exercise on finding the reasons for Wal-mart to fail in Germany, Japan and South Korea
Evaluation - looking at the pros and cons of things; making critical comparison especially when certain theories and practices are applied to different contexts; understanding the extent of usefulness of certain theories and practices 

Have a realistic expectation that the students will need more exposure in their academic endeavor to understand the teaching in Academic Skills as they have be exposed to the situations in other class learning in which the knowledge acquired from academic skills have to be applied.