Get started with 3D modelling

Thursday 29 January 2026 1pm - 2pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: online
Open to: staff/Students/research graduate

Let's explore the world of 3D models. In this introductory online session, we'll quickly share our top tips for getting started with designing and creating a 3D model from scratch. We'll show you a few useful tools, which are useful for different purposes such as 3D printing, or for games/digital experiences.

Open for everyone, we'll get practical with some easy-to-use free tools to help you get started with modelling your own creations. 3D models are great for 3D printing, using in a virtual environment and sharing ideas. They are also an interesting way to help explain a topic or engage people with your work. Feel free to come along with an idea of your own!

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Critical Thinking: What It Is and How to Do It

Monday 2 February 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

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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Academic Writing: What It Is and How to Do It

Wednesday 4 February 2026 10.30am - 12pm

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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Academic Integrity and Turnitin

Friday 6 February 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This workshop introduces students to the principles of academic integrity and why they matter in higher education. Participants will explore common challenges such as plagiarism, collusion (inappropriate collaboration), and poor source use, while learning practical strategies to maintain honesty and accountability in their work. Through examples and guided activities, the session builds confidence in ethical academic practices and supports students in developing responsible research and writing habits.

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Time Management

Monday 9 February 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

In this workshop we share tips and tools for organising yourself to enable you to make the best use of time available.

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PGT Dissertation Writing: An Introduction

Tuesday 10 February 2026 3.30pm - 5pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Postgraduates

This workshop is for postgraduate taught students only. It will define what a dissertation is and show how it differs from other assignment types. It will then go to look at the opportunities writing a dissertation offers students and the academic skills that are needed to write one. Finally, it will briefly look at the different sections/chapters that can be included in dissertations and what type of information these sections/chapters typically contain.

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Confidence to Speak and Listen (COSAL)

Wednesday 11 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 WEDNESDAYS: An introduction to useful digital tools available at York

Wednesday 11 February 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

At York you have access to a wealth of software, from general 'Office' applications like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 through to more specific programs to help you be organised or be creative. This session (aimed at all members of the University, however long you've been here) will provide an overview of some of the digital tools available that you might find useful, with a particular focus on applications for organising information, keeping track of your notes, working collaboratively, and keeping up to date. We will share some of our tips for making the best use of technology, and there'll be time to ask questions and share any of your own IT tips.

'You don't know what you don't know' Skills Guide

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Learn to code: Introduction to coding

Thursday 12 February 2026 10am - 12pm

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

Want to know more about what computer coding is, how it works, and how you can start learning to code?

This introductory workshop is for anyone who is new to writing computer programs or learning coding languages. The workshop will look at useful coding concepts and some basics of the coding language Python to demonstrate these, and will cover:

• How computers work and how this applies to coding
• What are coding languages?
• Key concepts in coding, such as variables, loops, and data types
• How to get started with learning coding.

Coding Practical Guide

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10 tips for Video Editing (Online)

Thursday 12 February 2026 1pm - 2pm

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

10 tips for Video Editing

In this quick-fire online webinar, we'll be going over our 10 ten tips for creating and editing videos, from creating and gathering video material to exporting a completed project. Whether you're creating videos for social media, making films to promote your work, or working with short videos for any other purpose, come along to this session to learn about our recommendations for how to get started and what to remember. We will also signpost further resources and training available from the Creativity Lab.

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Beginners Guide to Quantitative Data Analysis

Thursday 12 February 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This beginner-friendly workshop is designed for those who are collecting or working with quantitative data. We'll guide you through the essential steps of planning your data analysis - from clarifying research questions and identifying variable types, to selecting the most appropriate statistical tests. Whether you're just starting your project or preparing to analyse your dataset, this session will help you build confidence, avoid common mistakes, and make informed decisions about your analysis. No prior statistics knowledge is required.

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Learn to code: Introduction to programming with Python (a 2 week course)

Friday 13 February 2026 10am - 12pm

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

Looking to start learning Python?

This introductory hands-on 2 week course gets you familiar with the coding language Python and using Python for basic data analysis and visualisation. Over the two 2-hour long sessions, you will learn the basics of how to:

• Start using Python in notebooks
• Create variables and work with data types
• Process data, from analysis to data visualisation
• Repeat actions with loops and use decisions in your code
• Use functions to improve your programs
• Deal with errors

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Note-making for Reading: What It Is and How to Do It

Friday 13 February 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

It is important that both reading and note-making are done with a clear purpose. This workshop will introduce a number of different note-making systems/methods and show how these can be used effectively as a bridge between academic reading and writing. Please find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/skills/reading

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Academic Reading: What It Is and How to Do It

Monday 16 February 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Learning to read academic texts more effectively, by reading actively, critically, and purposefully, is the focus of this session. You will also learn strategies to reduce the time you spend reading. Please find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/skills/reading

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3D capture with Photogrammetry

Tuesday 17 February 2026 10am - 12pm

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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Academic posters: Designing posters in PowerPoint

Tuesday 17 February 2026 1pm - 3pm

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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Confidence to Speak and Listen (COSAL)

Wednesday 18 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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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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Structuring Paragraphs Effectively

Friday 6 March 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

One of the most important areas of academic writing is being able to build clear paragraphs which develop a topic in a coherent and cohesive way. This session will not only focus on how paragraphs are structured and the different types of sentences paragraphs contain, but it will also look at how we can signal the link between paragraphs. It will also pay specific attention to how to write clear topic sentences. Find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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Designing surveys

Friday 6 March 2026 1pm - 3pm

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. We'll then consider how put them to practice in the two main survey tools we have at York: Google Forms and Qualtrics.

Data: Gathering data

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How to Write an Argument

Monday 9 March 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This workshop introduces students to the key components of effective academic argumentation. Participants will learn how to develop a clear position, support it with credible evidence, and structure their ideas logically. Through practical examples and guided activities, the session helps students strengthen their critical thinking, refine their reasoning, and communicate persuasive arguments in their academic writing. Find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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360° Filmmaking

Tuesday 10 March 2026 10am - 12pm

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

Ever wondered how a 360° video works and where the camera operator is hiding?

In this practical session in the Creativity Lab, we’ll explore and play with 360° cameras. Tops tips will be shared around capturing (including how to hide), followed by a chance to capture your own footage. You will learn about some practical considerations when you’re trying to film a whole space in one go and how to go about planning for a video. We’ll explore basic editing and how to compile your 360° videos, along with what to do with them once completed.

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Procrastination: What It Is and How to Deal With It

Tuesday 10 March 2026 1.30pm - 3pm

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

In this workshop we examine procrastination, its possible causes and consequences, then look at strategies to try to address procrastination in creative and constructive ways.

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PGT Dissertation Writing: An Introduction

Tuesday 10 March 2026 3.30pm - 5pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Postgraduates

This workshop is for postgraduate taught students only. It will define what a dissertation is and show how it differs from other assignment types. It will then go to look at the opportunities writing a dissertation offers students and the academic skills that are needed to write one. Finally, it will briefly look at the different sections/chapters that can be included in dissertations and what type of information these sections/chapters typically contain.

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PGT Dissertation Writing 1: introduction and literature review

Wednesday 11 March 2026 10.30am - 12pm

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

This workshop is for postgraduate taught students only. It will look at the purpose of introductions and literature reviews and then go on to examine how they can be structured and the sort of information they typically contain. It will also focus on the academic skills and language needed to write these sections of a dissertation.

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Confidence to Speak and Listen (COSAL)

Wednesday 11 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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DIGITAL WEDNESDAYS: Microsoft Word for dissertations and theses

Wednesday 11 March 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

When producing a long piece of academic writing such as a dissertation or thesis, you will save time and effort if you take advantage of the most appropriate features in Microsoft Word. In this session we'll explore approaches to using Word that are particularly important when you need to produce material as efficiently as possible to match academic guidelines. We'll explore the power of using styles to make it easier to add outline headings, tables of contents and to make your document accessible. We'll also look at making the most of the tools available, such as adding automatic page numbers, tables of contents, and captions.

Creating documents

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Critically evaluating information: What makes a credible source?

Thursday 12 March 2026 1pm - 3pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

In this session we'll think broadly about what makes a reliable source of information. We'll start by considering online sources and how, given so many voices, and the growth of generative artificial intelligence, we can possibly hope to tell truth from lies. We’ll explore frameworks for evaluating information and determining credibility, and we'll consider why some sources are considered more reliable than others. We'll also start to look at how we might use such sources in support of an academic argument.

Being critical: Evaluating information Searching for information: Academic sources

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Bivirate Statistics: Correlations, T-tests, and Chi-square

Thursday 12 March 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This session explores the essential statistics for analysing two variables or questionnaire responses. During the workshop you will be able to practice running correlations, t-tests and chi-square tests in your chosen statistical software, (e.g. SPSS, RStudio, STATA).

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Writing effective prompts for generative AI with Gemini and NotebookLM

Friday 13 March 2026 1pm - 2pm

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

Generative AI tools can be used effectively to work through problems or to develop your understanding of a topic, but you need to think carefully about the ‘prompts’ (the questions and commands) you're using if you're to get good quality results. In this hour-long bitesize workshop we will explore how to craft effective and safe prompts for the main AI tools we have at York — Google Gemini and NotebookLM — and how this compares to more traditional ways of finding academic information. We will also consider how to adapt and interpret your outputs, and how to make best use of advanced models and features within the tools.

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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PGT Dissertation Writing 2: Methods and Results

Friday 13 March 2026 3.30pm - 5pm

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

This workshop is for postgraduate taught students only. It will look at the purpose of methodology and results sections, and then go on to examine how they can be structured and the sort of information they typically contain. We will give a brief summary of the most popular software used to help you analyse your data and present it in your report. This workshop will also focus on the skills and language needed to write these sections of a dissertation

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Essay Writing

Monday 16 March 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

How to understand correctly what essay titles are asking you to do, and how this can help you to adopt an appropriate essay structure and line of argument are the main focuses of this session. It will also introduce a range of essay structures and strategies for developing persuasive arguments. Find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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Reference management

Tuesday 17 March 2026 1pm - 3pm

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

How do you manage your reading and keep track of the material you find? In this workshop, we'll take a look at how managing your reading fits into the academic reading and citing process, reflect on what might work for you, and explore options for keeping track of your reading. We'll then look at how reference management software can help you store, organise, and use citation information, looking at how specific features of Zotero and Paperpile can be used for this process.

Reference Management Practical Guide

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How to Use Feedback to Improve your Mark

Tuesday 17 March 2026 3.30pm - 5pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Sometimes, when we get feedback from markers, we are not sure which direction to take to make improvements. In this workshop, we will be looking at feedback on assignments from academic staff and identifying how this advice can be used to improve our writing. We will also consider what resources/sessions are available from the academic skills community to work on these areas for improvement.

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Academic Grammar and Vocabulary

Wednesday 18 March 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

A range of grammatical structures that are commonly found in academic texts will be introduced, focusing on their function and form so that you can start using these structures in your own writing. We will also focus on academic words that occur frequently together in academic texts, such as ‘conduct research’, and how the use of these phrases (collocations) can make your academic writing sound more natural. Please find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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How to run better Zoom meetings

Wednesday 18 March 2026 12.30pm - 2pm

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

Whether you are using Zoom for meetings, interviews, teaching sessions or looking to generally improve your video-conferencing skills: join us to look at all the settings and best-practice to follow to make your Zoom sessions run smoothly with confidence.

We will look at:

• Setting up your Zoom calls with confidence
• Managing participants, keeping on top of the chat and being a responsive host
• Common faux-pas, issues and troubleshooting
• Managing hybrid meetings effectively
• How to record and share your meetings
• Following accessibility best-practices

Video conferencing

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Explore handheld 3D scanning

Wednesday 18 March 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

Let's create a high-quality digital twin of a 3D object. Starting with a chance to try out dedicated handheld 3D scanner, we'll then look at the considerations and challenges of trying to create a digital replica. We'll also share a whole host of ideas for how you could use 3D scans in your study, work or research; like animating them, or even 3D printing them. This session is open to anyone, including those who are interested in seeing how 3D models can help people engage with your work or area of study. If you have your own portable item you'd like to scan, bring it along!

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Finding academic literature - going beyond your reading list

Thursday 19 March 2026 1pm - 3pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

When you do a Google search or a search of the Library's resources, you will potentially be faced with a massive reading list. How do you choose which are the best texts? Who do you trust? Where do you get the most reliable data from? In this session you will learn some of the best places for finding academic information and how to select the most appropriate reading for the task you have to complete.

Being critical: Evaluating information Searching for information: Academic sources

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YorCreate: So you want to 3D print a D&D miniature?

Thursday 19 March 2026 5pm - 6.30pm

Organiser: Digital Skills & Creativity Lab
Location: LFA/132 YorCreate (Harry Fairhurst Building, Campus West)
Open to: Everyone

Have you ever wanted to create your own custom miniature figurines for tabletop gaming? In this session we’ll look at how you can digitally design a 3D miniature for Dungeons & Dragons and similar games, and we’ll share our advice for how to most-effectively 3D print your miniatures. We’ll also consider what other peripheral items we could print, such as dice towers and dungeon tiles.

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UG Dissertation Writing 3: Discussion & Conclusion

Friday 20 March 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Undergraduates

This final session explores how we discuss our results and bring everything together in a compelling way. How do we find meaning in our results and relate them to the literature? What questions do our results raise, and how can we acknowledge and account for unforeseen limitations of our research? Finally we will look at how we tie the discussion section back to our introduction, and how to write a compelling abstract.

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How to Get a First (All UGs)

Monday 23 March 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Undergraduates

This workshop helps you decide where to focus your energies to enable you to move from good to even better in your academic work. If you are aiming high, you will get ideas for what markers might see in your work to convince them your work deserves that top grade.

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Create a simple 2D platformer game

Tuesday 24 March 2026 10am - 12pm

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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Getting Started with RStudio

Tuesday 24 March 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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Critical Thinking: What It Is and How to Do It

Wednesday 25 March 2026 10.30am - 12pm

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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DIGITAL WEDNESDAYS: Working with data in spreadsheets

Wednesday 25 March 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

It's one thing getting some data; it's another thing knowing what to do with it. In this session we'll take a look at methods for finding, importing, and cleaning up data, and performing simple analyses in a spreadsheet. We'll also consider principles for structuring data, and how you can reshape it to suit different needs.

Essential Spreadsheets

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How to read an academic article

Thursday 26 March 2026 1pm - 2pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Where do you start when looking at academic literature? How can you successfully engage with the literature you find?

You don't need an AI summary tool to understand most journal articles — there's usually already ways for you to get to the important information quickly. This bitesized session will explore the structure of academic articles, show where to look to check the validity of findings, and offer tips for navigating online texts.

This training will be delivered online via Zoom.

Being critical: Reading academic articles Searching for information: Academic sources

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Creating Interactive Graphs in RStudio

Thursday 26 March 2026 2pm - 3pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This session will cover how to make interactive graphs in RStudio. You will learn how to go beyond simple bar or scatter graphs, and make them more interesting, such as animating a graph, building 3D graphs, and creating a moving gif of your graph. Suitable for people who have used RStudio previously and would like to create interactive graphs from their data in the future.

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How to Edit your Writing

Friday 27 March 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

If you find it difficult to edit your work effectively this is the session for you. During this workshop, you will learn how to redraft your work by focusing on 6 key areas which help with editing. Please find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Get started with 3D modelling

Friday 17 April 2026 10am - 11am

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

Let's explore the world of 3D models. In this introductory online session, we'll quickly share our top tips for getting started with designing and creating a 3D model from scratch. We'll show you a few useful tools, which are useful for different purposes such as 3D printing, or for games/digital experiences.

Open for everyone, we'll get practical with some easy-to-use free tools to help you get started with modelling your own creations. 3D models are great for 3D printing, using in a virtual environment and sharing ideas. They are also an interesting way to help explain a topic or engage people with your work. Feel free to come along with an idea of your own!

Go to event

PGT Dissertation Writing 3: Discussion and Conclusion

Friday 17 April 2026 11am - 12.30pm

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

This workshop is aimed at postgraduate taught students. It will look at the purpose/function of the discussion and conclusion sections of a dissertation and then go on to examine how they can be structured and the sort of information they typically contain. It will also focus on the academic skills and language needed to write these sections.

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Academic Writing: What It Is and How to Do It

Monday 20 April 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

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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Academic posters: Designing posters in PowerPoint

Tuesday 21 April 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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How to Write Scientific Reports

Wednesday 22 April 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This workshop guides students through the structure and conventions of effective scientific reporting. Participants will learn how to present methods, results, and analysis clearly and objectively, using appropriate scientific language and formatting. Through practical examples and hands‑on activities, the session helps students develop confidence in organising data, interpreting findings, and communicating scientific information with accuracy and clarity.

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Confidence to Speak and Listen (COSAL)

Wednesday 22 April 2026 10.30am - 12pm

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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10 tips for better engagement in Zoom presentations

Wednesday 22 April 2026 3pm - 4pm

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

How can you make your Zoom sessions more interesting than just a simple video call? Whether it’s for a meeting, presentation, teaching session or interview: Zoom has a huge range of features that can make your sessions more dynamic with added interactivity and engagement.

We will look at tips including:

• Using whiteboards and annotation tools to collaborate and brainstorm in real-time

• Boosting engagement through interactive polls and surveys

• Creating and managing breakout rooms

• Elevating your presentations with advanced screen sharing and remote control (no more "next slide please!")
• Capturing your content by recording, pausing, and sharing your sessions efficiently

Video conferencing

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ANOVAs

Thursday 23 April 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

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

This session explains various ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) tests which look for significant differences between different groups or measures. 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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Critical Thinking: What It Is and How to Do It

Friday 24 April 2026 11am - 12.30pm

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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Successful Supervisor Meetings at PGT and UG Level

Tuesday 28 April 2026 3.30pm - 5pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

A supervisor is someone you have the opportunity to meet for one-to-one consultation on your academic progress and intentions. Effective communication and preparation are essential for these meetings to go well. This workshop focuses on the role of a dissertation supervisor. We discuss how supervisors can and can't help you and what you can do to get the most out of your supervisory relationship.

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PGT Dissertation Writing 1: Introduction and Literature Review

Wednesday 29 April 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Postgraduates

This workshop is for postgraduate taught students only. It will look at the purpose of introductions and literature reviews and then go on to examine how they can be structured and the sort of information they typically contain. It will also focus on the academic skills and language needed to write these sections of a dissertation.

Go to event

Confidence to Speak and Listen (COSAL)

Wednesday 29 April 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.

Go to event

DIGITAL WEDNESDAYS: Data visualisation & infographics

Wednesday 29 April 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

How you present your data has a massive impact on audience understanding and engagement. Using different data visualisations can also provide you with new insights into your data findings. In this workshop we will cover the principles for working with data, from data cleaning to visualisation.

Data: Data visualisation

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Getting Started with RStudio

Thursday 30 April 2026 2pm - 4pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: LFA/144 Academic Skills workshop room (Harry Fairhurst Building, Campus West)
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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Writer's Voice: What It Is and How to Develop It

Friday 1 May 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This workshop helps students understand the concept of writer’s voice and how it shapes clarity, tone, and identity in academic writing. Participants will explore strategies for developing a confident, authentic, and academically appropriate voice through word choice, structure, and stance. Using practical examples and guided activities, the session supports students in refining their writing style and communicating ideas with greater precision and impact.

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Essential Podcasting (Online)

Friday 1 May 2026 1pm - 3pm

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

Essential Podcasting

Let’s make some noises. Then record them, publish them, and distribute them online. This two hour online workshop will introduce you to the fundamentals of podcasting, going over some of the basics of podcast production, and looking at how an idea turns into an audio file that can be shared online. We’ll explore podcast formats and how to generate ideas along with our top recording tips. No prior knowledge of audio production or media creation is required. This workshop is perfect for you if you are interested in making a podcast yourself but aren’t sure where to start, and to find out more about podcasting facilities here at the Creativity Lab. This session runs alongside our other '10 tips for Audio editing' session (bookable separately), which will delve into the practicalities of editing audio.

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Designing presentations in PowerPoint and Google Slides

Tuesday 5 May 2026 10am - 12pm

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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Creating Interactive Graphs in RStudio

Tuesday 5 May 2026 2pm - 3pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This session will cover how to make interactive graphs in RStudio. You will learn how to go beyond simple bar or scatter graphs, and make them more interesting, such as animating a graph, building 3D graphs, and creating a moving gif of your graph. Suitable for people who have used RStudio previously and would like to create interactive graphs from their data in the future.

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PGT Dissertation Writing 2: Methods and Results

Wednesday 6 May 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Postgraduates

This workshop is for postgraduate taught students only. It will look at the purpose of methodology and results sections, and then go on to examine how they can be structured and the sort of information they typically contain. We will give a brief summary of the most popular software used to help you analyse your data and present it in your report. This workshop will also focus on the skills and language needed to write these sections of a dissertation.

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DIGITAL WEDNESDAYS: Framing your research question

Wednesday 6 May 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

In this session, focused primarily on postgraduate research but applicable to any research project, we'll consider how to come up with a workable research question with regard to available literature: is there enough information to provide a suitable background? What limits will you need to set? We'll explore how to scope a range of different sources, including academic, government and organisational literature.

Searching for information: Framing your research

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Create a Graphic in Adobe Illustrator

Thursday 7 May 2026 10am - 12pm

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

Interested to try out a graphic designer tool for the first time?

Using the Creativity Lab's access to Adobe Illustrator, this practical session will guide you through creating your own graphic design. We will focus on the most useful tools and hacks to create a logo or clipart illustration, with a useful step-by-step written handbook that we will share with you during the session. No prior knowledge is required. We will also share information on other alternate tools that can be used.

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Getting Started with SPSS

Thursday 7 May 2026 2pm - 4pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: LFA/144 Academic Skills workshop room (Harry Fairhurst Building, Campus West)
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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Effective Revision and Managing Exam Stress and Anxiety

Monday 11 May 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Strategies for effective revision and skills that will work for you. We will cover revision hints and tips, exam technique, useful resources and time management. In this workshop we also share tips and techniques for managing stress and anxiety in the lead up to exams, and on exam day itself.

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Editing content for Social Media

Tuesday 12 May 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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Getting Started with STATA

Tuesday 12 May 2026 2pm - 3.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: LFA/144 Academic Skills workshop room (Harry Fairhurst Building, Campus West)
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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Editing and Proofreading

Wednesday 13 May 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

If you find it difficult to edit or proofread your own work effectively, this is the session for you. During this workshop, you will learn a number of different strategies and techniques to help you redraft your written work and also identify and correct errors. Find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

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DIGITAL WEDNESDAYS: An intro to NVivo

Wednesday 13 May 2026 2pm - 4pm

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

NVivo is a qualitative data analysis (QDA) software package. It has been designed for qualitative researchers working with very rich text-based and/or multimedia information, where deep levels of analysis on small or large volumes of data are required.

In this introductory session we will cover the basics of importing files into NVivo, data coding and classification principles, and basic data analysis and visualisation.

Data: Qualitative data analysis

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Editing and Publishing your Podcast

Thursday 14 May 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

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

Are you starting a podcast and want to know how to get your podcast idea out there? This session focuses how to edit podcast recordings, and getting them ready to post publicly online. We'll look at using free editing tools like Audacity to learn the key editing skills. Then there will be a demonstration of how to host your files online, plus lots of useful tips and advice for picking up new listeners.

This session will be recorded and sent out afterwards to everyone signed up.

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Academic Grammar and Vocabulary

Monday 18 May 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

A range of grammatical structures that are commonly found in academic texts will be introduced, focusing on their function and form so that you can start using these structures in your own writing. We will also focus on academic words that occur frequently together in academic texts, such as ‘conduct research’, and how the use of these phrases (collocations) can make your academic writing sound more natural. Please find related online resources here: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

Go to event

Microsoft Word for dissertations and theses

Tuesday 19 May 2026 10am - 12pm

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

When producing a long piece of academic writing such as a dissertation or thesis, you will save time and effort if you take advantage of the most appropriate features in Microsoft Word. In this session we'll explore approaches to using Word that are particularly important when you need to produce material as efficiently as possible to match academic guidelines. We'll explore the power of using styles to make it easier to add outline headings, tables of contents and to make your document accessible. We'll also look at making the most of the tools available, such as adding automatic page numbers, tables of contents, and captions.

Creating documents

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PGT Dissertation Writing 3: Discussion and Conclusion

Wednesday 20 May 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Postgraduates

This workshop is aimed at postgraduate taught students. It will look at the purpose/function of the discussion and conclusion sections of a dissertation and then go on to examine how they can be structured and the sort of information they typically contain. It will also focus on the academic skills and language needed to write these sections.

Go to event

Reading More Effectively: Comparing Traditional and AI Strategies

Friday 22 May 2026 11am - 12.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

Can generative AI enhance our reading efficiency? This workshop will compare traditional academic reading strategies with techniques for utilising generative AI tools to support with reading.

Artificial Intelligence can significantly enhance our reading efficiency. This workshop will explore techniques for utilising a Large Language Model to perform simple tasks on our behalf, greatly improving reading speed and saving valuable time.

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Applying Critical Thinking to Writing

Wednesday 27 May 2026 10.30am - 12pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

This workshop helps students strengthen their academic writing by applying critical thinking skills at every stage of the process. Participants will learn how to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, identify logical connections, and construct well‑reasoned arguments. Through practical examples and guided activities, the session supports students in developing clearer, more analytical writing that demonstrates depth, independence, and academic rigour.

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Power of Punctuation

Monday 1 June 2026 1pm - 2.30pm

Organiser: Academic Skills
Location: online
Open to: Everyone

What are the most frequently used punctuation marks in academic writing and how can they be used effectively to convey the exact meaning you want to communicate? We will explore the answers to these questions in this sessions. Find related online resources here:https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

Go to event