“Quote, Unquote”
Welcome to Skills for Learning
Skills for Learning is a collection of resources to support the learning and teaching of academic skills.
Developing your academic skills is an essential part of successful study at university and your future employability. Academic skills include the use of IT, numeracy, academic literacy, problem solving, critical thinking, working with others and research skills.
We also offer Skills for Learning workshops and tutorials on academic communication, maths and IT skills.
Off-campus access: If you are accessing the site off-campus, you will be asked to log in using your user id and password from your student card. For more information, see our Frequently Asked Questions page.
What you'll find on Skills for Learning
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Academic Communication
Learn about writing essays and reports; how to reference your sources correctly; what plagiarism is; how to make a mind map; how to read more effectively; what critical thinking is; and test your grammar and spelling.
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Business Enterprise
Learn about what makes an entrepreneur; the different legal formats describing types of business; what you need to start a business; and how to do market research.
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Group Skills
Learn about why group work at University matters; how to organize a meeting; effective teamworking; and team development theory.
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Information Technology
Learn about how to use your PC more effectively; the meaning of technical terms in the IT glossary; and download IT self study booklets covering a range of topics, including Office 2010.
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Learning & Teaching
Learn about the difference between formative and summative assessment; different methods of assessment such as exams; how to become an independent learner; and successful language learning.
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Maths
Learn about how to calculate percentages; express proportions as ratios; use different types of charts; and test your maths skills.
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Personal Development
Learn about developing your self-confidence; becoming more creative; improving your time management skills; and how to cope with culture shock.
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Reflection
Learn about why reflection is important in academic study; different ways of reflecting on your experience, such as critical incident analysis; or writing a reflective journal; and different models for structuring reflection.
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Research
Learn about the research process; ethics and research; finding information; evaluating websites; and analysing and presenting data.
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International Students
A collection of our website resources that are especially useful to our international students while studying here.
PDF copies of the timetable for printing can be found on the Workshop and Tutorials page.
What's new?
- Problem solving
Recognise a way of diagnosing problems effectively and develop techniques that can be used to solve them.
- Microsoft Office 2010 training videos
The tutorials offer a comprehensive guide to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The tutorials are broken down into main topic areas which are further divided into a set of sub topics.
- IT self study booklets - Office 2010
These booklets are designed to be used for self learning as well as in the classroom. They cover various topics within Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Critical thinking
Understand how critical thinking is used at university, learn how to analyse arguments and find ways improve arguments in your own work.
- "Quote, Unquote" - Online version
The Skills for Learning guide to Harvard referencing is now available online in a collection of web pages.
- Graduate attributes
Find out which Skills for Learning resources can help you develop your Graduate Attributes.
- Time management
Analyse how you use your time, identify areas for improvement and learn how to prioritise academic work and other activities.
Popular resources
- Types of business
Learn about the most important legal formats describing types of business and the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
- Getting started with IT
Identify key IT skills and learn some techniques to use your PC more effectively.
- Report writing
Find out about the sections that should be included when writing a report and the correct writing style that should be used.
- Models for structuring reflection
Learn about the models and theories that you can use to help structure your reflective work.
- What is reflection
Explains what reflection is, why you may be asked to do it and gives some advice and strategies to help you.
- Essay writing
Learn to analyse essay questions, to write your own questions and to plan, prepare and write essays using the appropriate style and presentation.
