Help for taught students

There may come a time during your studies when you need guidance on how to gather and/or analyse data for dissertation work or need to know how to effectively use software such as python or SPSS.  This is where our statistics and data support service can prove invaluable. Our support team offers individual support in three formats; workshops, drop-in sessions and bookable 1-to-1 appointments.  

Drop-in sessions 

The service operates on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. There is space for you to study while you wait for a support tutor to become available. You are welcome to attend the drop-in sessions as frequently as you like. We encourage you to bring along any relevant materials, e.g.  your lecture notes and question sheets, datasets etc. so that we have any background information from your course to help understand the context.  

Come along to our drop-in support sessions in the Skills Space on the Ground Floor of The Laidlaw Library. The sessions usually happens every week at the following time but you can check our current schedule for up-to-date information (including workshops). 
Note that during busy periods it may only be possible to speak to an advisor for 15-20 minutes.   

• Tuesdays, 1 – 3pm  (except university closed dates)

The drop-in is intended for shorter queries, e.g. ten minutes or less. If you have a longer query or multiple questions, please request an appointment.

One-to-one appointments 

Attend an appointment to get one-to-one advice on any issues you have with statistics and working with data in your course. 

Our individual support is tailored to your unique needs as an undergraduate or taught Masters student. We can help you with a wide range of statistics topics. Examples of statistics topics include more than just data analysis. You might need to talk through your data collection process, how best to present and report your findings, or require support with statistical software such as SPSS.

We are unable to support PhD researchers. Instead, you should contact your school or department for support. 

Book an appointment 

View and book available appointments 

Our one-to-one appointments are delivered either in person at the Laidlaw Library or online through Microsoft Teams. You can select a preference when requesting your appointment. See below joining instructions for online appointments. 

Appointments last up to 45 minutes but may only take a couple of minutes if your query is resolved quickly. 

Statistics and data appointments are available Monday to Friday, depending on tutor availability.  

What happens in an appointment? 

In an appointment, you will speak with an experienced statistics tutor who will respond to your individual needs. 

If there isn’t a specific issue you need support with, but you’re worried about statistics and working with data or would like to discuss general statistics skills, you’re welcome to book an appointment. 

We mostly offer individual support but, if you and a small group of friends have similar needs, we are happy to offer an appointment to a group. Just indicate that on your booking form. 

Limitations of what we can offer 

We can support you with developing your skills for working with data and statistics, but we can’t do your work for you. So, for example, if you’re struggling to complete your assessed coursework or you would like someone to solve specific statistics and data problems for you, you might be expecting support we can’t offer. 

At busy times we might not be able to offer you an appointment in the timeframe you require, so it is a good idea to get in touch well in advance of any deadlines. However, we try to help as quickly as we can, so always get in touch. 

Our tutors have experience in learning as well as teaching statistics. They will be able to support you in finding ways to learn, but they will not have your subject-specific knowledge. The aim of this service is to support you in becoming an independent learner, and our tutors will do that by signposting you to relevant resources and suggesting general approaches to learning statistics and working with data. 

Joining your online appointment 

To access your appointment, we recommend using Google Chrome to log into your UOL MS Office 365 account. You can join the appointment by either clicking on the “Join” button from your Outlook calendar or your Teams calendar. It may ask if you would like to install the MS Teams app, but this is not essential as the web browser version should be fine.