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Skills enrichment programme

Skills workshops each Semester to enhance your academic performance and boost your employability skills.

Our skills enrichment programme is based on the most common areas for development identified in students' work.

The interactive sessions are carefully planned to help you at different stages of your academic journey, whether you are tackling your first essay, preparing for exams, or writing your dissertation.

You can find 5 great reasons to attend a skills enrichment workshop on our blog.

"These sessions helped to build my confidence and allowed me to explore new skills that I wouldn’t have known about. I had a lot of feedback on how to structure my essay. By working on this issue, I was able to improve my essay and reach higher grades." (Sophie Benton, BSc Biomedical Sciences with Professional Placement)

Session summaries

Find out more about the skills enrichment sessions available.


Students with laptops in a lecture theatre listening to a lecturer.

Academic writing

  • Improve your academic style: Discover how to write in the appropriate way and follow correct academic conventions in your assignments.
  • Kickstart your assignment: Discover how to begin the assignment-writing process by analysing your title and creating a content outline and plan.
  • Perfect paragraphs: Learn how to write great paragraphs, the foundation of all clear and compelling academic writing.
  • Summarising and paraphrasing: Discover how to write critically and safely about the ideas of others in your work.
  • Power introductions and conclusions: Learn how to make an excellent first and final impression in your assignment with a powerful introduction and conclusion.
  • Reader-friendly writing: Learn some helpful hacks to make your writing ‘flow’ and guide your reader clearly and easily through your work.
  • Report writing under the microscope: Examine the structure and style of a lab report in order to hone your scientific writing skills.
  • Edit and proofread like a pro: Refine your editing and proofreading skills to polish your work, avoid embarrassing errors, and make an overall positive impact.
  • Speculation in writing: Discover how to incorporate speculation in your writing to strike the right balance between potential scenarios and evidence-based claims.

Other study and employability skills

  • Email and communication etiquette: Learn the do’s and don’ts of communicating by email at university and beyond.
  • Listening in lectures: Develop sound listening techniques to ensure you get the most out of live and recorded lectures.
  • Knowledge, truth and bias: Explore the dynamics of knowledge production and the challenges of bias in today's information era.
  • Using feedback for success: Explore how to use your tutors’ valuable feedback to upgrade your academic performance.
  • Presentation skills: Over two sessions, practise how to design and deliver effective and engaging presentations at university and in the workplace.
  • Public speaking: A series of workshops to help you overcome your fears of speaking to audiences in academic and professional contexts.
  • Referencing refresher: Recap on how to reference sources correctly to avoid plagiarism and be an ethical scholar.
  • Strategic reading and note-taking: Explore a range of smart techniques to help you read and process large quantities of materials efficiently.
  • Improve your critical thinking: Gain insight into how arguments are structured so you can develop practical ways to criticise academic literature.
  • Participating in seminars: Get some top tips on how to communicate your ideas clearly and listen actively so you get the most out of a seminar discussion.
  • Taking part in meetings: Discover how workplace meetings work and what you might be expected to do before, during and after a meeting.
  • Group work essentials: Develop vital teamwork skills and learn how to enhance communication, collaboration, and problem-solving for group assignments.
  • Getting exam-ready: Explore tried and tested techniques to stay calm and positive throughout the exam season.
  • Devising your exam strategy: Learn how to approach exams strategically and how to tackle different question types.

More information

What you need to know about the sessions and how to book.


The sessions run each semester and are suitable for all students at all levels of study.

All sessions are 50 minutes except 'Presentation skills' which is 110 minutes per week and runs for two weeks, and 'Public speaking' workshops which are 90 minutes.

Sessions are either in-person on campus or live online (LOIL) on Microsoft Teams.

Advance booking is required on MySkills. Before signing up for a session, please make sure that the day and time do not clash with your academic timetable by checking MyTimetable.

You can meet the skills enrichment teachers in this blog.

You can learn more about our skills enrichment sessions in the following student blogs:

Please note, sessions may be cancelled at short notice if there is insufficient take-up. We will advise you as soon as possible if a session is cancelled.

Contact us

If you have any questions about our skills enrichment programme, please get in touch.