Choosing the Right Statistical Software for You

Thursday 19 February 2026 2pm - 3pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This session is designed for those who are unsure which statistical software best suits their research needs. We'll provide a clear, practical comparison of SPSS, R, and Stata, covering core features, accessibility, and pros and cons of each. Whether you're just getting started or considering switching tools, this workshop will help you make an informed choice based on your skills, project type, and long-term goals. We’ll also share helpful resources for getting started with each platform.

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UG Dissertation Writing 1: Introduction and Literature Review

Friday 20 February 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: virtual event
Open to: Everyone

We will look at the opening section of your dissertation, introduce the main components to include, and talk about how we use literature in our dissertation. How much reading should you do? How do we find the useful information quickly and efficiently? What do we class as a reliable source? How do we incorporate our reading into our own work and acknowledge the source?

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Wrestling with your reading list: How to read online books and articles

Friday 20 February 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Whether preparing for your seminar, revising for an exam or researching an assignment, you're likely to have to do some reading. And that means dealing with your reading list, the library catalogue, a publisher platform - or all three! If this seems daunting - don't worry, we're here to help. This session is designed to help you understand your reading list, get the most from the library catalogue and learn how to use publisher platforms to get the texts you need in the file formats you prefer.

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Confidence to Present

Monday 23 February 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: LFA/144 Academic Skills workshop room (Harry Fairhurst Building, Campus West)
Open to: Everyone

Your presentation may be well put together, but can you present it effectively? In this interactive workshop we discuss and practise some of the delivery skills needed to communicate your work to an audience, be that through a PPT or an academic poster presentation.

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Blender: Part 1 & Part 2 (ONLINE)

Tuesday 24 February 2026 10am - 12pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Interested in how more complex 3D models are created from scratch?

Blender is a free, open-source and advanced tool for creating detailed 3D models and is widely used for many purposes, from video games to 3D printing. In this two-week course, we will explore how to get started with this tool and explore some of brilliant ways it can be used to help your study, teaching or research. We will cover:

• Key tools and keyboard shortcuts for getting started
• Using automated tools to make changes to models
• Lots of practice in creating your own objects from scratch
• Creating a number of parts and putting them together

On signing up to this session, you are signing up for two two-hour sessions, with the second session held the same time the following week:

Session 1 takes place on Tuesday 4 November 2025, 3pm - 5pm Session 2 takes place on Tuesday 11 November 2025, 3pm - 5pm

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Organise your life with Google!

Tuesday 24 February 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Sort your life out!

Join us for this session as we share tips on how to use Google’s tools to help you stay organised. Whether it’s using note taking apps to stay on top of your to-do list, managing your time effectively in Google Calendar, staying on top of your emails or organising your files in Google Drive, we’ve got you covered.

We will look at helping you get organised with:

• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Keep
• Google Tasks
• Google Drive
• Google Chrome
• Google Contacts.

Google Workspace: a Practical Guide

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DIGITAL WEDNESDAYS: A student’s guide to using generative AI at York

Wednesday 25 February 2026 1pm - 2pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Generative artificial intelligence (or AI for short) is being talked about and used all around us, including in universities. In this hour-long bitesized session, the first in a series of AI-related sessions, we will take a look at what generative AI actually is and which generative AI tools are available for students to use at York. We’ll then delve into the advantages, disadvantages, and ethical conundrums that have arisen from generative AI, including false authorship, copyright, and training data. Can we trust the outputs that generative AI gives us? And is it going to take over the world?

This session will be particularly useful for taught students but is open to anyone at the University.

Generative AI: a Practical Guide

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Confidence to Speak and Listen (COSAL)

Wednesday 25 February 2026 1.30pm - 3pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: LFA/144 Academic Skills workshop room (Harry Fairhurst Building, Campus West)
Open to: Everyone

Confidence to Speak and Listen workshops are open to all. They give you the chance to get to know others from different disciplines and to practise communicating. Each time we meet we engage in interactive activities involving your voice, your body and your ears! We discuss confidence from perspectives of both speaker and listener and identify communication strategies to take away and apply in different contexts. To get maximum benefit and build your confidence incrementally, we recommend coming to more than one workshop. These interactive sessions are not recorded. The content is different each time, as it is built by you on the day. Slides are not available.

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Digital skills for research: Searching the literature

Thursday 26 February 2026 1pm - 3pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

It's important to do the reading, but literature searching itself can be a hassle. In this session, aimed predominantly at PhD research but applicable to other large-scale research projects, we look at the stages of the literature search process, from planning and preparing your search, developing an effective search strategy, and utilising specialist search skills, through to accessing the texts that your search finds.

Searching for information: Search skills

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Getting Started with SPSS

Thursday 26 February 2026 2pm - 4pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This session is for people who have never used SPSS before or who want a refresher. You will learn how to get data in, quick ways of cleaning your data, running basic statistics and how to create graphs in SPSS.

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Academic Language

Friday 27 February 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

What are the key features of academic language? How can we achieve an academic style in our writing? This workshop focuses on the differences between academic language and the language we use on a daily basis, and tries to suggest elements to improve our academic writing, mainly in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and style.

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Writing and Citing

Monday 2 March 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: virtual event
Open to: Everyone

In academic writing, we need to refer to the ideas and work of others. To do this, we often use direct quotations, paraphrases, and summaries. This workshop will focus on when and how to use sources in these different ways. It will also focus on how to avoid plagiarism when using others' work. Find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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Managing and Analysing Questionnaire Data

Tuesday 3 March 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This session is for people who have collected and will be analysing quantitative questionnaire data using statistical software (e.g. SPSS, RStudio, STATA, Excel). We will cover the types of data produced by different question types, how to summarise and visualise responses and how to analyse data. Using an example dataset, you will be able to practice managing and analysing questionnaire data in your chosen statistical software.

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UG Dissertation Writing 2: Method and Results

Wednesday 4 March 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: virtual event
Open to: Undergraduates

We will look at how we can plan and piece together your methods section. What actually goes into methods, and what do we save for the results and discussion? We will also look at how we present our research findings and data - How much data do we even need? What do we do when the results aren’t what we expected?

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DIGITAL WEDNESDAYS: Creating accessible presentations

Wednesday 4 March 2026 1pm - 2pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Whether you are presenting in-person, online, or just creating slides for learning materials: it's important to consider the elements and faux pas that can render your presentation inaccessible. Join us to look at the key universal design principles to consider when using Google Slides and PowerPoint in your work and practical tips for when presenting both online and around the University.

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Confidence to Speak and Listen (COSAL)

Wednesday 4 March 2026 1.30pm - 3pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: LFA/144 Academic Skills workshop room (Harry Fairhurst Building, Campus West)
Open to: Everyone

Confidence to Speak and Listen workshops are open to all. They give you the chance to get to know others from different disciplines and to practise communicating. Each time we meet we engage in interactive activities involving your voice, your body and your ears! We discuss confidence from perspectives of both speaker and listener and identify communication strategies to take away and apply in different contexts. To get maximum benefit and build your confidence incrementally, we recommend coming to more than one workshop. These interactive sessions are not recorded. The content is different each time, as it is built by you on the day. Slides are not available.

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Create a 3D-printable part

Wednesday 4 March 2026 2pm - 4pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: LFA/103 Creativity Lab (Harry Fairhurst Building, Campus West)
Open to: Everyone

This in-person interactive workshop is intended for anyone who would like to come and try out 3D modelling, and learn a new digital skill. Even if you're not sure what you would use it for, come along and we will share lots of ideas that relate to your own study, teaching or research.

Have a brilliant idea for a 3D design? Let's sketch it and then turn it into a digital 3D model. In this practical session, we'll look at using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software to learn how we can design our own models and how we can alter our designs ready for 3D printing. No previous experience needed, we'll show you how to get started in a modelling tool and work through some of the key tips. We'll include information at the end of the session how you can then get access to our YorCreate makerspace to 3D print your design. Please note: to use our YorCreate 3D printers, you must also attend a separate safety induction before or after this session, see the YorCreate webpage for upcoming dates

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Designing presentations in PowerPoint and Google Slides

Thursday 5 March 2026 1pm - 3pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

How can you create presentation slides that are memorable and impactful while also being accessible? PowerPoint and Google Slides include many under-exploited features that can help you create more effective presentations (as well as other resources). This session explores the principles of designing presentations, including templates, animation, accessibility principles, and working with media. We'll also look at presentation features in these tools that can help you as you convey your material to an audience.

Presentations Practical Guide

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Getting Started with STATA

Thursday 5 March 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This workshop will cover how to import, manage and plot data using the STATA software and its coding language. In this introduction you will practice getting data into STATA, as well as cleaning, summarising and plotting the data. No prior knowledge of computer coding is needed to attend this session.

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