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Study skills hub

Develop academic and communication skills to help you learn more effectively.

You need strong study skills to succeed throughout your degree. To help you develop, we offer four types of service to suit different learning styles:

  • online learning guides
  • hands-on experience and use of equipment
  • one-to-one support
  • workshops

Where to start

Our Skills Guides are online resources to develop your academic writing, digital skills and more.
Our Subject Guides include Library resources and support for your subject and contact details for your Faculty Librarians.

Common topics

Need more?

One-to-one appointments for academic writing, maths skills, data skills, and study coaching are tailored to your specific needs.
Hire a range of digital tools and equipment from our Creativity Lab.

Forthcoming study and digital skills workshops

Event

Monday 13 April 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

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

How to Proofread your Writing

Monday 13 April 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

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

If you find it difficult to proofread your work effectively this is the session for you. During this workshop, you will learn different strategies and techniques for helping you to identify and correct errors. Please find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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Event

Tuesday 14 April 2026 1pm - 3pm

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

Essential Spreadsheets (a 5 week course)

Tuesday 14 April 2026 1pm - 3pm

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

In these sessions you will learn how to exploit the capabilities of both Excel and Google Sheets for storing and analysing data, including features that are particularly helpful when working collaboratively.

All five sessions take place over five weeks, on Tuesday afternoons.

This course will take place online via Zoom.

Essential Spreadsheets: a Practical Guide

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Event

Wednesday 15 April 2026 10.30am - 12pm

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

Writing and Citing

Wednesday 15 April 2026 10.30am - 12pm

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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Event

Wednesday 15 April 2026 12.30pm - 1.30pm

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

The Distractibles Meetup

Wednesday 15 April 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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Event

Wednesday 15 April 2026 1pm - 2pm

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

AI and your future career

Wednesday 15 April 2026 1pm - 2pm

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

There has been a lot of talk recently about generative AI (artificial intelligence) and how it might transform our lives. In this session we will take a look at how AI might impact your career. We will offer an introductory overview on the effect AI tools are having on workplace recruitment and selection, and we’ll consider the employer perspective on the use of generative AI. This session will be particularly useful for taught students but is open to anyone at the University.

Skills Guide: Generative AI

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Event

Wednesday 15 April 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

3D capture with Photogrammetry

Wednesday 15 April 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

Have you ever come across a detailed 3D model of a real object and wondered how it was made? In this hands-on session, you’ll discover how a series of standard photographs, combined with some software magic, can be transformed into a 3D digital model—a process known as photogrammetry.

We’ll start by photographing a university sculpture and sharing some top tips for capturing great images. Then, you’ll get a chance to process the photos yourself. Along the way, we’ll explore what to do when things don’t go quite as planned and share helpful tricks to refine and tidy up your model for viewing.

This session will show you how to digitize objects related to your work or study and demonstrate how 3D scans can captivate and engage audiences with the unique aspects of your research or interests.

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Event

Thursday 16 April 2026 10am - 12pm

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

Getting better at Google Docs: from essentials to advanced (and everything in-between!)

Thursday 16 April 2026 10am - 12pm

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

In this session, we will look at making the most of Google Docs and all of the clever features it has to offer, showing you how it is so much more than just a simple word processor.

We will cover all the essentials for those new to Google Docs or transferring from Microsoft Word, as well as the more advanced features for those already familiar. This is a chance to get the full inside scoop on how others are working effectively with Google Docs and see everything it has to offer!

Creating documents

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Event

Thursday 16 April 2026 1pm - 3pm

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

Essential Video Editing

Thursday 16 April 2026 1pm - 3pm

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

Want to be able to edit video content?

Video is a really useful medium for storytelling, educating, and sharing your ideas. Whether you're making a longer film, or short videos for social media, we'll cover tips on many types of video. Based in the Creativity lab, this session will go through key video editing concepts and techniques to help you get started, from gathering your material to exporting your completed video. We’ll explore top tips for recording video and sound, along with how to put everything together using video editing software. During the session, you'll have a go at editing pre-recorded footage using some recommended tools and you will be able to begin your own creation.

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Event

Thursday 16 April 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Regressions

Thursday 16 April 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This session explains various regression tests which aim to predict an outcome variable using one or more different predictor variables. During the workshop you will be able to practice running these tests in your chosen statistical software, (e.g. SPSS, RStudio, STATA).

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Event

Thursday 16 April 2026 3pm - 5pm

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

Create a simple 2D platformer game

Thursday 16 April 2026 3pm - 5pm

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

Let's make a simple platform game. Games can be a brilliant tool to aid learning, or share your study/research.

Using a tool called Gdevelop, we'll look at the beginner steps to build your first simple game, with step-by-step instructions and lots of time to have a go yourself. We'll look at some of the key areas of game mechanics, and have some time to plan out our ideas for a simple game. No coding knowledge is required. This is an in-person session in the Creativity Lab.

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Contact us

Contact the Library Help desk with any questions you have about study skills.

Contact the Library