An Extended Project Qualification – or EPQ for short – provides a unique opportunity for students to complete independent research outside of their chosen subjects and produce an essay, report, artefact or performance (depending on the exam board).
It’s a great taste of what it’s like to learn and study independently at University, but can be challenging. Prepare your students for every stage of their EPQ with our resources, from managing their time and workload to researching and writing.
You can also book a research skills workshop with us to support the taught element of the EPQ. If you’re local to Newcastle, you can visit Newcastle University Library or we can deliver the workshop in your school or college, or alternatively we can deliver an online workshop directly to your classroom via Teams or Zoom.
Assessment Objectives
Ideas and inspiration for how you might use our resources in accordance with the EPQ assessment objectives, both for whole-class delivery and to set as independent work.
Time Management
Our Study timetable allows students to customise their own study timetable each week based on their A-Level subjects, and features built-in prompts reminding them to take a break between study sessions.
Our Time management strategies resource provides effective time management strategies for students to choose from.
Our Work-life balance scale is a tool that supports students in optimising their work-life balance.
Our Procrastination quiz provides students with strategies to help them avoid procrastination.
Planning
Our Essay planner allows students to input their deadline for a piece of written work and provides approximate guidelines on how long to spend on each stage of their planning, research and writing.
The stages of writing an essay is an interactive that invites students to reorder the stages of writing an essay and consider how long they should approximately spend on each.
Finding resources
Our Research skills resources provide your students with guidance on how to find free resources, including:
- Books in a library
- Google Scholar
- Open Access
- JSTOR
- CORE
- Statistics
Our Introduction to the Dewey Decimal System explains how to find books in a Library and our game tests their knowledge, prompting students to reorder books in the correct order against the clock (which can promote healthy competition during whole-class delivery!).
Evaluating resources
Types of resources is an interactive providing students with an overview of different types of resources and examples of how they might be useful in their studies, allowing them to make more informed decisions when searching.
Our Resource evaluation checklist can be used by your students as they are searching for resources. It encourages them to critically evaluate each resource they find by asking themselves the six questions before deciding whether to use it in their work.
Choosing appropriate resources is an interactive quiz prompting students to consider how useful different resources might be in answering a series of academic questions.
Our Drag and drop interactive encourages students to weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of different resources.
The list of pros and cons at the end of the page highlights some of the things students might consider when using different types of resources.
Reading resources
Our Reading skills resources can support your students with getting the most out of their reading, from identifying useful features and reading more effectively, to establishing their reading purpose and taking useful notes from their reading.
Features of a Text introduces students to the different features of a text and explains how they might be useful in their studies, from abstracts and glossaries to URLs and indexes.
Reading with a purpose is a concise video explaining how students can read with a clear purpose.
Our Reading effectively interactive introduces students to effective reading strategies.
Our Note-taking strategies interactive provides students with a variety of effective notetaking strategies that they can adapt and use in their studies.
Making the most of your notes is a short animation guiding students through effective ways of using the notes they make.
Referencing resources
Our Referencing skills resources cover everything your students need to know about referencing resources accurately and consistently.
Our Referencing page includes a video covering the basics of referencing, an interactive helping students find information for their references, referencing FAQ videos and examples of Harvard referencing.
Our Plagiarism page contextualises plagiarism for students and includes an interactive quiz to test their knowledge.
Our Writing skills resources can support your students in preparing for writing longer essays and expressing themselves clearly and confidently.
Getting started
Our essay decision tree supports students who are about to write their first essay and may be unsure about what to do next.
Building your argument
Our series of videos cover building an argument from conception through to expressing it in a piece of work. Making arguments defines and explains the basics of arguments, Understanding how to build an argument uses the analogy of baking to explain how Bloom’s Taxonomy can help students develop their argument, and Forming your argument explains how to communicate an argument effectively to others.
Technical writing support
Our Writing skills resources cover the technical elements of writing, including proofreading, punctuation and academic conventions.
Our Proofreading video provides practical tips for spotting errors in your work and the accompanying interactive give students a chance to have a go at finding mistakes in a piece of writing.
Our Punctuation page covers the basics of using punctuation in academic writing.
Features of academic writing explains the typical features of academic writing and provides an example of a paragraph in both academic and non-academic style.
Using evidence in your work reminds students of the importance of acknowledging sources clearly and provides examples of how to refer to evidence in a piece of work through paraphrasing and quoting.
Our Communication skills resources support students with handling the technical requirements of delivering presentation, like creating an appropriate slideshow and complying with time limits, to managing presentation nerves and delivering on the day.
Presenting to an audience
Our Delivering a presentation video reassures students who may be nervous before a presentation and provides practical guidance to manage these nerves.
Our Presentation tips provide a succinct list of things to consider before delivering a presentation.
Our presentation decision tree support students who are about to deliver their first presentation and may be unsure about what to do next.
Our presentation quiz demonstrates effective and less effective presentation scenarios and invites students to identify what went well or could be improved in each scenario.
Technical presentation support
Our Presentation example demonstrates and explains how students can create clear and effective presentation slides.
Reaching conclusions
Our series of videos cover building an argument from conception through to expressing it within a piece of work. Making arguments defines and explains the basics of arguments, Understanding how to build an argument uses the analogy of baking to explain how Bloom’s Taxonomy can help students develop their argument, and Forming your argument explains how to communicate an argument effectively to others.
Technical writing support
Our Writing skills resources cover the technical elements of writing, including proofreading, punctuation and academic conventions.
Our Proofreading video provides practical tips for spotting errors in your work and the accompanying interactive give students a chance to have a go at finding mistakes in a piece of writing.
Our Punctuation page covers the basics of using punctuation in academic writing.
Features of academic writing explains the typical features of academic writing and provides an example of a paragraph in both academic and non-academic style.
Using evidence in your work reminds students of the importance of acknowledging sources clearly and provides examples of how to refer to evidence in a piece of work through paraphrasing and quoting.
