Student experience of using Study Skills resources and support

When I applied to ARU I didn’t know much about study skills support, I kind of knew it existed but I didn’t realise just how much help there is available, or how useful it would be to me. So, I thought I would dedicate a blog just to study skills and share my experience of it….

1 to 1 support meetings

Study skills plus offer each student 6 one to one appointments each year to support with all types of skills such as IT skills, independent learning, or academic writing. I had my first one to one in the first trimester, to help me work on my academic writing, as this was an area, I had much less confidence in. It was so helpful, I was able to send my draft and we went through it together to help me understand what I needed to do to improve! I have also had academic writing one to one sessions, to help me understand my feedback from the first round of assignments and how to enhance my work next time. For me ‘critical analysis’ felt a bit vague, but it really helped to go through what that meant in terms of my writing and now I am reading through my drafts and adding ‘how do we know this’ and ‘why is it important’ to help me develop this skill! I have had a few different study coaches and each one has been extremely supportive and helpful!

Study skills plus on canvas

I really can’t stress enough how worthwhile it is spending time exploring all of the online resources and guides there are on the study skills plus on canvas pages! The guides are really good as a self-help tool. One I particularly found helpful was the academic writing step by step guide, it takes you through planning and structuring your writing, researching for your work, and even formatting and editing your work. This is definitely a great place to start, and I would recommend looking early on in your course so you know what is there and can keep coming back to it as you need to!

Online events

We were lucky enough to have a study skills plus session for our cohort on referencing! It was so helpful, as I had never used the ARU Harvard referencing style before! They also signpost you to the quick guide, which is a must have for every single assignment, I use it to check my references before submissions. They also do online events about using the library and searching for research articles, so again I would highly recommend taking the time to explore this area fully in the early days of your course, because I can almost guarantee you’ll find it useful so many times!

As you can see, there is so much support available through study skills plus at ARU, it can really enhance your learning and ultimately your assignment work! Good luck and enjoy!