University is very different in its expectations from school and college and, over the academic year, undergraduate students face different challenges in relation to their learning. Postgraduate students often need to meet different, but nonetheless similar, challenges. Our aim is to provide that little bit of extra input before pressure points come round, but still be there with support, if it’s needed, as students work on assignments and other assessments.

Online Access Course

Prepares students for entry to the University of Dundee by providing online activities and learning opportunities as ‘tasters’ of what they will be expected to do as new undergraduate students. The Academic Skills Team provide the Academic Skills element of this online course which dovetails with the Gateway to Learning Programme that is offered on campus in Orientation Week. All Online Access Course students will be invited to participate in Gateway to Learning activities as a practical follow-up of interpersonal and practical learning activities that cannot take place online.

Gateway to Learning

Gateway to Learning for specific Schools

• Gateway to Computing
  This bespoke programme is offered as a two-week preparation for students entering Applied Computing. Admission to the programme is by invitation of the School of Applied Computing. It includes activities to develop academic student skills alongside activities that introduce the study of applied computing.
• Gateway to Social Work
  This programme is offered as a short preparation for students entering Social Work. Admission to the programme is by invitation of the School of Social Work. It provides an introduction to the academic skills and contexts of understanding required by social work students.

Moving on in the academic journey, postgraduate students are often moving into a new institution, as well as into a higher level of study. This workshop session highlights the realities, the expectations and the conventions that apply to learning as postgraduates. Taught course postgraduates and research postgraduates are welcomed to this workshop in Orientation Week.

• Academic writing
• Learning styles and learning habits
• Powerful presentations – how to prepare, produce and present effective presentations
• Notes from lectures – notes from texts: strategies for taking and making notes
• PowerPoint – put the power into your presentation. Language and other issues.
• Reading for Speed – knowing how to read for academic purposes
• Lexicons – university is not all ‘big’ words
• Teams, groups and buddies – learning with others – Study Partnership Projects
• IT as a tool for language

The Academic Skills Team provide a series of examination preparation workshops called ‘Ready, Steady, Exams!’. These are two-hour workshops that cover, in the first hour, Revision Strategies and, in the second hour, Exam Tactics.  The workshops are positioned to give students time to put into practice the approaches covered in the revision sessions and to be able to plan their tactics ahead of the exam days.

Note that if you are unsuccessful in the Summer examination diet, then you could join the Preparatory Resit Examination Programme (PREP) in July in time for the resit diet in August.

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