The Abertay College Transition programme

Coming to Abertay from college direct into third year? This FREE online course helps you to identify the differences between college and uni, and is designed to help you settle into university life before you start your studies here.

Course detail

Start Date

After Registration

Duration

Online Anytime

Award Title

Request Prospectus

Overview

Continuing your studies in third year here at Abertay? Wondering how to approach studying for your degree? Want to gain confidence in what you'll need before starting your course?

Then take the FREE Abertay College Transition (ACT) programme.

The online ACT programme is designed to help new third year students like you to settle into university life.

How ACT can help you

Identify the differences between college and university.
Understand what to expect when studying here.
Build up your academic skills.
Connect to Abertay support services and opportunities.

How much does ACT cost?

Nothing! It's completely free.

How do I access ACT?

Once you've registered for university, you'll automatically get access to the ACT programme and you can use it whenever you like. It is delivered online via MyLearningSpace, Abertay’s online learning environment. While it is designed to help you get started, it will remain as a resource for you during your whole time here.

What you'll learn

ACT covers a range of topics including:

Preparing for online study.
Building digital skills.
Understanding your assignment brief and creating a plan.
Researching, sourcing and using information.
Cohesive, concise and precise writing.
Citing and referencing...and more!

You will have plenty of opportunities to explore and practise these skills. At the end, you'll know what's expected of you as a student here, and have the resources you need to meet those expectations.

Classroom environment - group of students sitting listening

Meet other students

Just like you, all the ACT students will be coming to Abertay directly into third year. Many are transferring to Abertay from local colleges.

We encourage you to participate in the discussion boards, share tips and tricks and meet other people like you. This is a great opportunity to make helpful connections and make new friends along the way!

No formal assessments

There are no formal assessments or tests. Instead there are self-assessment quizzes and tasks throughout the course.

These are designed to help you to continue to think about the topics and check in on your own learning progress. At the end you should have ideas about what you can do well, what you may want to work on, and some resources to help you.

A male and a female student working together in an Abertay classroom.

The ACT programme in detail

The ACT programme is organised in three sections. You can explore the sections in your own time and in any order. Programme materials will also direct you to extra online resources to support your studies, and connect you to student support services and opportunities to get involved with university life.

Studying at Abertay

You'll learn how to navigate your way around the most useful Abertay systems before analysing your own digital capabilities to create a digital development plan. Then you focus on the importance of 'good academic practice' and how to engage in it. Finally, you will look at some of the academic support tools designed to help you with your coursework, and the different support teams here at Abertay.

Getting started with your assignments

You'll develop the important skills that you need before you start to write. The unit begins with a quick 101 on how to manage your time carefully so that you can keep up-to-date with your study workload. Then you'll cover understanding and planning your assignment and identifying trustworthy resources, before using a range of tools to search for information that you can evaluate and use to take notes. After that you'll learn about thinking critically and analysing information and ideas before synthesising your responses logically to help your reader.

Writing your assignments

This unit focuses on what you need to write assignments. To write effectively, you need to build good paragraphs and construct convincing arguments. You also need to write cohesively and coherently, keeping your reader in mind, and clearly link sections and paragraphs while being concise and precise.

Other skills include: how to integrate information from sources into your writing and cite or reference correctly, how to use writing technology tools, and how to write about data. Finally, you will also need to be able to proofread and edit your work carefully before you submit it.