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The main study skills this initiative focusses on are correct approaches to revision and then how to use the assimilated knowledge to create well organised and clear essay-style answers. These two skills are inseparable.
The initiative was chose chosen because personal marking experience indicated that even in final year, some students did not really understand all the factors that would help them produce a good quality, longer-style essay answer. I know students will have attended sessions at school and during lower years at University to improve essay writing skills, but problems still persist through to final year and they can adversely affect performance in final degree exams.
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A secondary problem was that some students thought they were studying properly but were not. They were coming to exams without having a comprehenisve comprehensive set of facts about their topic or a deep understanding of its theoretical and technical aspects. Discussion with some students revealed they had a very poor approach to revision, (question spotting, caffeine-fuelled sessions the night before tests and a very superficial approach to conceptual understanding). However they did not all realise that their revision approach was poor and so a discussion of some recent research findings in the area of revision and study (e.g. sleep, interspersed active recall recall vs re-reading etc) was introduced.
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