The Academic Skills Hub provide a wide range of guidance and resources that you can signpost your students to. From Referencing to Time Management, below you'll find the various topics included in the Academic Skills Hub area and how to access these on Brightspace.
Some of these are popular topics for PAL sessions - we've provided some activity ideas you could facilitate in your sessions below.
Link to Brightspace: Critical Thinking
Activity: Think Critically
Approx. time allowance: 30 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Students an practice picking apart a piece of text to find information that is relevant for them
Link to Brightspace: Presentation and seminar skills
Activity: Presentation practice and peer review
Approx. time allowance: 45 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Getting students to work in pairs may reduce any initial anxiety the students have about presenting to a group for the first time and may help with receiving feedback as this feels less targeted.
Link to Brightspace: Healthy study habits
Activity: Mind-mapping / discussion
Approx. time allowance: 45 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Getting students to consider their worries in this way may help them see that much of what they are stressed and anxious about is beyond their control. Helping them target the worries they can control may help them focus more clearly on strategies to overcome them.
Link to Brightspace: Referencing
Activity: Round Robin Referencing
Approx. time allowance: 40 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Encourages team working and promotes the retention of information
Link to Brightspace: Time Management
Activity: Time Plan
Approx. time allowance: 45 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Activity will double as an icebreaker as students discuss with the group what thy do in their spare time, allowing students to become more familiar with each other
Link to Brightspace: Exams and Revision
Activity: Word Web
Approx. time allowance: 30 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Promotes the retention of information that could be useful to know in exams
Link to Brightspace: Finding Sources
Activity: Source Search
Approx. time allowance: 40 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Allows students to experience working as a pair for future group assignments and getting use to working with someone else with a common goal as well as having students become more familiar with the resources BU provides.
Link to Brightspace: Understanding Assignments
Activity: Brief Breakdown
Approx. time allowance: 35 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Allows students to think about their assignments in more depth and break them down to be more manageable, this can make the assignment less overwhelming
Link to Brightspace: Academic Integrity and Plagiarism
Activity: Your work or mine
Approx. time allowance: 33 minutes
Instructions:
Benefit: Students gain a batter understanding of what is expected of them when writing a university assignment rather than their previous experiences in other forms of education