Academic skills

This is a short guide about learning university and what to expect from us at the academic skill centre. To get us started, when studying or even working at university, what do you think might be some of the key attitudes to help someone learn and succeed?

Well, maintaining your curiosity and not being afraid to ask questions is often key. It can also help to have what is called a growth mindset. This means accepting that despite some things being more challenging than others, and not always having the answers or solutions, it's still always possible to learn, adapt and improve. University also gives you the space and opportunity to try lots of different, perhaps new, things. They may or may not always work. But importantly, you can learn from them. There are also so many different people to meet, learn from and also support you. So try to connect with others wherever possible.

If we take a step back, then it's possible to see that the university culture as a whole, whether it involves students or staff, is about asking questions, trying things, testing them out, learning from them, and striving to improve whilst crucially supporting each other along the way. So now you can be part of that too.

On a practical level, what can you expect when studying at university? Well, this will of course vary dependent on your subject area, but you'll likely encounter lots of different types of direct teaching. From lectures where you'll be in bigger groups with some interaction, to smaller group seminars and tutorials where you contribute to discussions, share and challenge each other's ideas.

In some subject areas, you may be actively involved in laboratory or practical sessions as well. There will also, of course, be assignments to complete and likely some forms of assessment. They might be quite varied and you'll be given guidance and support in all of these. Beyond your specific course studies, you'll almost certainly have access to lots of other extra-curricular opportunities to develop your wider skills and experiences too.

You'll also, of course, learn and study in different kinds of ways. First of all, your learning will likely involve both in-person teaching but also some online learning materials. You'll also likely need to work collaboratively with others on your course, perhaps for specific assignments or project work within classes.

And a really important aspect and skill in studying at university in particular is independent learning. And this might be quite different from school or college. So let's look at this a bit more.

What do we mean by independent learning? Well, this really involves taking responsibility for your learning, including managing and planning your own time and your workload. It also means researching the information and materials you're directly given. It means thinking critically, evaluating and questioning ideas and information, and clearly communicating your argument around them. Importantly, it also involves reflecting on your own study skills, strategies, and looking for ways to improve and develop these. We’ll look at all these aspects in a little more detail now.

At university managing your own time and workload is crucial. And organisation will help with all of this. So as early as you can, iron out and familiarise yourself with practical things such as any course guidelines, your timetable, online tools where key rooms and buildings are, how to use and access library resources.

Make a note of when all your key deadlines for assignments and assessments are, and check if there are any pinch points where you might be particularly busy, both steady and life-wise. Then work backwards from these and see what steps you need to start doing in order to meet them.

Being able to prioritise is a key skill at different points during the semester. You might need to prioritise different parts of your studies. For example, towards the start you may need to focus more on orientating yourself, meeting people and finding what support and resources are available whilst you develop a routine with your timetabled classes and independent learning around this. But later in the semester, your priorities will probably turn towards completing assignments or preparing for assessments. Of course, all of this has to be balanced alongside other important aspects of your life, such as family, friends, perhaps a job, home, and other commitments.

Independent study also means researching beyond the information you are simply given. To help you with this. Explore the library and its resources. You could start with your module resource lists for readings and materials your tutors particularly recommend. Then you can start to search beyond this using either the library catalogue, findit@bham, or your specific library subject guides.

Don't forget, the university’s libraries offer so much more than just resources too, including study spaces, academic skill support groups, study rooms, wellbeing collections, PCs, loanable laptops, printers and more.

Critical thinking is another crucial skill at university level, and you'll probably hear the phrase mentioned often. But what does it actually mean? Well, it really means having a questioning approach. This often involves engaging with different information and evidence, but then also questioning and evaluating it, deciding whether you perhaps agree or disagree, or whether it is both convincing and reliable. It sometimes means demonstrating an awareness of different perspectives and possibilities. And then having done this, it also means building and justifying your arguments based on evidence.

And a big part of this, of course, is communicating all these ideas and arguments. This might be through, for example, speaking, writing, presenting visuals, and more. Usually, this involves demonstrating the quality rather than quantity of your ideas, and carefully choosing the relevant evidence to explore and support them. It means being clear and concise in what you say, aware of your audience and purpose and using a clear structure. And really importantly, it's doing all of this to build strong, logical and easy-to-follow arguments.

Independent study also involves reflecting on and developing your own skills and attributes. For all aspects of your studies, you'll need to use and develop a wide range of different study skills, and no doubt you'll have already begun to develop a number of these already.

A few examples of different skills might be research, time management and writing. Pause for a moment. Can you think of any others? What are the skills you think might be increasingly important?

Here are some more examples, such as reflection presentation skills, digital skills, evaluation skills, and collaboration. But the list could go on. Consider if there are any study skills you might want to start developing further. The Academic Skills Centre will be able to support you with this. And digital skills are, of course, more important than ever. So to find some advice about digital tools and skills which may be useful for your studies you can visit the Digital Skills resources on the Academic Skill Centre web pages.

There is so much support available at university for you as and when you might need it. Never be afraid to ask. So make the most of your lecturers' office hours and support from your personal tutor or wider services such as the Academic Skill Centre and Math Support centres, the Wellbeing Team, Careers Network and The Guild.

And don't forget, of course, to support each other too. Learning is much easier and more enjoyable with the support of others, whether it's your classmates, friends, societies, your family, and beyond.

Finally, learning at university will be so much easier if you are looking after yourself first and foremost. So always prioritise your health and wellbeing. Connect with this as much as you can and ask for help and support if you ever need it.

Being at university is a really special, unique time in life, so enjoy and embrace it.

Here at the Academic Skill Centre, we can support you and your studies with a wide range of academic skills. Explore our website to book a 1 to 1 confidential appointment with a friendly skills advisor. Discover upcoming workshops and drop-ins or explore our online resources via the Academic Skills Gateway.

Referencing is basically the statement of your sources of information in any piece of academic writing that you may be doing.

It is best to see it as part of a bigger process. We call this module good academic practice because referencing your sources of information in a piece of written work is an essential element in the chain of scholarly communication in which you, as a student or a researcher, are engaged.

So here is your link in the chain. You are given or you choose a research topic to work on, and you use a range of bibliographic databases, catalogues and other search tools to find the best quality academic reading material for your study.

Very often you'll need to do a literature review of some kind to show that you are aware of the scholarly publications and discussion around your topic. Next, you set about reading the material you found and taking notes from it. It's always a good idea, even before you start taking notes from a book or article to make a note of the full bibliographic details accurately so that you won't have to waste time later when you need to compile the bibliography at the end of your written work.

In the written work itself, you demonstrate your understanding of your subject by answering your research question and building up a logical argument, using evidence from your reading to back it up. And finally, you acknowledge the sources of all the information you have found by means of in-text citation of your sources, as well as a full bibliography of your sources at the end.

There are four main reasons for referencing carefully in your work. Firstly, to acknowledge your intellectual debt to the authors whose ideas and facts you are using to support claims that you are making in your text. So when you have made an assertion or a claim, you need to cite the specific source where you got the information from, on which you base it.

Another reason for citing accurately is that whoever is reading your work might think you have made an interesting point here, and they may want to find your source and read more about it for themselves.

Lastly, there is the more prosaic reason that you don't want to be accused of plagiarism. That is, using other people's ideas without acknowledging them. Putting in a citation to your source will let you avoid that.

There are many different styles of referencing and you must select one and use it consistently. At the University of Birmingham, we recommend using the Harvard style. This is a very popular style and is used in publications around the world. Some departments, however, use a different style. For example, Oscola is a specialist style used in the law school. Vancouver style is used on some medical and life science courses and so on. It is very important that you find out from your tutor or your department which style they expect you to use, and make sure you become familiar with it. The following examples will be using Harvard style.

A citation normally consists of two parts. The first is the in-text citation . This means when in the course of your writing you are quoting from an author or referring to an argument or point they have made in one of their publications, you put in a brief citation to it, usually at the end of the sentence. In Harvard, this takes the form of the author's surname and the year of publication, enclosed in round brackets. If the point was made on a specific page of the publication, you should also add the page number as in these examples.

In the first example, the author is mentioned by name. So there is no need to repeat it, and only the year and page numbers are given in the round brackets. In the second example, the author is not mentioned by name in the sentence. So the name here and page number are all given in the brackets.

At the end of your work, you then need to provide a list of all the references you have used in your text, giving the full publication details of each one. In the Harvard style, they need to be listed in alphabetical order by the authors' surnames. So in this example, you have the surname, author's initials, year of publication in round brackets, the title of the article in single quotation marks, the name of the journal in italics, the volume and part number, and the page numbers of the complete article.

Of course, this is a straightforward example of a journal article with a single author. There are all sorts of other possibilities as well. Books or articles with multiple authors, chapters in books and different types of publication. You will want to cite electronic books, scientific reports, government publications, websites, videos, blogs, and so on.

Each needs to be cited in a specific way. So you need to become familiar with the style you are using. Fortunately, we have some excellent resources which will help you to do that.

The first is a database called Cite Them. Right. Here is its homepage. The first thing it invites you to do is to choose the style you are using.

Whichever style you choose, in this case Harvard, you will be presented with a set of tabs for the different kinds of materials you might want to cite books, journal articles, internet sources, and so on.

You just need to choose the most appropriate tab, and it will give you examples of citing that type of material, both in-text and as a full citation in the bibliography. All you then need to do is follow the examples in every detail punctuation, capitalisation, italics, and so on.

After you've done a few references like this, you will soon become proficient in using the referencing style. Two other things we have that will help you are the Library Services referencing guide and a thing called EndNote online. Endnote Online is an online package which allows you to store your collection of references, to import references from bibliographic databases and catalogues, and it can work with Microsoft Word to put references in and create bibliographies in a variety of styles in any written work that you do.

There is plenty of guidance available for Endnote Online and referencing, generally from the Academic Skills Centre through the links on this screen.

Hello, welcome to this short guide on time management from us at the Academic Skills Centre.

At university there can be a lot going on all at once and many things to balance; from managing your studies and maybe also working, through to your social life, keeping in touch with friends and family and simply looking after yourself day-to-day.

So being able to manage your time effectively is a really important skill and one that will likely take a bit of time to develop as you explore and decide what works best for you.

Rather than being about time itself, time management is really about organising your priorities and making decisions about what is and isn't most important and where you most want to dedicate your time.

Whilst at university, managing your time can also become steeped in emotional issues such as worry, having high expectations of yourself or the pressure of other people's demands on your time.

It is therefore important to try and take an objective step back when you are making decisions around time and remember that everyone has different lives, different priorities and different expectations. So just focus on what works best for you as different time management strategies will suit different people.

Remember that your time at university is short so you deserve the time to dedicate to it whilst you are here. As soon as you can, look ahead at the semester and the year, when your assignment or assessment deadlines are. Can you spot any potential pinch points where you might have clashes or conflicting priorities? Those might be both within and outside your studies.

Plan backwards from these times so you know what you need to start doing and when, removing any last-minute pressure from yourself as much as possible. Time management at university is not about studying constantly, instead it's about having self-awareness and using your time effectively.

Reflect on past experiences of studying and consider when your best thinking time is in the day. Are you a morning person or maybe more of a night owl?

Use this time for the most difficult taxing tasks such as writing, problem-solving or thinking creatively. You can use other times of the day for other tasks such as organising your notes or dealing with emails.

Remember also to give yourself regular breaks as this will refresh your brain and mean that when you are working you will study much more effectively.

Managing your study routine and timetable is important. It might be that you have a mixture of life, teaching and also some pre-recorded materials to engage with each week, as well as of course your independent learning.

It is a good idea to schedule all these aspects into each week, for example by drawing up a timetable. You can find any example of a timetable online, as well as scheduling times when you are studying.

Make sure to also set aside clear times when you will not be studying to ensure you have a healthy work-life balance. If you are living with others, it might also be useful to share your set study times with them so they know when to give you the space and time you need.

Dealing with both distractions and procrastination is often a challenge. Be honest with yourself and consider what you know are your most common distractions. How might you be able to actively reduce or even remove them when you are trying to get things done?

To help with procrastination rather than looking at any big, seemingly overwhelming tasks as a whole, instead break them down into small manageable chunks. And face it one chunk at a time. If you can tell you are really struggling with the task, it might be a sign that you just need a break or to try and do something else for a bit. Come back to it later with fresh eyes and you will often be amazed at how a new perspective can really help.

And don't forget, if you set yourself manageable study goals, you can of course then reward yourself afterwards. Use this reward as a helpful incentive to get your work done.

A famous and proven time management strategy is called the Pomodoro Technique. This aims to help you study in a time-efficient and focused way. Essentially, using a timer, you break down your study into 25-minute intervals before stopping for a 5-minute break. You repeat this three or four times before then taking a slightly longer break.. Set yourself a small goal for each 25-minute interval and before you know it you will have probably achieved a lot within a short space of time. There are lots of apps and online tools that can help you with the Pomodoro technique such as Focus Keeper.

Being able to effectively prioritise tasks will make managing your time much easier. Sometimes it can be hard to separate your feelings, anxieties or external pressures when making decisions about what to prioritise too. It might therefore be helpful to break down any conflicting priorities you have into a clear grid or process.

Separate them into those tasks by how important and urgent they are. For example, if you still need to finish an assignment which is due tomorrow, then this is both important and urgent and should be your top priority right now. If, for example, you have some lecture materials you need to recap, this is certainly important, but perhaps less urgent. You could therefore put time aside later to do this. And so on. Take a moment to prioritise your task each week or even each day, so that you feel more in control of what you need to achieve and when.

Finally, just to share a few ideas for other time-saving resources. If you're looking for library resources, then don't forget to use your resource list, but also FindIt@Bham, the Library Catalogue and your Library Subject Guide. This will help you to efficiently find the most relevant resources in your subject areas.

Similarly, the University's iCite Guide provides a lot of guidance on referencing to support you. For ideas of useful academic phrases to use in your writing, the Academic Phrasebank is a really useful resource and if you would like to explore some online tools to help you with for example note taking or organisations then our online learning guides provide lots of ideas.

The Academic Skills Centre can support you in your studies with a wide range of academic skills. Explore our website to book a one-to-one confidential appointment with a friendly skills advisor, discover upcoming workshops and drop insurance, or explore our online resources via the Academic Skills Gateway.