How to Get the Most From Your Lectures
This online course helps get first-year sciences students off to a good start with advice on how to survive lectures, take effective notes, structure your first essay, and lots of other helpful resources to support you throughout your first year.
While aimed at Part IA students, this course is open to anyone who wishes to use it.
The Critical Reading course aims to improve students' ability to read critically and evaluate sources, as well as giving helpful tips about productive reading, note-taking and providing a checklist of questions to help them with their reading going forward. It is suitable for all students but aimed mostly at undergraduates.
This course is based on a typical literature review lifecycle. You start by planning your search. You then carry out your search. Once you've found some results, you evaluate what you have found to see if it is relevant to your needs. You manage your results by saving them to a suitable place so you can come back to them. If you are interested in tracking changes in your field, you enact approaches to keep up to date with new research. And as your research evolves, you refine your search to reflect new concepts and new terms. And so the cycle continues.
While you may not be as focused on the longer-term tracking of new research in your field, being able to plan, search, evaluate and manage effectively are key skills which we will cover in this course. The course will be structured around these first four stages, with optional additional information about the last two stages for those who are interested.
Target audience: Undergraduate students working towards a research project or dissertation
Format: Videos, interactive content and handouts hosted in Moodle
The Library Study Skills Catalogue is a growing collection of available resources and workshops available to students within the University and provided by University, College, Department, and Faculty Librarians.
A full catalogue of all the training offered by Cambridge University Libraries is available on the Library Study Skills Catalogue
An introduction to critical reading: Breaking it down
The Critical Reading course aims to improve students' ability to read critically and evaluate sources, as well as giving helpful tips about productive reading, note taking and providing a checklist of questions to help them with their reading going forward. It is suitable for all students but aimed mostly at undergraduates.
Literature Searching: A Guide for Undergraduates
This course provides you with techniques to help you search for sources for an essay or dissertation. It includes planning, conducting and evaluating your searches with advise about modifying your searches.