Transferable Skills
This page
will give you some links that should help you prepare and present the
various assignments you will be given throughout your four or five years
at Edinburgh. Although these websites give you a very good idea of what is
required, most are not based at Edinburgh and each university expects
different things. These sites will help you, but should be used in
conjunction with your course booklet or lab manual, as these will outline
what is expected from you at Edinburgh. After all, the people who write
these are the people who mark your work !!
- Lab Report Guidelines
- A clear and relevant page telling you how to lay out a typical lab report and a guide to what the content should be. Ideal if you are unsure what a lab report should contain; for students in first to third years.
- Long Report
- This site describes a more thorough lab report than would be helpful in first and second years but is more suited to the long report you will be expected to produce in third year physical labs.
- Science Writing
- Based on the Southampton University web site, this is a page giving a general guide to science writing; what style of language to use and what structure to adopt.
- Essay Writing Tips
- This page is aimed at scientists and gives some useful tips on how to write an essay.
- Literature Review
- A short guide to writing a literature review. Although this is not aimed specifically at chemists it is still useful to obtain an overview of what is expected of a literature review. Good for third to fifth years.
- Scientific Reports
- A good site that offers help in laying out a science report, including information on the abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussion.
- Research Papers
- A very useful site for third to fifth years, when writing reviews and research projects.
- Presentation
- The presentation slides
- Oral Presentation
- An easy to follow and thorough site that takes you step by step through all the processes necessary to prepare and deliver an oral presentation.
- Powerpoint Presentation
- A comprehensive tutorial showing you how to do almost everything from adding images to adding basic animation. It also goes on to give advice on delivery and timing.
- Mac Users
- For those who prefer to use Macs, here is a good tutorial on Powerpoint.
- Poster
- A brief description of how to design a poster, including an example layout.
- Poster Presentation
- A comprehensive page of advice on poster construction and layout.
- Poster Construction
- A rather disorganised site, however, it does have some useful information and advice if you look for it.
- Powerpoint Tutorial
- A step by step guide to creating a poster using Powerpoint.
- Graphics and Multimedia Resource Centre
- To print your poster you should go to The Graphics and Multimedia Resource Centre, room 3901 JCMB. Here they will not only be able to print your poster but they can help you with any technical backup and advice.
The best program for drawing molecules and reactions is ChemDraw, available to you on the University network. It can be found in Departmental software in the Start menu (go to the Chemistry folder, in the Sci & Eng section). The best way to familiarise yourself with this program is just to have a play with it to see what it can do.
- Excel Tutorial
- This site is designed for physicists although it is ideal for chemists too. It will explain the basics and show you how to draw and present scientific graphs. It covers all the functions you will need to use in detail.
- Origin
- Origin is a scientific graphing package. It is a good tool for data analysis, however, it isn't on the general access computers, it can only be found on the computers in the physical labs. You may be required to use it especially in the third year physical labs. This website will give you a good tutorial on how to use Origin, starting at the very basics.
For a tutorial on literature searching go to the Robertson Library for a
lunchtime tutorial. These are weekly (during term time) on Tuesdays at 12.15pm and Thursdays at 1.15pm. They last for about 30 mins and help you with
Web Of Science and other databases, e-journals, accessing full papers, library searching etc.
- EU library
- You can search the chemistry section of the university's library centre for the journals you require. There is a general list of
e-journals available at the university's library centre.
- Chemistry department at the University of Cambridge
- This site contains a comprehensive list of journals. This is really handy as it takes you to the publishers web page where you
can then search for your article. Not all articles are actually on line (see below) but most have an abstract. You can then use the
library to find out if the uni has the copy you want.
- State University of New York
- This site contains a list of e-journals available for download, some of which have links to the references which saves lots of
time.
Some of the files require acrobat reader to view them. This is completely free to down load from
this site. Every type of journal is available from
this site so hopefully you won't need to visit George Square for that all-important medical journal. The only down side is that
they only go back as far as about 1996.
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