Training for research: becoming an effective researcher

1. Training for research: becoming an effective researcher • Ongoing professional development and training is a requirement for all students and supervisors • What kinds of things constitute professional development for a research degree student? • How far have you considered what you might need to get you off to a flying start?

2. Students without a recent and relevant Masters degree (or identified at admissions as benefiting from exploring research methods) must take the University’s formal research methods programme (usually MR401 and MR402) or other equivalent research methods training authorized by a Faculty Lead for Postgraduate Research (this is decided at admission.)

3. MR401 (find details on ADU research and research degrees link)

4. MR 402 (find details on ADU research and research degrees link)

5. Exciting changes nationally and locally: • Changing national context for training • Expectations changed – not as many students becoming academics • Goal = high quality research –high quality researcher who can talk about, write about and communicate their research and research skills to mixed audiences.

6. Researcher Development Framework (RDF) • We are in the process of implementing this nationally recognized framework. It is a tool for planning, promoting and supporting personal, professional and career development. It describes the expected knowledge, skills, behaviours and personal qualities of researchers and encourages them to aspire to excellence through achieving higher levels of development.

8. Gloucestershire Skills Forge • To support training and development use Gloucestershire Skills Forge . • Familiarize yourself with its contents. You can keep logs of training, carry out specific University monitoring tasks and book on to sessions..

9. Annual Training Needs Analysis (TNA) • Within the next month you should all carry out a TNA exercise with your supervisors • It is a good way for you and your supervisors to get to know each other and devise a plan for your professional development as a researcher (it is also mandatory as it is used to manage and monitor the progress of your research programme).

10. Training needs and opportunities: • While much of your training needs will be met through one-to-one tutorials with supervisors, the following generic and subject-specific opportunities and sources of support are available to research students across the University: • Research Degree Student Workshops (look on SKILLS FORGE).

11. For research students there are two key points of intense engagement with research methods Summer School: • A summer school is organised for students each September and involves students presenting their work informally over a two-day period as well as auditing their skills and devising strategies to improve their research and their effectiveness as researchers.

12. Research Student Conference: An annual conference takes place (usually in May) each year where students present their work formally as in an academic conference. They have to provide abstracts (which are published on the research student pages) and give a timed presentation as part of a themed panel. The conference is also open to students from the University of Worcester, Bath Spa University and our partner colleges.

13. Subject specific seminar programmes: • A wide range of seminars and lectures is available, arranged by departments and faculties. These are normally advertised on faculty web pages. In the future they will accessible and bookable via the Gloucestershire Skills Forge system.