he assignment

Important

These pages provide guidance on how to write your assignment. Please ensure you read all of this information right through until the checklist at the end.

Before you start work on this assignment, please ensure that you have read theAssessment Guidancespecific to this module and are familiar with the advice in the Social Sciences Assessment Information. These sources contain support and guidance that you may need in writing your TMA, including, for example, advice on plagiarism and the marking system. Guidance on referencing is available on the LibrarysReferencing and plagiarismpage. You will be following theCite them Right (CTR) Harvard referencing style. A higher-grade answer requires close adherence to the Cite them Right Harvard referencing system.

You are required to use PowerPoint for this TMA to create a presentation. There is more information on creating effective presentations at the following links:

• Tips for creating and delivering an effective presentation
• PowerPoint help & learning.

If you have not made slides for presentations before, or if youd like a refresher, then you could use one of the following resources:Producing a slide presentation(Week 9, Section 7) and/orJudging a slide presentation(Week 10, Section 6).

OU students can accessMicrosoft Office 365 for free, which includes the latest version of Microsoft PowerPoint. There is an MS Office support page on?finding the word count of your presentation.

If you require further guidance on submitting your slides via the eTMA system, see the following Computing Guide resources:

• Working with .zip files
• Online TMA/EMA service.

Please note: your submitted file must be in .ppt or .pptx format. If you use different software (other than PowerPoint) to produce your presentation, you need to make sure that it is compatible with .ppt/.pptx. You can use free presentation software (e.g. OpenOffice which is a free version of Microsoft Office), as long as the file can be saved in the .ppt or .pptx file format.

If you use a Mac, you can access guidance on converting Keynote to these formats at the following link:Convert Keynote presentations to PDF, Microsoft PowerPoint, and more.

There isonepart to this TMA. On the following pages you will find guidance on how to complete this assignment.

The task: a summary

Your assignment is to submit a presentation for an imagined non-specialist audience. You should prepare your presentation based on the content in Week 9 and Chapter 7.

Your presentation should be completed in Microsoft PowerPoint and has two elements:

1. Slides

• Slides are the visual accompaniment to your presentation. You shouldproduce 812 slidesfor this assignment in addition, a slide for references should be placed at the end of the presentation.
• You can include both text and imagesbut notvideo material or animations.
• There is no formal limit on the number of words you can use in your 812 slides, but you should bear in mind that slides should not be too cluttered, and there is a limit on the number of words to be used in the presentation as a whole. We assume that you would not need more than around 1000 words for all of the slides, at the very most.
  2. Script
• The script is everything you would say in the presentation. You should write this in the Notes section of PowerPoint, underneath the slide that accompanies the text. Your script should be written in full sentences. It should be no more than around1200 wordsIt does not need to be referenced because any relevant in-text citations will be included on your slides.

The whole document should not exceed2200 words. It is possible to check the word length of a PowerPoint document by selecting Info (in the File tab). This is the method that markers will use to check on word length.

Scenario

You should create your presentation based on the following scenario.

A national mental health charity runs a number of local wellbeing centres offering a variety of resources, services and support at a local level. You have been contacted by your local wellbeing centre and asked for help. One of the services they run is for older people, which includes low-cost counselling and a number of social and activity groups that service users can choose between. The centre has seen growing demand for its services in recent months.

The majority of clients accessing the older person services are over 65 years old. Some have mild mental health problems, and nearly all experience chronic loneliness. Volunteers at the charity include current and previous service users (who run social groups and activities, and co-design them with paid staff), and trainees on counselling and psychotherapy placement work. These two groups are supervised and managed by paid charity workers, who also supply the administration, funding and operational management needed to keep the wellbeing centre running.

The manager of the charity runs a programme of development events for staff and volunteers, and has contacted you to ask you to contribute to an event. This event will focus on increasing understanding of the wellbeing and mental health needs of the older client population and, in particular, increasing understanding and knowledge of loneliness for that group.

The manager asked you to focus on four areas:

1. What is loneliness, and in particular what forms might it take for older individuals?
2. How can the causes and impacts of loneliness best be addressed for older age groups, including in counselling?
3. What kinds of other wellbeing or mental health issues for this age group should the team be aware of in its service provision?
4. Your recommendations to support the team delivering the service, and for the service focused on this older age group (a maximum of three recommendations in total).

In the following pages you will find:

• learning outcomes addressed by this assignment, and key skills which support it
• student notes that will help you with the focus of the task, the structure, tips for writing, pointers to relevant material and submission guidance
• a checklist to ensure you have done everything required for this assignment.

Learning outcomes

The module learning outcomes are accessible fromWeek 1of the module. Those listed below relate specifically to this assignment (though note that they are numbered in alignment with the list from Week 1).

Knowledge and understanding

1.1?Understand the history of ideas about mental illness, their treatment and the debates around these issues.

1.3?Develop awareness of the importance of social and political factors with respect to diversity and difference in mental health and counselling.

1.4?Understand the importance of ethical issues in research and practice in mental health and counselling.

1.6?Understand critical debates on the role that mental health and counselling services play in society.

Cognitive skills

2.1?Construct arguments with appropriate use of evidence, concepts and theories.

2.2?Identify, select and critically evaluate different theories/arguments and types of evidence.

2.3?Consider and compare the strengths and weaknesses of different methods of practice and research used in mental health and counselling.

Key skills

3.1?Apply knowledge, understanding and skills to critically evaluate and formulate evidence-based arguments.

3.3?Use a range of digital practices (including tools and resources) to find, use, create and share information and knowledge relevant to mental health and counselling practice and research.

3.4?Effectively communicate information, arguments and analysis in a variety of forms to specialist and non-specialist audiences.

Student notes

The following notes provide guidance on how to write your assignment and explain how it will be marked by your tutor.

In addition to these notes, the module team has provided you with theAssessment marking grid, which sets out how your work will be assessed for all assignments. Marking grids are used by your tutor to grade your TMA. They are therefore useful tools for you to use as they clearly explain what your tutor will be looking for. Your tutor will also comment on your work for the assignment in their feedback.

You should use this feedback to help you improve your work when you complete your next assignment.

If you feel at all uncertain about how to work with any part of these notes, consult your tutor for advice.

Focus of the task

In this task you are asked to produce a presentation for an imagined audience of volunteers and staff working in a service for clients of older age (65 and more years of age). There are three main elements to consider to be able to complete this task to a high standard:

1. Knowledge of loneliness

The first thing is to be clear that you understand the material in Week 9 and Chapter 7 which is relevant to this task. In the relevant material section, you can find more detail on exactly where to look for the material you need to understand to complete this assessment.

2. Communicating material in a way appropriate to the audience

You need to think about how best to communicate this material to the audience in the scenario. This involves paying attention to your presentationscontent(what you will include, in what order),language(what the audience will understand) andform(what the presentation will look like). These are all important in putting together an effective presentation. You can find more information in the writing your assignment section on what to consider in creating slides.

Remember that your audience is a mix of non-specialist volunteers of older age with lived experience of loneliness, trainee counsellors, and staff with a variable level of knowledge of mental health and older age. This means that you should avoid technical language or jargon as much as possible. You may need to introduce some technical language to complete the task, but try to keep this to a minimum and explain its meaning clearly.

Theneeds of your audienceshould guide what you decide to include in the presentation. This is a short presentation, so think about what the most important things are for this audience to understand and know. They are likely to be interested in what can cause loneliness, how it is experienced and the impact it can have in older age. Think about how different types of loneliness makes people feel and behave, and what this might look like to someone else. Think about how you can help the audience understand more thoroughly the issues of loneliness and the effects it has on those who come to the charity for help, and the types of support and help which can be provided. It is important to consider how to advise volunteers, trainee counsellors and staff on which kinds of interventions will be most effective and valuable to their clients.

You might want to think about whether this is a client group who may have some other restrictions on their lives, and how the service can engage with these. However, you should balance this against the fact that the charity has limited resources.

3. Applying your knowledge

The third part of the presentation asks you to make three recommendations. This asks you toapply your understandingin a new way. For this, you need to think about what you know about loneliness and how the associated problems might be addressed. You shouldinclude a rationalefor each of your recommendations to the team. To do well in this element, you need to explain clearlywhythe recommendation is important,howit would work andwhatneed it addresses.

Your recommendations should clearly flow from the research and theory you present about loneliness. You can be creative you dont have to simply find an intervention someone else has done but should be clear how the recommendations are grounded in the research. You can think about recommendations in terms of services for individuals, or groups of people who might experience loneliness, or they might be recommendations made to improve the knowledge and practice of the whole team (e.g. reflective practice). Your recommendations can focus on one or all of these. Again, be sure to explain any jargon to the audience.

In summary:

• create a presentation consisting of a script (of up to 1200 words) and slides (812, plus a slide for references)
• on the topic of loneliness in older individuals (65 or more years of age)
• for a non-specialist audience of volunteers and staff working in a service for clients of an older age.

Writing your assignment

This section provides guidance on how to approach your assignment what the assignment is asking you to do, and what you need to consider to create a good presentation.

Make sure you keep to the word limits for both the script and the slides. Remember: fewer words on the slides can often be a good thing. The word limits make it vital that you stay tightly focused on the assignment task and write concisely these are key academic skills for this assignment.

There will beonly onemethod for counting words accepted by your tutor. PowerPoint has a word count function, as outlined below:

• To count the words in your slides and notes pages within a PowerPoint presentation, go to the File tab and click Info.
• At the bottom of the rightmost pane, click Show All Properties.
• The Words property counts the words in both the slides and notes pages.

View larger image

The Info tab in PowerPoint; select Show All Properties (bottom right) to see the word count

While you are expected to draw on the content of Block 2 more generally, as well as the specific material on loneliness, make sure you select and prioritise the aspects that seem most relevant and would have the most impact in the scenario.

It is a good idea to produce a plan for your slide presentation first, as this will help you to stay focused. You could produce a bullet point for each slide.

As this presentation is written as an assignment in an academic context, it should be referenced as usual. You should reference content drawn from the book chapters and online materials, and any other external source used. You have already developed the skill to find and use one external, relevant reference for TMA 01. In this assignment, it is expected that you will consolidate the skills and experience from TMA 01 of finding an external source, by finding and using one relevant external source in this presentation.

It might be useful to look at the feedback you have received on other assignments from previous modules and on TMA 01, so that you are addressing any suggestions for improving your work.

Guidance on creating your slides

Your slides are the visual material that will accompany your presentation. You should create these in Microsoft PowerPoint. Your presentation should be 812 slides long, excluding the references slide.

The slides should comprise the following:

• One title slide: Include the title of the presentation and your identification number.
• One overview of presentation slide: Detail what the presentation will cover.
• Content slides: Include 810 content slides, covering these areas:

• loneliness: types, causes and impacts
• what helps
• • One references slide: Additional to the 8-12 slides listed above; this should include all of your references.

Before creating your slides, revisit the guidance and tips on creating good slides given inWeek 9, Section 7andSection 7.1.

In order to achieve a higher grade, attention to style and design is needed to bring your slides to life, so you should not submit completely plain slides. Remember that the visuals should always complement the points you have included on your slides. Creating clear points in both visual and teaching terms should be the primary aim. You should not include video material or animations.

The purpose of using a tool like PowerPoint is to help structure your presentation for your audience and enhance the points you are making. To be most effective, your slides should carry key points or messages, but not detail and comment. Do not be tempted to fill up your slides with lots of text and multiple images. This can be confusing for the audience and means that they spend time trying to decipher the slides rather than listening to what you are saying.

Text on your slides

Think carefully about the text that you include in your slides. This should be minimal and help to guide the audience through the presentation. Keep the font large; it should not be smaller than 16pt. Use bullet points and avoid full sentences. It can be good to play around with the colour of your background and text, but make sure these do not make the text difficult to read.

If you wish to reference a source of content, you must include an in-text citation on the slide where this content is being used. You are writing accompanying notes, which would be spoken as the slides are presented, but in-text citations should not be in the notes and are not necessary there. Any point for which you need to use an in-text citation as evidence should be included in the slide. The references slide at the end of the presentation should provide references that correspond with all in-text citations.

Images on your slides

You are encouraged to include images in your presentation,but notvideo content or animations. Think about whether your images are appropriate for the audience and context, and whether they add to the key points on the slide. In a professional scenario such as this one, you should try to avoid images that are distressing or dramatic. Also consider how the images you use portray older people living with wellbeing and mental health difficulties, and if they perpetuate any negative stereotypes.

When you include images, make sure they are correctly formatted. It is better to use fewer images sparingly rather than too many, which might clash and make your slides harder to decipher.

Note that in this TMA there is no need to reference where your images come from.

Guidance on writing your script

Alongside your slides you will provide a script for your presentation. This is everything that you would say if you were to do the presentation live. This should be written in full sentences. You should write the script in the style of speech, not in the style of a written essay. You used in-text citations on your slides, so you do not include these in the script.

Your script and slides should be submitted in the same PowerPoint document. Complete your script in the Notes function in PowerPoint. For each slide, write down in the notes exactly what you would say to accompany the visuals and think about how your script matches up to the key points, headings or messages given on the slide it accompanies. For example, for the title slide you might start with Hello, thank you for the opportunity to come and speak to you today. I am and I am going to talk about supporting older people experiencing loneliness and

A good script will be engaging and clear, and works in concert with the visual materials on the slides. You dont have to repeat the information on the slides; you can assume that people can read them. Instead, think of how your script and slides work together to convey the information to the audience.

Your script will be more detailed than your slides. This is where you can elaborate and explain the points on your slides, helping the audience to understand the brief content on the slides. If you find yourself writing lots of detail on the slides, think about whether that level of information would be better in the script.

It may be useful to practise your script out loud and see if it makes sense and flows when talked through, rather than written down. This might be a useful tactic overall for constructing your presentation and seeing if the visuals and script work together as a whole. If you talk through your slides and script, either alone or with an audience, it may be easier to see what can be cut or done to finesse the structure. You may even want to record yourself talking through your slides and write down what you say as a starting point for your script.

Remember that you are being assessed on your knowledge of the material, how you communicate the material, and how you apply your knowledge. This means your script will need to be detailed enough to convey your academic knowledge, while also being accessible to a non-specialist audience. This might take some time to get right, so be sure to leave plenty of time for editing your script and slides.

You dont need to say anything about the references slide. Remember that your presentation should not exceed 8-12 (includingthe title slide and overview of presentation slides) butexcludingthe references slide. The maximum word count for the slides is 1000 words, excluding the references slide, and the maximum word count for the script is 1200 words.

The whole presentation must not exceed 2200 words, excluding the references slide.

Relevant material

This section provides brief guidance on where to find relevant material pertinent to different aspects of the presentation. Before looking at the block content, note the general advice below.

Loneliness

This TMA assesses your knowledge from Block 2 of the module. The directly relevant material will be inWeek 9, Section 5 Lonelinessof the VLE andChapter 7, Section 2.1 Loneliness and its consequencesof the module textbook. However, it is a good idea to familiarise yourself with all the material in both the chapter and the VLE for Week 9, as other sections may cover useful topics and insights which relate to the source and impact of loneliness in older age.

TheIndependent study section of Week 9contains some very useful independent study resources on the topic of loneliness, as do the reference lists at the end of both Week 9 and Chapter 7.

Here are some sources of online information provided by organisations currently supporting older people and those experiencing loneliness, which may help with context and further ideas:

• Campaign to End Loneliness
• Scottish Government:Tackling social isolation and loneliness
• Age UK:Loneliness
• NHS:Loneliness in older people
• Mental Health Foundation:Loneliness and Mental Health report - UK.

It is a requirement of this assignment that you use one external academic source relevant to the presentation topic in your presentation. It could be one of the references from either Week 9 or Chapter 7, which you have gone to the library to find and use, or another relevant academic source not used in the module.

Study skills

The following study skills have been covered in the block.

• Week 7, Section 7.3,Using the WWW framework to evaluate sources on worrying
• Week 8, Section 5.1,Searching the literature and using the library
• Week 9, Section 7,Producing a slide presentation
• Week 10, Section 6,Judging a slide presentation

Submitting your work

You should submit your work using the eTMA system. You must complete your assignment in Microsoft PowerPoint using the slides and the notes functions.

If you require further guidance on submitting your slides via the eTMA system, see the following resource:

• Online TMA/EMA service.

Please note: The submitted file needs to be in .ppt or .pptx format.

Please ensure that you clearly label your file name with your student ID code, as for all other TMAs. Begin the presentation with a title slide containing:

• title of presentation
• personal identifier (PI).

Checklist

Use this checklist to make sure that you have completed everything before you submit your assignment.

Have I made sure I understand the question?Look atGetting startedin Social Sciences Assessment Information. See alsoUnderstanding the questionin the OU Help Centre.

Have I read all of the guidance notes for this assignment?Carefully read through the student notes that accompany your assignment to check that you have followed all the advice and instructions.

Have I actively studied the relevant module material and anything else to which Ive been directed?See the bookletsReading and taking notesandThinking critically.

Have I reflected on my learning, including feedback received on earlier assignments, in order to improve my skills?See section 2, Active learning and section 4, Being reflective of the bookletDeveloping effective study strategies. See alsoLearning from feedbackin the OU Help Centre.

Have I thought about how best to structure my answer and questions of style and language?Further advice on structuring answers is available in the relevant sections in Social Sciences Assessment Information; see, for example,Skill: Essay writing. For questions relating to style and language, see the sectionPresentation and languagein Social Sciences Assessment Information. See alsoDeveloping academic EnglishandWriting for universityin the OU Help Centre; and section 7 Choosing a writing style and section 8 Improving your written English of the bookletPreparing assignments.

Have I written in my own words?Guidance on writing in your own words is available in the sections onUnderstanding plagiarismandWriting in your own wordsin Social Sciences Assessment Information.

Have I, where necessary, used evidence to back up my arguments, and referenced correctly?Advice on using evidence to support your arguments is available in the section onSelecting your examplesin Social Sciences Assessment Information. See alsoGathering your materialsin the OU Help Centre. Guidance on referencing is available on the LibrarysReferencing and plagiarismpage.

Have I checked my word count?The assignment tells you the word limit for the TMA. An answer that is shorter than the word limit by more than 10% is likely to be too short to have fully answered the question. An answer that exceeds the word limit by more than 10% may be penalised. For further information see the section onWord limitin Social Sciences Assessment Information.

Have I written the word count at the end of my TMA?Check the word count and write that figure clearly at the end of the assignment.

Have I set out my assignment properly?See Section 3.3Conventions for presenting written workin your modules Assessment guidance, which you will find in the Assessment section of the module website.

Have I completed each part of the TMA? Read through the assignment notes carefully to check that you have completed all the necessary tasks.