Te Taiako - Student Learning provides support for the following university skills. Below I have put my own twist on their advice.

Time management - give yourself a lot of time to think and mentally digest the complicated information you are encountering. Use To Do lists to organise your schedule and provide a valuable sense of achievement.

Reading - academic reading takes time and you will have to get used to not understanding everything. Read actively: ask questions of the text and your own understanding. 

Note taking - give your page a structure, use colours to categorise (and beautify) your notes. Take note of authors, theories, subjects, and academic journals.

Quoting and paraphrasing - do not over quote. Instead integrate shorter quotes into your own words i.e. paraphrasing. 

A note on A.I. (i.e. ChatGPT): as tools they have many uses but they cannot replace your own learning or the value of building robust university and research skills. 

To come up with keywords, identify the most important words in your research question or topic.

In the research question above, the most important keywords are: "social media", "political polarisation", and "New Zealand" 

You could start searching the library's databases with just these keywords, but you may need to expand your search by brainstorming related words for each keyword. These could be: 

• Narrower words
• Broader words
• Ideas that are related to your topic 
• Synonyms (words that mean the same thing)

Take a look at the table below to see what other words we could use for 2 of our keywords. 

As you search for sources using the keywords, you will identify new keywords from abstracts, subject terms and titles. You can revise your searches with new keywords and continue the process until you find relevant sources.