The Learning Technology Development Unit (UPTB) of the Faculty of Psychology UGM held the first Technology in Training Friday (5/3). The event entitled “Optimizing Microsoft Word and Mendeley Features for Final Project Writing” was presented by a speaker L. Edwin Gandawijaya, M.Psi., A psikolog.
The event which was held online was attended by several participants from the UGM Faculty of Psychology students. They attend training events from 09.00 WIB to 11.00 WIB. Some of the participants also participated in this event via Youtube streaming on the Kanal Pengetahuan Psikologi Gadjah Mada University.
In the first session, Edwin presented material about the optimal use of Microsoft Word’s features. Software that is very commonly used by students in writing for lecture assignments actually provides a lot of functions that will greatly facilitate users in making good and structured writing. But in reality, not many people know about it, so a lot of users only use manual methods that are ineffective and efficient.
One useful but rarely used feature is “page breaks” and “section breaks” to separate individual chapters in an organized and structured manner.
“So my friends no longer need to separate chapter one chapter two chapter three chapter four chapter five in separate files. That is the first time to really bother, without, yes want to save”, want to back-up is really complicated. And it is also a pleasure to make it easy for friends to back up,” explained Edwin.
There are several other features that Edwin explained about the functions and ways of using them, including paragraphs & styles, proofing language, tables and figure captions, and tables of content & figures.
Edwin also emphasized the importance of using original Microsoft Office software so that users can take full advantage of the software’s functions. For UGM students, Office 365 is available which is provided by the university and can be downloaded for free.
“If you use Office 365 you can also directly autosave to one of your friends’ drives. So there is no such thing as a missing thesis because the flashdsc is damaged, the hardisc is damaged. Now that is out of date, especially when we live in an online age, friends. So it’s a shame if we lose our thesis or thesis just because the hard disc is damaged or the flash disc is missing,” continued Edwin.
In the second session, Edwin presented material on the use of automatic quotation and list software, namely Mendeley. To complete lecture assignments and scientific papers, citation from research books and journals is very common, so if it is done manually, it will take a lot of time and effort. For this reason, on this occasion, Edwin shared how to automatically quote and create bibliography using the Mendeley software.
“So my friends don’t need to write the names of the authors, writing down the bibliography one by one is a tedious way. My friends can use Mendeley directly, find new journals (can be directly imported),” explained Edwin.
The event went on quite smoothly. With a simple and interesting explanation from the speaker, participants can immediately understand and apply the material on their respective laptops and PCs. The committee hopes that this event will provide many benefits to the participants to make it easier for them to produce good writing, especially in the academic realm.