Understand your assignment task before you start! Try these resources.
The University of Sydney's First Year Experience series, although a decade old, has some valuable tips for new students.
There are many ways to plan for a successful assignment - it's useful to choose what suits you as a researcher, so several options are included here:
Using Mind Maps or Concept Maps are often a useful way to organise your thoughts about a new topic. There are basically four different types of Mind Map, though a Hierarchical or Spider Mind Map are usually the most useful for organising your research. Mind Maps can assist you to identify the main concepts, and the relationships between concepts:
| Hierarchical Mind Maps | Spider Mind Maps | Mind Maps can get messy, but are useful! |
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"Hand drawn mindmap" by Austin Kleon 
They use colour, images and hierarchical grouping of concepts.