Track your skills
Reflect on, record and develop your skills to help you now and in the future.
You are developing skills all the time through your studies, extracurricular activities and in your day to day life.
Taking time to reflect on your skills, and tracking them in a purposeful way, will help you to develop them and communicate them effectively to others.
The University's online skills platform, called My Skills will help you to:
- understand your skills
- reflect on your skills
- build your skills profile
- develop your skills and set goals.
You will need to register the first time you use My Skills.
Understand your skills
Co-designed by students, academics and external partners, including graduate employers, My Skills focuses on nine essential skills, that we have grouped into three categories:
What will I learn?
Academic skills
- How to think beyond my discipline
- How to express my ideas
- How to develop effective learning strategies
Research skills
- How to conduct my own research
- How to evaluate the research of others
- How to think critically
Knowledge handling skills
- How to develop ideas and solve problems
- How to think creatively and innovatively
- How to analyse and present data.
What will I be able to do?
Work well independently
- Organise myself effectively
- Act with integrity
- Recover from difficulties and set backs
Work well with others
- Work well as part of a team
- Communicate confidently and appropriately in a range of settings
- Develop and maintain healthy relationships
Work well across communities
- Recognise and value the views and differences of others
- Engage positively with local communities
- Engage positively with global issues.
What will I become?
Proactive about my wellbeing
- Good at caring for my physical and mental health
- Able to develop my self-awareness
- Able to develop a positive mindset
Clear about my direction
- Clear about my motivations and values
- Confident in expressing my strengths
- Ready for my next steps
Ready for the future 
- Confident in using digital tools
- Able to identify and work with technological advances
- Ready to adapt to changing and challenging environments.
Reflect on your skills
Use My Skills to assess your ability and experience in the different skills.
- Complete the self-assessment to see your current skill level. It will take you about 20 minutes.
- You don’t have to complete the self-assessment in one go, you can come back to it later.
- You can retake it as many times as you wish to review your progress.
- If you score lower on some skills in future assessments, this doesn’t mean you’re getting worse, it is more likely you are making a more accurate assessment.
Build your skills profile
Once you’ve completed a self-assessment you can view a summary of your scores against each skill.
- Where you have scored highly, think of examples (within or outside of your studies) of when you have used these skills.
- Record them as a skill statement by clicking the + icon next to the skill.
- You can view a summary of your statements by clicking skill statements.
- If you complete the self-assessment more than once, you can compare your latest results with previous assessments.
Develop your skills and set goals
Once you have completed the self-assessment you can set goals for your academic and personal development.
Pin the skills that you want to focus on first. These could be the ones that are most important to you or ones that you feel you need the most support in developing.
Go to pathways for support in developing that skill further. Click the link next to your skills score or in the My career passport section.
Access after graduation
You can access My Skills for up to three years after graduation.
You can download your skills statements as an Excel file and your skills history as a PDF at any time. This can be useful to share with your personal tutor or to build on after graduation.