Library Guides: Your Library Essentials: Skills

Skills

Supporting Your Learning

Get the most out of the library’s resources and develop your research skills and critical thinking through our workshops and webinars, online tutorials, videos and guides, and in-course teaching.

Getting Started

Where do I search for academic information for my course? (tutorial)
Learn where to start searching for information and which discovery tools to use for your needs.
Getting the most out of StarPlus (workshop)
This session introduces information searching to students undertaking their first assessments at University level. You will learn about different information sources, and how to access information from your Leganto Reading Lists and StarPlus.
Discovering and using eBooks effectively (tutorial)
Learn how to discover and use eBooks effectively on some of the key eBook platforms: ProQuest Ebook Central, and VLebooks.
Referencing and Preventing Plagiarism (workshop)
This session introduces the essentials of referencing, the concept of plagiarism and how it can be avoided, and gives you an opportunity to practice referencing in your departmental style. The session will also provide an overview of useful citation tools for this process.
Referencing: the essentials (tutorial)
This tutorial will give you an understanding of referencing and how you should use it in your academic work.

Developing Your Research Skills

Active reading for understanding (tutorial)
Learn how to read an academic text effectively.
How to read a journal article (tutorial)
Learn what scholarly journals are, what type of information they publish, and how to read them effectively.
The Fake News Game
Fake news is all around us - see if you can find the stories you think are untrustworthy to see how well you can spot fake news! This game will help you to learn what to look for when evaluating your sources.
Questioning and Evaluating Information (workshop)
In this session you will consider how to critically evaluate information when undertaking independent research. You will question different types of information and develop a critical approach, considering a range of questions and using the tools and data available to apply this to relevant resources.
Evaluating information and critical thinking (tutorial)
Learn how to think critically about your information sources, and evaluate information that you find to ensure that it is reliable, accurate, of good quality, and relevant to your assignment.

Explore further tutorials, videos and workshops through the University Library’s Research Skills and Critical Thinking Hub to improve your skills in discovering, understanding, questioning, referencing, creating, and disseminating information.

Remember to review and record your skills development in your mySkills portfolio.

Further Support

Explore further tutorials, videos and workshops through StudySkills@Sheffield, a collection of how to guides to support the development of your skills throughout your studies.

Remember to review and record your skills development in your mySkills portfolio.

Information for Postgraduate Research Students

Doctoral students have access to a wide range of specialist support, including expert guidance and training on literature searching, bibliometrics, reference management, research data management, author rights, use of third party materials and open access publishing. See the Student Researcher webpages for full details.

Your Library Essentials

Research Skills and Critical Thinking online tutorials

Workshops and events at the IC