GREat Skills is a programme of workshops designed to support students to develop key skills relevant to their academic learning and their preparation for the transition to university and beyond.
GREat Skills offers a variety of academic, personal and transferable skills workshops delivered by our trained student ambassadors and staff, aimed at students from our targeted schools and colleges. The GREat Skills workshops are suitable for all level 3 students, studying A levels, BTEC, IB, T Levels, Access courses or equivalent. The workshops are designed to support students currently completing a piece of academic work, those who are due to complete one in the near future or those who would benefit from the opportunity of being able to build on key skills relevant to their future studies within a Higher Education setting. The workshops are also particularly suitable for students taking the EPQ as they cover many of the main skills which students develop and are expected to demonstrate within their projects.
GREat Skills Workshops
Academic Skills
- Choosing your question
- Selecting and evaluating sources
- Referencing and avoiding plagiarism
- Effective presentations
- Reflective writing
- Academic writing
- Revision techniques
Personal Skills
- Understanding feedback
- Managing stress
- Developing resilience
- Independent learning
- Critical thinking
- Digital literacy
- Careers Planning
Transferable skills
- Problem solving
- Active listening & communication
- Time management
- Attention to detail
- Leadership
Further details on each of our GREat Skills workshops can be found here.
Delivery
For our targeted schools/colleges, our trained student ambassadors and staff will be able to deliver the GREat skills workshops in person or digitally/virtually across a variety of platforms. These workshops are usually one hour in duration. Dates and times can be agreed to fit in with the timetable for your students or your study programme, but we do ask that workshops are delivered to a minimum audience of 20 learners.
Recorded Workshops
For schools and colleges who do not feature in our target list, we have pre-recorded versions of our GREat Skills workshops, as well as PDF versions of these presentations and any accompanying resources, available for you and your students to download and access. These can also be helpful refreshment tools for any of your students who may have completed a workshop with us previously. Further information on how to access these can be found on our resources page. These will be updated and refreshed later this term to include our newer workshops.
Please see our Safeguarding Policy which provides details about staying safe at online events and webinars.
Data Collection & Evaluation
We encourage all participants to register their details with us, so that we can evaluate our workshops and the schools/colleges we work with.
We also encourage all participants and teachers/advisers to provide feedback at the end of our workshops, which supports us to improve the content and quality of our workshops.
On-campus GREat Skills day
Our targeted schools and colleges can book to bring students to our on-campus GREat Skills Day on selected dates. Further details to be confirmed soon.
GREat Skills Scholarship
Students who successfully participate in a minimum of 5 of our outreach activities during their A Level/Level 3 studies and who will be joining us for their undergraduate studies in September 2023, will potentially be eligible for nomination by school staff for a substantial cash scholarship of £2000. Further details on the eligibility criteria can be found on our GREat Skills Scholarship page.
Please note, that where we receive a large number of scholarship nominations, priority will be given to submissions from those within underrepresented backgrounds, e.g. POLAR 4 Q1 and IMD Q1 (areas with the lowest proportion of young people who participate in higher education). We reserve the right to change this criteria subject to guidance from the OfS. A committee will review all applications and award scholarships on merit. We aim to make our decision by the middle of June.
Feedback from Teachers/Advisers
“I really enjoyed the GREat Skills Workshops, I thought they were really interesting, well presented (never boring) and I think very useful.”
Teacher, Barking & Dagenham College
“The Plagiarism workshop was excellent – exactly what our students needed and delivered in an interactive fashion.”
Teacher, Northfleet School for Girls
Contact Details
If you would be interested in booking or finding out more about our GREat Skills Programme, please contact us at outreach@gre.ac.uk