Academic Skills Project - Divinity

This page contains details of the ASP workshops run by the School of Divinity. All workshops are aimed at a first year audience. For further information and to register for these workshops, contact the School ASP Coordinators Riane McConnell or Aogu Suzuki by email at either rm399@st-andrews.ac.uk or as677@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Semester 1:

Workshop 1 - Preparing for Tutorial

Date: Monday 29 September 2025
Audience: First and second year undergraduates

Intended Learning Outcomes:

Students will learn to prepare for tutorial by understanding course syllabi and professor’s expectations, comprehending course materials, practicing communication with tutors, and preparing tutorial materials in relation to the course.

Workshop 2 - How to read an academic article

Date: Wednesday 1 October
Audience: First and second year undergraduates

Intended Learning outcomes: 

Students will learn how to identify and read academic articles, including skills like identifying an article’s main thesis, examining an author’s argument and structure, and constructing counter-arguments and critical thoughts.

Workshop 3 - How are Divinity essays marked?

Date: Monday 6 October
Audience: First year undergraduates

Intended Learning Outcomes: 

Students will gain a broad understanding of how Divinity essays are marked, including the British scoring system, common marks, and expectations according to topic.

Workshop 4 - How to find and cite academic sources

Date: Wednesday 8 October
Audience: First, second and third year undergraduates

Intended Learning Outcomes: 

Students will learn how to find academic articles and cite articles utilizing the Chicago Humanities citation style (including footnote and bibliographic citation norms). Students will be given hands-on experience locating academic articles in the library catalogue and corresponding journal publications.

Workshop 5 - Essay writing part 1

Date: Monday 13 October
Audience: First, second and third year undergraduates

Intended Learning Outcomes: 

This is the first of a two-part series that teaches students how to write an essay. This includes instructing students on essay outline practices and critically assessing if their essay outline meets the course expectations. Additionally, students will learn techniques to aid in the construction of good thesis statements/questions. Students will also learn how to find resources that correspond to essay topics.

Workshop 6 - Essay writing part 2

Date: Wednesday 15 October
Audience: First, second and third year undergraduates

Intended learning outcomes: 

This is the second of a two-part series that teaches students how to write an essay. Students will focus on creating subsidiary questions/statements that support their thesis question/statement. The focus of this workshop is constructing critical arguments that can be proven using primary and secondary texts.