Academic Skills and Personal Development Planning
The College is dedicated to supporting your academic needs and enhancing your academic skills throughout your time at Homerton and Cambridge. For support developing study skills, check out the new Student Skills Hub on the main Homerton website. Most Faculties also run their own study skills courses - ask your Director of Studies for details.
One-to-one support is available for any student who requires assistance with writing skills, maths support or time management and personal organisation. You should speak to your Director of Studies (DoS) or your Tutor in the first instance before getting in touch with one of the advisors listed in the relevant area of the Skills Hub.
During your time in the University you will be given various opportunities both in your academic work and other activities to develop skills that will be transferable to situations outside academic work and study. You are encouraged to use these opportunities to develop skills such as critical reflection; the ability to gather, organise and deploy evidence, data retrieval; the ability to identify and solve problems; the ability to present material orally in a clear and effective way; the ability to present written material clearly and appropriately; self-direction; self-discipline … and so on. Your Tutor will encourage you to keep a ‘Bucket CV’ – a physical or online record of achievements and experience in both academic and non-academic spheres.
The process of identifying skills that you might need for your course, your career or other areas of your life, and then looking for opportunities to develop those skills is called personal development planning. You will be able to draw on this report when applying for jobs or future courses. These could be very diverse: being a member of a Committee, participating in sport, voluntary work, and University or College societies.
Your Tutor/Director of Studies will be able to give you more information and guidance. One of the points of Personal Development Planning is that you take responsibility for your own development. Below are three means to address this:
1. The Careers Service
Make contact with the University Careers Service early on – don’t wait until exams are upon you! The website is www.careers.cam.ac.uk. You’ll also find information about Handshake, an innovative career development platform here: Activate your Handshake account | Careers Service (cam.ac.uk).
2. Your Faculty or Department
Look on your Faculty/Departmental website or Handbook for its transferable skills policy – this will give you an idea of the opportunities that exist for personal development planning.
3. The TS website
Use the University Transferable Skills website for PDP templates, ideas of the kinds of skills you might want to develop, and how to find the opportunities to do it: www.skills.cam.ac.uk/undergrads/subjects/.
Additional Support
If you find you are struggling with your work, please do not hesitate to seek assistance as soon as possible. Speak to your DoS, Tutor, Senior Tutor or a counsellor. Homerton and the University both have a variety of support structures in place to assist you. Even if the support you are seeking is outside of the College, it is important to keep us up to date with your situation.
Library Drop-in Sessions
The Library can offer assistance during staffed hours on a wide variety of topics including iDiscover, ebooks and ejournals, referencing, literature searching and reading recommendations. Students are free to drop in at any time, or if preferred, can make an appointment with a member of staff.
