Training sessions
Building an Effective Search Strategy – you have your research topic and access to millions of resources – but how do you find relevant material? This session will help you turn your research idea into a comprehensive search strategy designed to get maximum results. It will cover creating targeted keywords, filtering results, evaluating materials and recording your methods to save you time throughout your project. PDF version also available.
Your Literature Review: Finding What You Need – literature reviews are a great way to explore the current thinking on a topic and you will often be asked to conduct one to determine the landscape in your discipline. But where do you start and how do you find results that are actually useful? This session will guide you through the process of thinking about what you want to search for, creating a bespoke search strategy, evaluating your results and putting everything together into a literature review. PDF version also available.
Web of Science – using Web of Science, this session will guide you through basic and advanced search functions, finding relevant content for your research and setting alerts to keep on top of new material.
Scopus – using Scopus, this session will guide you through basic and advanced search functions, finding relevant content for your research and setting alerts to keep on top of new material.
Making Your References Work for You (with Zotero) – referencing is an important part of the academic ecosystem. It can showcase the range of sources you have read, allow the reader to follow up on any interesting points and help to avoid the problem of plagiarism. But referencing can also be time consuming. This session will explore reference management tools and how they can support you throughout the entire research process from discovery to write up. Using Zotero as an example, it will cover how to import references from a range of sources, create easy in-text citations and produce a bibliography at the click of a button. PDF version also available.
Taking Good Notes – taking good notes that can be used in a variety of situations is a valuable skill, during your studies and beyond. Done well, good notes can also save you a lot of time. This session will look at the different types of notes you can take, how to take notes from readings, in lectures and from recordings and how to use the resulting resources. PDF version also available.
Study Skills Refresh – an interactive ‘choose your own adventure’ style session covering core academic skills including finding sources, referencing, productive reading, notetaking and presentation skills. Presenter notes are also available.
Short guides
Short videos