Support for learning and studying at QMU

Studying for a degree is exciting, stimulating, and a challenge. As a college or mature student, you bring with you a wide range of skills and strengths from your past experience, whether this includes study at college, employment or looking after a family. Whatever your previous background and experience, you will have valuable skills to draw on as you adapt to university study and develop ways of learning that suit you.

At QMU there are several important sources of help and advice for making the most of your time at the University and developing you study skills.

• The Effective Learning Service offers individual advice as well as group workshops and resources. Check out the ELS wepages for more information.

• The Learning Resource Centre has a useful website with full guidance on the full range of books and online resources available, as well as details of workshops on how to use the LRC effectively.

• Your Personal Academic Tutor (assigned to all students during your induction week) is there for advice and guidance about any issue which may be affecting your studies.

• QMAdvance: an optional course, which helps new students to ease their way into life and study just before the first semester (the first block of study up to Christmas) officially commences. QMAdvance has been designed to give participants the opportunity to meet and spend time getting to know other new students who have also come to QM via an access course, another course at a college or straight from employment. The course aims to ensure that participants feel confident in their abilities while giving early access to a range of key services and staff. This course is run by our Transition & Pre-entry Guidance Adviser and our Effective Learning Adviser who liaise with other departments to ensure that the programme offers an informative and confidence-building introduction to QMU.

The course takes place over 3 days, just before the start of semester each year. We send out publicity information to new students over the summer but if you are interested and think that QMAdvance could help you to settle into QMU, then please contact our Transition & Pre-entry Guidance Adviser at any stage.

• QMConnect - Student Mentoring Project: We also run a mentoring project, QMConnect, that offers new students (including direct entrants to Level 2 or 3), the opportunity to be matched with a trained student mentor. Mentors are usually students who are studying the same or a similar course to you but who are a year or so ahead of you (often they took part themselves as mentees). Mentees and mentors usually meet up for informal support on a weekly basis for about an hour. However, the scheme is very flexible and mentees and mentors decide between themselves what they want to get out of it and how often to meet up. Every partnership is different. Some will mainly concentrate on discussing issues to do with learning and study skills while others may focus on practical things like making best use of IT/library resources, or tips for fitting study into your life.

While we will do our best to match any interested student, places are limited so it's best to get in touch with our Transition & Guidance Adviser as early as possible.

In addition Student Services at QMU offers a range of support and guidance for students including Careers and Employment Service, Counselling Service, Disability Service, Medical Servioce, Student Finance Advice.

Features of university study

A main feature of university study is independent learning. Lectures are your main introduction to a topic, and you plan your own reading and research around these, to explore a topic in more depth. Reading lists are only a starting point – you get used to browsing and making your own decisions about the type of information you need to focus on. There is generally less contact with lecturers than you may be used to previously.

When you have assignments, you will usually have several weeks to complete them. This means planning time effectively, and fitting study tasks within a weekly schedule. Depending on your course, you are expected to study for roughly 2 hours for every 1 hour lecture. This is only a rough guide, but gives an idea of how many hours in the week you may be studying – for most courses, this adds up to 20-30 hours. Students generally have to be fairly self-reliant, both in making their own decisions about a task, finding the information they need, and locating sources of advice and support when they are needed.

Key skills

Key skills needed for independent learning are beingable to organise your time, processing informationand making priorities with study tasks, and alsothinking for yourself – questioning and thinkingcritically about ideas and information. It also helpsto focus on developing particular skills for particulartasks, such as planning and writing essays, readingand note-taking, and dealing effectively withlectures. You may want to think about how youtake notes and deal with lectures initially. Later on,other skills become more important, such as essaywriting and revision and exam techniques.You will also develop skills in other areas of studysuch as groupwork and giving presentations. Allthese skills are transferable, relevant not only touniversity study, but for whatever you choose to doafter graduation.

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