What we offer
We help students develop skills required to succeed in Higher Education by supporting academic, referencing, information literacy or general IT skills that contribute to achieving their educational or professional goals, for example by producing high-quality assignments.
This page details the ways in which we can and cannot support your learning development, and additional information for each team.
We have created a range of resources in our A-Z guidance, but for further questions, or if the skill you wish to develop is not covered by our guides, you can request an appointment with one of our specialist teams.
What you can expect from us
We provide a range of support to develop your learning or assignment writing skills, whether you are just starting a foundation year or are writing a doctoral thesis.
We produce a wide range of resources and offer appointments to discuss your study skills and assignment quality. In our appointments, you can either choose a skill to develop, or a section of your writing to discuss during a session.
What we expect of you
We expect you to take responsibility for your own learning. This means you should:
- Use our self-help resources (and Studiosity, where appropriate) before arranging an appointment with us.
- Make (or at least attempt to make) any changes agreed in one appointment before requesting another appointment.
- Contact us to cancel or reschedule your appointment in advance if you know you will not be able to attend.
- Test your equipment and send in any documents we request (for online appointments only).
The Learning Development (LD) team provides 30-minute appointments for a range of skills, including academic writing, assignment structure, understanding feedback, maths and statistics. We provide support that aims to develop the effectiveness and clarity of your writing.
To book an appointment, email us at LearningDevelopment@beds.ac.uk. We aim to respond to your request within 2 working days. Include the following information in your email:
- An overview of what you want support with
- Whether you are requesting a face-to-face or online appointment
- A list of dates and times you are available (as many as possible)
- For online appointments, include a copy of any assignment brief, feedback or work you want to discuss in your appointment
The ALL team provides support to students at all levels with referencing and information literacy skills including but not limited to search techniques, source and results evaluation and search results management.
We are not able to check all of a student's citations and referencing in the entire assignment, but will provide general feedback and check one source of each type e.g. a book, a journal article and a website.
To book an appointment of up to an hour email us at librarians@beds.ac.uk. We aim to respond to your request within 2 working days but to avoid unnecessary delays you should include the following information in your email:
- An overview of what you want support with
- A list of dates and times you are available (as many as possible) and location (Bedford, Luton, Online)
- A copy of any assignment brief(s), feedback or work you want to discuss in your appointment
The Microsoft Office Training team supports your use of Microsoft Office applications. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Project, and Access.
We can help you learn the skills required to:
- Produce professionally formatted documents and presentations.
- Manage long documents with styles, table of contents and table of figures.
- Create an academic poster.
- Use Excel to analyse and present data in a meaningful way.
- Create a Digital Narrative.
- Use your university email.
- Manage your files.
- Use your university OneDrive.
We provide guides and training workbooks to help you improve your IT skills. We also offer individual or group appointments.
If you would like to book an appointment or have any other enquiries, please email mot@beds.ac.uk
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