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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

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

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

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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Event

Wednesday 4 November 2026 12.30pm - 1.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Students/staff

The Distractibles Meetup *Online

Wednesday 4 November 2026 12.30pm - 1.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Students/staff

Finding it hard to focus and plagued by distractions? Join The Distractibles Meetup online on the first Wednesday of each month, 12:30pm to 1:30pm. We are a support group of staff and students with small group chat and an ideas bank of things to try. Whether you're neurodivergent or just easily distracted, our peer-support group might be just the thing for you. The Distractibles.

Go to event

Event

Wednesday 4 November 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 (COSAL)

Wednesday 4 November 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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Event

Friday 6 November 2026 12pm - 1.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Critical Thinking: What It Is and How to Do It

Friday 6 November 2026 12pm - 1.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Students are often told that they need to think critically. In this session, you will learn how you think critically all the time and how to apply this to thinking critically in your studies. There will be clear examples of critical thinking and we will show you how you can do this in a number of academic contexts. Please find related online resources here:https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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Event

Monday 9 November 2026 1pm - 2pm

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

Top Tips for Accessible Social Media Content

Monday 9 November 2026 1pm - 2pm

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

What good is trying to reach people with social media content if it's inaccessible for some people? In this bitesize session we will look at:

  • A range of transferable principles and tips for making accessible social media content
  • Tips on using some social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube
  • A checklist of considerations while writing and creating content

There will be chance to ask questions and share your own useful methods and tips.

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Event

Monday 9 November 2026 2pm - 4pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Getting Started with RStudio

Monday 9 November 2026 2pm - 4pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This workshop will introduce you to the RStudio interface, and writing R code to import, manage and plot data. Suitable for people who have not done any computer coding before, but would like to use RStudio in the future to carry out statistical analyses.

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Event

Tuesday 10 November 2026 10am - 11.30am

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

Organise your life with Google!

Tuesday 10 November 2026 10am - 11.30am

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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Event

Tuesday 10 November 2026 1pm - 3pm

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

Designing presentations in PowerPoint and Google Slides

Tuesday 10 November 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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Event

Wednesday 11 November 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Writing and Citing

Wednesday 11 November 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
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

Go to event

Event

Wednesday 11 November 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 11 November 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

Go to event

Event

Wednesday 11 November 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 (COSAL)

Wednesday 11 November 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.

Go to event

Event

Wednesday 11 November 2026 2pm - 3pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Open to: Everyone

Get started with Audio Editing

Wednesday 11 November 2026 2pm - 3pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Open to: Everyone

Needing to edit a podcast or audio track? In this hybrid session, we'll share our top tips for when it comes to editing an audio file. We'll take you through some tools and advice on how to edit any sound file; whether you're making a podcast, playing around with music or just recording yourself. From trimming and splitting your clips to our favourite tools, this session will get you ready for creating and combining your own audio files. This session is useful if you have any audio like music, podcast or recordings. We'll show you the fundamentals to start having a go yourself.

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Contact us

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

Contact the Library