magpie - online learning
Are you wanting to expand your career skills and get workplace ready?
Our careers learning platform is tailored to your needs, sourcing a wide variety of resources to help you develop key competencies sought after by employers.
Magpie is the go-to place for articles, videos and quizzes to help you develop key career skills. The more you use it, the better magpie will understand your preferences and tailor the content to you.
You can easily work on your personal and professional development. Whether you are preparing for an interview, looking for study tips or wanting to brush up on your networking skills, magpie has you covered.
What is magpie?
Magpie is a personalised learning engine aimed at developing essential career skills.
It tailors its content to match your needs and supplies useful resources all in one place to help you develop skills to succeed, either during your degree or while kick-starting your career.
In this video, Amaia talks about how magpie is the go-to place for career skills development.
When I was preparing for my internship, magpie was the perfect jumping off point. I found an article about presentation skills by the Harvard Business Review that I really resonated with.
How does it work?
When you login to magpie, you will be asked a few questions about your learning style and current skill levels. Magpie then builds a personalised profile of resources based on your goals, strengths and areas to improve. You will find a variety of content, such as blogs, articles, videos and online courses.
Magpie is flexible to your needs and is great for a quick brush up if you are short on time. Bored while waiting for the bus? Why not browse a blog. More time to get stuck in? Why not try an online course.
You can adjust your goals at any time to access more resources, and you can add notes or bookmark content to come back to later.
As you continue to develop your skills, your recommendations will change to keep up with your progress and make sure you have everything you need to reach your goals.
How do you use magpie?
Goals – Once you log into magpie, you can select your goals, which are located in the top right-hand corner.
Actions – You can use the filter function to narrow down results. For example, if you prefer less reading-heavy resources, you can narrow your results to video and podcast entries.
Emma’s experience
I’ve recently finished an online internship. It was a great experience and I picked up lots of new skills and knowledge. I’m hoping to reflect on what I gained from the online internship and build on my existing skills that will help me in my next internship.
- Networking skills– I met some interesting people during my placement who said to get in touch if I ever need anything. I want to make the most of these contacts and start to build a professional network.
- I used a self-assessment quiz to find out where I am on the extrovert-introvert scale and used this to reflect on how I want to reach out to the people I met during my internship. I then learnt about how important ‘chit-chat’ is when building new relationships, which will come in handy when I’m next in an office environment.
Phoebe’s experience
I am going into a work placement while on my year abroad in France next year. I really want to increase my confidence, especially in public speaking.
- Presentation skills – I’d like to get some pointers on how to improve my public speaking skills, especially as I don’t have experience presenting in an office environment yet.
- I listened to a talk from comedian who explained how she hooks people's interest on stage and how this could be translated into the workplace. I’ve been practicing my body language in front of a mirror, so I feel more confident when in front of others.
Max’s experience
I want to improve my skills in Microsoft Office to boost my CV. I don’t really know where to start, and magpie has been a great jumping off point.
- Microsoft Excel skills – I have used Excel a little in the past, but I know there’s still plenty to learn and I would love to expand my skills as it will be very helpful knowledge to have when entering the workplace.
- I watched some one-minute videos about Excel, making sure to save my notes as I went along. I’ve now learnt how to insert sparklines to quickly visualise data trends.
To be honest, I didn’t know where to start and magpie was a no-fuss place to start thinking about my career journey.
How do I access magpie?
- Log in to magpie using your University of Nottingham email.
- If it’s your first time logging in, you will take a five minute quiz in order to set up your learning profile. You can change your answers at any time to change the content on your dashboard.
- Once you register, magpie is ready to use. Whether you use magpie on a regular basis to develop your skills or just log in when you want a quick refresher, magpie is ready with your personalised learning resources.
Magpie was a great way to stay career focused while studying abroad. Even when Nottingham was across the ocean, it was great to have such easy-to-use resources straight in my pocket.