Arriving at University can be totally overwhelming, with a huge amount of information to take in very quickly. One thing that can help is having a clear overview of what your course looks like. It’s important for the way you organise your studies and can be really helpful in guiding how your set up your digital resources, like folders on your computer.  This is also useful at the start of each University year. It is likely that you will be taking a number of modules and mapping these, with some key information about each one, can give you a visual reference point to help you understand your course.

You could begin with something really simple like this- just the title of your course and the modules that you are taking:

You may want to do a slightly more detailed one, which could involve looking at information like a Module Handbook, which is often given to you or stored in your VLE (UniLearn at Huddersfield University). These booklets are sometimes neglected, but looking at them at the start of the course will give you a real clear idea of what you will be doing, what is expected from you and many of your key dates.

It took about 2 hours to pull out all this information, but it means that you know exactly where you are in your course. It is useful to cross-reference the dates straight onto a calendar or into your mobile phone calendar if you can.

You can then take this further if you want with software like MindView 7.

A map like this is ideal to print off and keep on your study wall, or on the front of a file. You can do more detailed ones for each module if you want. This does then help you with setting up your electronic filing system as well:

With a folder for each module, you should keep all those documents in order. And, you can always add sub-folders inside each one – like:

• Lecture notes
• Assignments
• Reading
• Seminars

Hope this helps with your organisation and if you need any support with your file management or with MindView, and you are at Huddersfield University, you can contact me through HudStudy.

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