Study skills hub

Assignment Planning

Wednesday 21 October 2026 10.30am - Friday 11 December 2026 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Assignment planning at university involves organising and scheduling the tasks required to complete academic assignments. This workshop covers understanding the assignment requirements, breaking down tasks, setting deadlines, and allocating time effectively to ensure thorough research, writing, and revision.

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Editing content for Social Media

Thursday 22 October 2026 10am - 12pm

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

Need to edit media content for social media? In this practical workshop, we’ll demonstrate tools and tips for editing some video and image content, thinking about what works best for social media. There will be advice on how to record content in the right size and scale, and how to plan your content to clearly portray your message. We’ll explore:

• Basics of social media
• Different platforms, types of post and choosing what works best
• Tips for capturing and filming content
• Key techniques of video and image editing
• Demonstrations of free-to-use editing tools
• Ensuring your posts are accessible

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Creating surveys with Qualtrics

Thursday 22 October 2026 1pm - 2pm

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

Tried Google Forms and feel the need for something stronger? Or maybe you’ve heard of Qualtrics but don’t know where to start? Dive into our Essential Qualtrics Bitesize training session, where we'll guide you through the basics of this advanced survey design platform. We will explore topics including:

• Qualtrics basics & getting started
• Survey formatting & customisation
• Implementing skip logic and survey flow for a tailored respondent experience
• Settings & sharing.

Data: Gathering data

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Strategies to Increase Reading Speed

Friday 23 October 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Let's learn how reading strategies, such as skimming, scanning, text navigation, and deducing meaning from context, can be applied to the reading of academic texts and considerably speed up our reading.

Find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/skills/reading

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Academic posters: Designing posters in PowerPoint

Tuesday 27 October 2026 10am - 12pm

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

Informative posters are a popular way to share research findings and other information at conferences and exhibitions. There are many desktop publishing applications you could use to design posters but in this session we'll demonstrate Microsoft PowerPoint: although intended for presentations, it shares many features with other publishing applications and generally has the advantage of familiarity, making it a popular and effective choice for poster design.

In this session we’ll look at the design principles behind what makes a successful poster, and how to configure PowerPoint for the creation of both large-format printed posters and virtual poster presentations. We'll look at how to plan your layout, and how to make best use of images and text in your design.

Academic Posters Practical Guide

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Google Vids: quick video creation

Tuesday 27 October 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

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

Google Vids is a web-based video editing tool, available as part of Google Workspace. In this bitesize session, we’ll show you how to easily compile and edit your own videos. We’ll explore, using the in-built recording feature, AI videos tools, importing pre-existing videos and how to cut your video clips. This is an online session held via Zoom.

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Academic Writing: What It Is and How to Do It

Tuesday 27 October 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

A number of academic text types, ranging from different essay types to reports, will be introduced in this session and then we will look at strategies for determining which of these best suits our assignment. In this session you will learn the basics of what academic writing is so you can recognise that style in the texts you are reading and begin to do it yourself. Please find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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The Distractibles Meetup

Wednesday 28 October 2026 12.30pm - 1.30pm

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

Finding it hard to focus and plagued by distractions? Join The Distractibles Meetup on Wednesdays, 12.30pm to 1.30pm in the Library, LFA/144. We are a support group of staff and students with small group chat and accessibility ideas to try. Whether you're neurodivergent or just easily distracted, our peer-support group might be just the thing for you. The Distractibles

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Confidence to Speak and Listen (COSAL)

Wednesday 28 October 2026 1.30pm - 3.15pm

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 WEDNESDAYS: How do you engage with generative AI ethics?

Wednesday 28 October 2026 3.30pm - 5pm

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

Generative AI has been a hot topic for several years now, whether that's hype about what it might do or fear about the impacts it will have on our world. The University of York has its own position statement on generative AI. You probably have your own thoughts and feelings about generative AI and its use.

In this face-to-face workshop, you will explore some of the issues and limitations associated with generative AI and discuss what the impact of these might be on the future of education and our world in general. You will consider how you can engage with these issues, keeping up to date and thinking about practical ways to have an impact on the future.

Skills Guide: Generative AI

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Create models for 3D printing

Thursday 29 October 2026 10am - 12pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
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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10 tips for better surveys

Thursday 29 October 2026 1pm - 2pm

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

Let's make badly designed forms and surveys a thing of the past! In this session, we'll take a look at the principles of survey design, from what kinds of questions to ask to get the data you're looking for to how to choose question types and use logic.

Data: Gathering data

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Getting Started with SPSS

Thursday 29 October 2026 3pm - 5pm

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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