Academic Skills Tutors are available to help you to improve your academic skills. They can provide advice on academic writing, structuring coursework and assignments, using library resources and carrying out research, understanding referencing and avoiding plagiarism. You can find out more about the Academic Skills Team by watching this short video.
Your Lecturer teaches on your programme of study, sets your coursework and marks your assignments. Your Academic Skills Tutor is there to help you to improve your academic skills. They can provide advice on academic writing, structuring coursework and assignments, using library resources and carrying out research, understanding referencing and avoiding plagiarism.
The Academic Skills Tutors are here to help you to improve your academic skills e.g. academic writing, structuring coursework and assignments, using library resources and carrying out research, understanding referencing and avoiding plagiarism. If you’re unsure about theories, concepts or approaches within your subject it is usually a good idea to check with your lecturer.
Academic Skills workshops are delivered throughout the academic year. Go to the ‘Academic Skills Workshop’ tab under the study skills portal to book your place. Once you have booked onto the relevant Academic Skills Workshop you will be able to access the workshop through your calendar on iLearn.
Academic Skills Tutors are available to work with you on a one-to-one basis and can help you develop your academic skills such as: academic writing, structuring assignments, literature searching, referencing and more.
At a one-to-one appointment you and your Academic Skills Tutor will discuss which areas of your work you would like to improve.
To get the most out of your appointment it is important to adequately prepare and allow your Academic Skills Tutor the opportunity to prepare for your session.
To prepare for your appointment:
1. If appropriate, please upload a sample of your work (no more than 500 words), when you book the appointment or send it to study-skills@arden.ac.uk. If possible, please try to do this 24 - 48 hours prior to your appointment and ensure it is in a readable format e.g. MS Word.
2. Clearly sate which area you would like to focus on in your tutorial e.g. writing style, structure, referencing, finding resources.
3. If you need assistance with your assignment brief, where possible please send this to the Academic Skills Tutor 24 - 48 hours before your appointment
Academic Skills Tutor Appointments are available 6 days per week. Go to the ‘Academic Skills Tutor Appointments’ tab under the study skills portal to book your appointment.
For online appointments, when you book your appointment you will see a Zoom link in the location of the meeting. This will take you to a meeting with the tutor. For face-to-face appointments, you will see the physical location of the meeting
Appointments will last approximately 45 minutes
You are encouraged to meet with your Academic Skills Tutor as many times as you need throughout the course of your studies. They are there to help you to develop your skills as you progress in your programme.
The appointment is for yourself only and not others, please encourage fellow students to book their own appointment so that they can get the necessary support for themselves. They can also book into any of the Optional Academic Skills Workshops that are offered on a daily basis.
Yes. We have availability till 10pm (GMT) on weekdays and on Saturday 9am – 5pm (GMT).
We can offer up to two sessions that might focus on one piece of work, but we would not look at the same piece of work for a third time as we feel it is important our advice does not overwhelm your piece of writing. Rather, we are seeking to extend your long-term, transferable skills in writing in an academic style. We hope that as a result you will be able to extend these skills to all of your academic writing while at university.
If you are unable to attend an appointment you have booked, just send an e-mail to study-skills@arden.ac.uk to let us know. Please try to give your tutor at least 24 hours’ notice if you cannot make an appointment and need to reschedule as this will help them to manage their time effectively. If you are delayed, please do your best to let your Academic Skills Tutor know or e-mail study-skills@arden.ac.uk, this is so they can keep the appointment open for you. Your appointment will then run for the remainder of the allocated 45 minutes. If you wish to book a follow up appointment you can do so via the schedulers on iLearn.
Should you fail to turn up for your appointment without notifying us, the Academic Skills Tutor will contact you to let you know that the room will be left open for a further 10 minutes before closing altogether at 20 minutes past the scheduled time. If you wish to book a follow up appointment you can do so via the schedulers on ilearn.
A - Yes, you can receive feedback via an email chat as an alternative to attending a Zoom meeting. Simply let your tutor know this is your preference when you contact them. However, we find it sometimes easier to talk to people directly as you might have questions that arise from the discussion.
Your Academic Skills Tutor will be happy to review your coursework structure and they can provide detailed feedback on small sections of your coursework up to a maximum of two paragraphs or 500 words however they will not be able to review or proofread a full piece of coursework prior to submission. Their feedback will focus on the structure and style of the assignment rather than the subject content.
We would like our students to feel comfortable using all of our library resources, so if you have a particular learning need and require an accessible format, please let us know so we can help: libraries@arden.ac.uk
Our Arden University Inclusion team are also always on hand to help students with any accessibility or learning needs. You can find out more on the Inclusion Portal here, or contact the Inclusion team directly: inclusion@arden.ac.uk
BibliU:
Our library partners at BibliU can provide full PDF versions of the majority books, if any students prefer this for accessibility support. They are always working hard to continuously improve their accessibility and customisation features for all students.
To find out more about how to use some of their existing accessibility features, including keyboard commands, reader settings, text-to-speech software compatibility and other in-built reading features, please see their Accessibility page here.
There are also different organisations within the UK that provide resources in different accessible formats for free. These are listed below with a link to their website:
Please note: if you are interested in any of the RNIB services, you may be eligible for a student account through Arden University, so please contact libraries@arden.ac.uk to enquire with us.
The Library Catalogue is tested with a range of screen readers to ensure its compatibility. The following guide provides tips for navigating using the major screen readers NVDA (Windows), JAWS (Windows) and VoiceOver (Mac OS):
Accessibility Navigation Guide
PDF content will often be more readable and more easily navigated by screen readers when it is displayed directly in Adobe Reader. For PDF documents, download them to your computer and open them in Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat.
If you require assistance with accessing any of the items found in the library collection, please get in touch with your student support advisor or contact the library: libraries@arden.ac.uk
All of our Subject Guides have links down the right-hand side, which will take you to a specific list of the key texts for your course.
Your key texts will also be listed in your module resources on iLearn, at the bottom of your lesson list for each module.
Most of the e-books in the library collection have no user access restrictions, however there are some titles that are only available to purchase using concurrent access models. This means only a certain number of students can access the book at any one time. We keep a close eye on e-Bbook usage for these titles and will purchase additional licences if required.
If you are unable to access an e-Bbook in the library, please contact libraries@arden.ac.uk
Occasionally, you may find that some eBooks don’t feature page numbers, due to the way that the book has been created electronically by the publisher for enhanced accessibility (usually this is referred to as EPUB format).
If you are using one of these, and wish to reference it in an assignment, we have some guidance in your aligned Referencing Guide:
· Harvard Referencing Guide (page 4)
· APA Referencing Guide (page 7)
· OSCOLA Referencing Guide (page 34 onwards)
As a general rule, if your eBook does not have printed page numbers, when referencing books in your work you will need to refer to a chapter/section/paragraph number to correctly identify the passage of text you are using. e.g., Leatherbarrow and Fletcher (2018) state that “HRM as a concept was attractive to many organisations because of its unitary perspective” (chapter 3, para. 2).
For webpages and online newspapers, this detail is not required.
Please note that the Harvard Referencing Guide has recently been updated in line with University policy, and the current version to be used by all students is available on your Subject Guide, all of which are available here.
If you would like further help with referencing, you can book onto one of the specialist Referencing Workshops run by our Academic Skills Tutors – you can find all the details and book your place here.
In some cases, you can copy, paste and print; however the allowable amount varies by publisher. Most of the e-books in EBSCO and eBook Central have a copy, paste and print allowance.
EBSCO:
If you are printing an eBook, up to 100 pages of a title can be printed per user in PDF format. In addition, you can select to save the pages as a PDF file instead of printing them. Availability of copy/paste functionality is determined by the publisher, and that information is presented in the Publisher Permissions information on the detailed record and in the eBook viewer.
eBook Central:
The default allowances are 40% for print and 20% for copy. Publishers may choose to modify these defaults on eBook Central, but typically they do not. eBook Central displays the patron's remaining copy and print allowances for each title when they are signed in.
BibliU:
In BibliU, you can copy text from your eBooks quite easily - simply highlight the text you wish to copy and this will automatically bring up the annotation menu. On the annotation menu window, click the Copy icon and then paste the copied text to your document.
If you see the message, "copying is disabled for this book" then this is referring to the copying allowance set by the publishers of the book. Some publishers allow more allowance than others, while there are also some publishers who don't even allow their books to be copied at all (0% copying allowance).
Part of BibliU's agreement with the publishers to distribute their content includes copyright protection, so unfortunately if this message comes up then that eBook is not available to copy.
Most of the items in the Library collection can be downloaded and read offline. The most effective way to
view library items offline is to download Adobe Reader or to use your device's native apps.
BibliU
Install the BibliU app and then you will be able to download your eBooks for offline reading:
Desktop App (Mac and PC)
Once downloaded, you can also follow these instructions here for a step-by-step guide in how to download and access your eBooks offline.
eBook Central
eBook Central e-Bbooks can be downloaded and viewed offline using Adobe Digital Editions, which is free of charge. Sign up for free here, then download the app from:
Google Play Store
Apple Store
EBSCO
E-books and journals from EBSCO can be downloaded using Adobe Digital Editions (see above). Alternatively, you can download the EBSCO Mobile App:
There are a range of resources available through the Library Portal which you may find useful when embarking on your dissertation. They can be found on the dissertation research pages.
You will be assigned a dissertation tutor who will advise you on the specifics of your thesis and help to guide you through the process.
Academic Skills Tutors are also available to support you, they can help you to take your research skills to the next level and become more confident in finding and assessing resources and with preparing your literature review.
The English Language Hub is dedicated to supporting students who are non-native English speakers. To give you an idea of how the English Language Hub can help you, here are some examples:
- Improve your fluency and confidence when speaking in English
- Review and practise grammar, improving your accuracy when using English
- Learn important academic writing skills for improving your essays/reports
- Be more familiar with the common errors that international students make and learn how to avoid them. Therefore, helping you to improve your marks.
- Improve your communication skills when giving presentations and writing emails; these are important skills for work as well as for your studies.
The English Language Hub is dedicated to supporting students who do not have English as their first language and therefore may require some additional support to study in English at Arden. If you are an international student, or a second language speaker of English, the English Language Hub can help you. If you are a native English speaker, then we recommend you seek support from the Academic Skills Team
No, if English is not your native language then you are welcome to join any of the support services on offer.
No, our services and support are completely free for all Arden students.
We have both online and face-to-face options. Get in touch with us at englishlanguagehub@arden.ac.uk to find out more.
This course starts in week 2 and runs every study block for Blended Learning students.
We have a waiting list for this course, which you can sign up to by emailing: englishlanguagehub@arden.ac.uk
You can join the course up until week 3 of the study block (it starts in week 2) for all Blended Learning students.
You can join the course up until week 3 of the study block (it starts in week 2) for all Blended Learning students.
Yes! Students who miss the first two sessions will lose their place on the course. It is therefore important that you let the ELH know about your absence before the session by emailing: englishlanguagehub@arden.ac.uk
It is also good manners to inform your lecturer if you cannot attend. Language classes are interactive and require you to participate in group work and pair discussions, and your lecturer will have planned each activity with the number of students in mind. Letting them know about your absence in advance will give the lecturer time to re-plan the activities so everyone can get the most out of the class.
No. The course materials have been custom made by our lecturers and are on iLearn. You won’t have to purchase anything else for this course.
Yes, absolutely! You can sign up to our course Fundamentals of Academic English, join a 1-2-1 tutorial session or use the self-study resources on iLearn. Email englishlanguagehub@arden.ac.uk for more details on how to sign up for a course or a tutorial.
A tutorial is a 25-minute meeting where you can look at your individual language issues with your teacher. You will go through a piece of writing (for example, an assignment, maximum 1,000 words) and work on improving some key areas. Your teacher might ask you some questions about a grammatical point, or get you to rewrite a sentence so it is more academic. It’s important that you send your teacher a sample of your work at least a day before the tutorial so they can prepare.
Tutorials can help you improve specific assignments, but they are more helpful to improve your academic English in general. If you aren’t taking part in a course, or if you are proficient speaker of English, a tutorial could be a good choice for you.
Top Tip: don’t wait until your assignment deadline to book a tutorial. Make an appointment in the middle of the study block so you can find out your areas of weakness and improve them before your assignment is due.
Please note, we are not a proofreading service.
Both services can help you with your academic writing, and we encourage you to make the most of the support offered by both departments. In general, the English Language Hub focuses on the sentence level: improving your grammatical accuracy or perhaps your pronunciation of key vocabulary. We focus on your comprehension and production of the English language, specifically. The Academic Skills Team will focus on all aspects of academic skills such as critical thinking, referencing, finding credible resources and the appropriate writing format for your given assignment.
The feedback we receive from Arden staff and students is essential to the development of our services.
You can provide feedback by participating in the mid module survey for each of your learning modules and you can also feedback to us directly by using the Library Portal Feedback Form
If you have an immediate enquiry or request, please reach out at any of our teams using the enquiry form on these support pages and we will do our best to help.
Unfortunately, we don’t currently have an inter-library loan service in place, although it is one of the services we’re hoping to develop in future. In the meantime, utilising open access resources is a good way of gaining access to items outside of the Arden collections.
You can install the Unpaywall free browser extension or the LibKey Nomad browser extension which will tell you if an article you’re searching for is open access. Alternatively, you can search Google Scholar for articles - - for more information and tips on using Google Scholar, you can use this Google Scholar Guide. You can also view this recording on Using Google Scholar and Open Access Materials.
Arden does not have access to the SCONUL reciprocal use scheme as we do not have a print Library collection. Access to the core resources you require for your course are provided in electronic format. If you would like access to any resources outside of the collection, please contact the team at libraries@arden.ac.ukand we will then look into whether we can obtain a copy, or find a suitable alternative resource for you. . For other specialist material, you can also see if there are any Universities local to you that allow you to register and visit outside of the scheme, so it’s best to contact them directly and see what access they allow. Public libraries also offer access to some academic resources on site. Many of the legal deposit libraries (which are entitled to request a copy of everything published in the United Kingdom) are also available to access free of charge. Please see details for each below:
Our library platform is available to all students to search freely and without needing any login details. You will be able to save items to a personal folder to revisit later, as well as download offline copies and bookmark individual items.
Separate to the Library, BibliU also has a feature to view your saved books (“favourites”) - if you want to favourite a book for future use, simply hover over it and click on the heart icon. This will then save the book to your favourites list, which is displayed in the top row of the homepage.
If you’d like to make a suggestion for something we don’t currently have in our library collection, you can email our Assistant Librarians: libraries@arden.ac.uk They will then look into whether we can obtain a copy, or find a suitable alternative resource for you.
Westlaw UK contains the fully consolidated full text of Acts since 1267 and selected Statutory Instruments since 1948. Legislation Compare allows the user to easily view historic and prospective versions of legislation and compare them. Annotations are available for most recent legislation and more are being added for earlier legislation on an on-going basis. Provision information provides analysis and links to case law, commentary, and journals.
Click here to access Westlaw UK.
Legislation.gov.uk carries most (but not all) types of legislation and their accompanying explanatory documents. In some cases, only the original published (as enacted) version is available.
Click here to access Legislaton.gov.uk.
Westlaw UK is one of the major databases for case law, legislation, and commentary. It has the full text of the official Law Reports series and contains material dating back to 1220 via the English Reports. Westlaw UK also provides a ‘case analysis’ document for UK cases providing information about the case, where it has been judicially considered and links to relevant legislation and commentary. It also provides access to European cases and international case law.
Click here to access Westlaw UK
The British & Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) contains British and Irish case law and legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission reports, and other law-related British and Irish materials. BAILII is a free service and useful to explore; however, it may not be as up to date or accurate as Westlaw UK.
Click here to access BAILII
Westlaw International provides access to cases, legislation and journals from non UK jurisdictions including Australia, Canada, European Union, Hong Kong, Korea and more.
Click here to access Westlaw International
The World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) provides free, independent and non-profit access to worldwide law including a country by country listing (for constitutions, cases and legislation etc.)
Click here to access WorldLII
Business Source Ultimate is EBSCO’s premier database provided for Business students, offering a wealth of peer-reviewed, full-text journals and other resources. These provide historical information and current trends in business that spark discussion on future developments and changes in the business world.
In addition to accessing peer-reviewed full-text journals, students can also access case studies, country economic reports, SWOT analysis, market research reports and company profiles, as well as interviews with executives and analysts.
Click here to access Business Source Ultimate
All students studying Arden’s CMI accredited programmes receive access to Management Direct as part of their CMI membership – Management Direct is the Learning Portal of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and provides a range of tools and resources, including checklists, articles, management models and CMI templates.
If your programme offers CMI membership, then the access will be linked via your Subject Guide.
Business Source Ultimate is EBSCO’s premier database provided for Business students, offering a wealth of peer-reviewed, full-text journals and other resources across a global perspective, with thousands of English-language and native-language full-text journals from Asia, Oceania, Europe and Latin America.
Click here to access Business Source Ultimate
IBIS World provides access to thousands of global industry research reports, providing students with the same industry intelligence and tools used by companies around the world.
Click here to access IBIS World
SPSS is a statistical package for social sciences, used by researchers to perform statistical analysis. We provide access to students studying across Psychology and the Social Sciences to support statistical analysis, modelling and survey research tools.
If your programme offers access to SPSS, this will be linked via your Subject Guide.
APA PsycTests is a repository of items associated with psychological measures, scales, surveys, and other instruments essential to the research needs of professionals, students, and educators across the behavioural and social sciences. You can download test instruments directly from the database for use in research and/or teaching.
Each record provides a summary of the construct and users can find information on reliability, validity, and factor analysis when that data is reported in the source document. Records include supplemental information such as datasets, answer keys, scoring sheets, and test manuals, when available.
Click here to access APA PsycTests
You can install the LibKey Nomad browser extension which will tell you if an article you’re searching for is open access or available in Arden’s Library collection. Instructions on how to do this are here.
Alternatively you can search Google Scholar for open access articles - for more information and tips on using Google Scholar, you can use this Google Scholar Guide. You can also view this recording on Using Google Scholar and Open Access Materials.
You can search Google Scholar for articles available through the Arden Library collection, by enabling Library Links in the settings - for a step by step guide on how to do this and for tips on using Google Scholar, you can use this Google Scholar Guide. You can also view this recording on Using Google Scholar and Open Access Materials.
When searching the internet for resources, you can also make use of the LibKey Nomad browser extension which will tell you if an article you’re searching for is open access or available in Arden’s Library collection.
Access to the Library Portal and its resources requires the use of your University supplied Office365 details. If you use another Office365 service, either a personal account or through your work or other institution, you will need to log out of Office365 with those accounts.
You can work around this limitation by using an alternative browser or incognito mode, which will allow you to be logged into multiple different accounts at the same time.
If you are having any access difficulties, first make sure you are logged into your Office 365 account.
You will use your Arden Office 365 login credentials to access the all the resources available through the Library Portal. If you are unsure of how to access your Arden Office 365 account, you can recover your password by clicking on this link - there is also some guidance on resetting your password here.
If this doesn’t work, or you need any further help accessing resources, please get in touch with the Library team at libraries@arden.ac.uk for assistance.
The Library team check and add in links to resources in your lessons, but there may be some circumstances where the link to the online content may be broken or missing, If you find any broken or missing links in your lesson material, please report this to your module leader as soon as possible and they can work with the Library team to get the linked replaced or added. You can also email libraries@arden.ac.uk for a link to the resource in the meantime, whilst the lesson content is being updated.
If you are experiencing any difficulties logging in to a resource on the Library Portal, or an error message is showing, please email the Library team at libraries@arden.ac.uk with a screenshot displaying the error message you are encountering. One of the team will then be in touch to troubleshoot the issue as soon as possible.