Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Web: www.services.unimelb.edu.au/academicskills
Email: academic-skills@unimelb.edu.au
Case Study
A common Business or Engineering genre. May be real life cases or fictitious, but with a real
world perspective. Often a scenario which then presents an issue that needs a solution. Need to
show understanding of the situation (the ‘case’) and provide some possible responses.
Academic Poster
A way of presenting graphic and textual information. Posters are often included in the scientific
program of a conference, and are usually displayed during a conference with times allocated for
presenters to be available to discuss their content with attendees.
Literature review
A cross‐discipline genre. May be a stand‐alone task or a section of a bigger work (eg. thesis).
Two aspects: a reporting aspect (X said this) and an evaluative or critical aspect (there are
limitations to what X says). You are expected to synthesise information – bring info together –
and compare and contrast it and offer your critique.
Lab report
A science genre. A record of an experiment – this paper shows what you did, why, how and
what you found out. It has similar headings to a Business report, but has an Abstract instead of
an Executive Summary.
Business report
A paper which analyses a facet of business – such as a situation, product, process, system or
approach – researches it then describes what was found. It is usually presented with section
headings, such as an Executive Summary, Introduction, Method, Findings, Discussion and
Conclusions. Tables and figures, stats and Appendices are also commonly found in reports.
Reflective paper
A cross‐discipline genre. May take the form of a short online post, a personal journal or an
essay‐style of paper. This is a personal style of writing, written with a focus on you – your ideas,
thoughts, feelings, reactions about something and what you have learned – so is almost always
written with an ‘I’ focus. Cannot just report on the topic, must also give your reaction to it and
learning from it. Citations may not be required, depending on what the paper is looking at.
Blog
A cross‐discipline genre. A less formal style of writing published online, you are generally
expected to write your thoughts on a topic. Citations may not be required.
Thesis
A cross‐discipline genre. A high‐level, long (generally 80K words) research paper which gives
you a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) qualification at the end. Consists of many sections, divided
into Chapters, such as the Abstract, Introduction, Method, Methodology, Results, Discussion,
Conclusions and Recommendations.
Annotated bibliography
Mostly Humanities, but can be cross‐discipline. An ‘extended’ Reference List where you need to
find a number of sources on a topic, list each source as you would in a Reference List and also
provide a short summary and evaluation of each source.