the entire literature review section felt like an artificial exercise to find other people’s words for what I wanted to say, but from “reputable journal” sources. frustrating as hell, and completely artificial and disingenuine. That format is a total crock, essentially following the formula “find a bunch of published journal articles that have snippets of text that sort of say what you want, then try to somehow string them together to approximate the narrative you have in your head, providing proper citation to ensure it’s all reputable.” I hate it. It’s as much a product of the length limitation (an artificial constraint) as the format itself, though.

I hope I never have to write another paper in this format, ever again. If I have my way, the next academic writing I do will be my MSc thesis, but that’s not for some time (haven’t even written up the research proposal yet) – it’ll likely have to have a lit review section, but I will do it on my terms.

You write, “Mott (2010) described the LMS as being central to the business of colleges and universities, and simultaneously coming to represent and reinforce a higher learning status quo. The scale and scope of the LMS leads participants to consider it too inflexible (Mott, 2010)”

Now, this isn’t anything you haven’t said before, I haven’t said before, a bunch of people haven’t said before. You maybe could have said this more or less clearly. Fine. But why the reference to Mott (2010)? Is it because, it wasn’t said before Mott said it? It wasn’t authoritative? It surely isn’t where you learned this for the first time. So you’ve introduced a layer of fiction into your paper.

In fact (and I could go through this point by point) your entire ‘literature review’ section is fiction. It’s not fiction in the sense that nobody said any of these things, but rather, it’s fiction in the sense of describing any actual history or account of the discussion.

It’s not a question of whether or not academic readers should here the things you have to say. They should, absolutely, and it is discouraging that they are so limited that they wouldn’t see it if you didn’t write in this forum. But to express it in this *format* lends to them a false sense of belief that they have been plugged into the discussion all along, and that their knowledge (based on that ‘literature’) is current.

I’m sure you were required to write the paper in this format for your course. So much the worse for your course. Please never write a paper in this format again. You’re better than that.