Researcher Training for Part-Time and Distance Doctoral Students

Wednesday 22nd– Friday 24th June 2016

Programme

1

Introduction

From juggling your research and other commitments to preparing for your viva, this three-day series of workshops addresses a wide range of research and personal skills. Whether you’re just starting or are near completion, this is an opportunity to explore the research process, pick up some useful tips and share your experiences and ideas with other part-time and distance researchers.

It is up to you to decide, in discussion with your supervisor(s), which of the sessions you will attend. As the Researcher Development Team run a similar programme on an annual basis, there will be opportunities to attend courses in the future, and we encourage you to focus on identifying the skills you will need over the next year when making your selection.

Venues

In order to minimise the need for travel between venues across campus and to ensure easy access to appropriate IT training rooms and the Bill Bryson Library, all workshops and meals will be held at venues situated in the lower half of the Science Site, Durham City Campus. A map can be found at:

The Science site encompasses the buildings shaded in black on Stockton road, in the lower-middle of the map.

Costs

All the workshops, refreshments and lunches are free.

As this is a non-residential programme, accommodation is not provided. If you need to organise accommodation, you can book bed and breakfast at one of Durham University’s colleges. For further details and prices, see:

For details about hotels and guest houses in Durham, see:

Booking Places

1. On the Timetable and Booking Form:

a) complete the participant details

b) indicate which workshops you wish to attend in the ‘booking’ column.

c) Indicate which refreshments/lunches you require

2. Save the document and send it to the Researcher Development team

By email to:

By post to: Carolyn McAlhone

Centre for Academic, Researcher and Organisation Development

Durham University

The Lodge

Lower Mountjoy

Durham

DH1 3LE

You will receive confirmation of the workshops you have booked places on.

9:15 – 9:45Arrival

9:45 – 10:00Welcome

10:00 – 13:00 Starting your Doctorate

Trainer: Bob Matthew

Target audience: First year research postgraduates.

This course aims to demystify the Doctorate. In addition to exploring the structure and criteria of a doctorate the session focuses on getting started and establishing good practice. This is also an opportunity for participants to discuss concerns and ideas about workload, supervision and motivation.

By the end of this session, participants will have:

  • explored the criteria for a doctorate
  • considered how best to get started
  • had an opportunity to share ideas, expectations and experiences.

10:00 – 13:00Introduction to EndNote

Trainer: Teresa Henley

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

This course provides the knowledge to use EndNote for bibliography management, via a step by step introduction to the fundamentals to utilise EndNote as a

  • Reference Database: to store manage and search for bibliographic references in a user’s private reference library.
  • Bibliography Maker: to build lists of cited works automatically into Microsoft Word and, later, to scan a document for the in-text citations in order to compile a bibliography in any format that is required.
  • Online Database: to search online bibliographic databases and retrieve the references directly into EndNote, in order to store them in the user’s own personal reference library.

10:00 – 13:00Be a Better Writer

Trainer: Helen Lawrence

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

Have you ever looked at your academic writing and thought, 'Well, it's ok, but it could be better'? If so, this session is for you. We will explore the character and style of academic writing, then consider ways to enhance both the clarity and accuracy of your written work.

10:00 – 11:45 Google Scholar and the Academic Web

Trainer: James Bisset

Target audience: First year research postgraduates, or anyone looking for help or assurance around their search skills.

The internet is a rich source for researchers but its vast size means that even the most proficient user can struggle to find relevant information. This session will cover a range of resources to help you find information for your research.

Google Scholar indexes peer-reviewed academic content from some of the largest scholarly publishers, as well as other non-peer-reviewed material aimed at a practitioner or scholarly audience. This provides greater visibility of academic content, if not always a means to access the full text. This session will cover how to make the most of Google Scholar, including setting up your library options to provide more streamlined access to full text content, citation searching and alternative versions.

This session will also look at Google Scholar as a profile service for the academic author, to increase the visibility and discoverability of your own research output (and tracking its use).

The session will then provide an overview and chance to explore other sources of academic literature on the web, such as:

  • content available via open access repositories from around the world (including meta-search portals provided through CORE and openDOAR),
  • open-access theses from across the UK (and beyond),
  • data sharing sites such as Figshare
  • profile sites such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu.

14:00 - 17:00Long Documents in Word

Trainers: David Heading, Sarah Dodds, Teresa Henley

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

This course explores the facilities within Word that aid the production of longer documents.

Topics include:

  • organising a longer document
  • splitting a document into sections
  • generating a table of contents and an index
  • working with multiple files and using the Master Document facility

14:00 - 17:00Resilience

Trainer: Helen Lawrence

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

Research is full of ups, downs and unexpected turns, isn't it? Navigating this rollercoaster takes resilience: the ability to bounce back and face whatever is coming next. This session will give participants the opportunity to discuss the situations which threaten to derail us, to examine their own responses to those situations, and to develop a plan for taking control of those responses and therefore flourishing in the research environment.

14:00 – 16:00Introduction to Poster Production and Presentation

Trainer: Christine Bohlander

Target audience: Research postgraduates with little or no experience of poster production and presentation.

Already commonly used in the Sciences, poster sessions are becoming a more popular mode of presentation across all disciplines. This course will serve as an introduction to the design, production and delivery of a poster.

The session will focus on:

  • How to strike the right balance between content and design
  • The various methods of production
  • How to make the most of the poster session.

16:30 – 18:00Introduction to Project Management

Trainer: Christine Bohlander

Target audience: First year research postgraduates

A PhD project requires careful planning and management in order to ensure success. This session focuses on exploring how you can apply the various methods of project management to your research project:

•Principles of Project Management

•Stakeholder Management

•Tools for Planning

•Managing Risks

9:00 -12:00Introduction to NVivo

Trainer: David Heading

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

NVivo is a software package designed to assist research with qualitative data. It contains a selection of tools to facilitate data management and analysis. The course will cover:

  • Creating projects
  • Adding documents and linking external files
  • Creating nodes and coding data
  • Creating cases and attributes
  • Using queries
  • Using sets
  • Creating dynamic models
  • Generating reports.

9:00 -12:00First Steps with Excel 2013

Trainer: Sarah Dodds

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

This workshop will introduce the basic concepts of data entry, formatting and presentation, and also some of the more commonly used functions to enable you to create some basic spreadsheets. Topics included in this first course include:

  • Navigating a spreadsheet
  • Entering data
  • Formatting data
  • Arithmetic operations
  • Simple functions (SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT)
  • Charts
  • Printing spreadsheets

9:00 – 12:00Taster Session for Reading Skills in German

Trainer: Christine Bohlander

Target audience: Research postgraduates who plan to read German texts for their research. No prior knowledge of German is required.

This workshop familiarises you with the basic structures of a German text based on words that are similar to their English equivalents. By the end of the session you will be able to decode simple German texts and to develop strategies to improve your reading skills in German.

10:00 – 12:00Discover your Personality Type

Trainer: Carolyn Whelan

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

Using the Myers-Brigg Personality Type Indicator you will explore your own personality preferences and gain an insight into how other people’s preferences may affect your working relationships with them. We will also look at how your personality preferences can influence your career choice & planning.

12:00 – 13:30 Open Access Publishing: Funder & REF requirements, options and your academic career

Target audience: All who are interested in pursuing an academic career in the UK, but predominantly second and third year research postgraduates (or anyone in receipt of Doctoral funding from the Research Councils or currently publishing academic peer-reviewed research).Open Access publishing is currently a prominent topic of discussion within the academic community. It is also a requirement of many funders, both within the UK and internationally, to which all researchers looking to publish need to be aware of. In addition to this, any academic looking to pursue a career at a UK University should be aware that making your research publications open access is an eligibility requirement for submission to the next REF.

Over the lunch period, information will be available and professional staff on hand to discuss any concerns, answer any questions or go through some of the policy requirements you may have heard of but aren’t sure of the details.

13:30 – 16:30Individual careers appointments

Trainer: David Henderson

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates

This is an opportunity to discuss your individual career ideas and plans. It is a useful follow-up activity to the personality type workshop but the appointments are open to all part-time and distance doctoral students.

13:30 – 16:30Speed Reading

Trainer: David Heading

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates

How many hours a week do you spend reading? When did you last learn a new technique to improve your reading?

This workshop will help participants to:

•Measure their initial reading speed and comprehension

•Consider how they read and what limits their current speed

•Distinguish between types of reading material and choose the appropriate reading strategy

•Learn and practise techniques of speed reading

•Design an individual learning programme to follow after the workshop.

13:30 – 15:30 Completing your Doctorate and Preparing for your Viva

Trainer: Bob Matthew

Target audience:Final year research postgraduates.

How are you going to pull all your research together into a coherent thesis? What are the administrative procedures you need to complete before you can submit your thesis? How are examiners (internal and external) appointed? In focussing on these and other questions, the course enables you to make the best use of your time during the final stages of your research.

By the end of this session, participants will have:

  • prioritised essential activity with the aim of completion
  • become familiar with the processes and procedures for the successful completion of a research degree
  • discussed issues pertinent to their own situation.

13:30 – 15:30 Introduction to Time Management

Trainer: Christine Bohlander

Target audience: First year research postgraduates.

Have you ever wondered where all your time goes?

This workshop will help you focus on your own time management situation and provide an opportunity to explore and discuss a range of time management tools and strategies.

By the end of the session, participants will have:

  • discussed the importance of time management in the research environment
  • considered a range of tools and strategies
  • reflected on their own time management strategies and considered ways to improve.

13:30 – 15:00 Copyright for Researchers

Trainer: Colin Theakston, Academic Liaison Librarian and University Copyright Officer.

Target audience:First, second and third year research postgraduates.

This session will provide an overview of copyright law in the UK.Throughout the session users will learn about rights for authors, length of copyright, "fair dealing", digital copyright, Crown copyright, the licences held by the University and their scope, "orphan works", "creative commons", and the UK government licencing scheme.

15:30 – 17:30 Keeping up to date with Emerging Research

Trainer: James Bisset

Target audience: Primarily first or second year part-time research postgraduates, or anyone who is looking to keep on top of the published research in their field of study.

It is a frightening reality that a literature review is often out of date as soon as you have started it. During the course of your research you will need to ensure that you keep up to date with the most current publications and news in your field.

This session will take an in-depth look at current awareness, covering both email alerts and RSS feeds as tools to help you discover new articles and academic debate relevant to your needs. No technical knowledge of RSS required - this session simply looks at what they are, and some examples of how to use and manage them.

This hands-on pc-based session will focus on:

  • E-mail alerts and RSS feeds
  • Setting up an online RSS reader account and starting to populate with current awareness feeds
  • Using RSS and email alerts to keep up with new book, journal and other information sources.
  • A brief overview of additional tools for keeping up to date to explore in your own time

9:00 -12:00Research Integrity

Trainer: Sam Nolan

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

The learning outcomes of this course will be that you will

•Know, understand and explain the key responsibilities you have as a researcher

•Identify the challenges you could face in meeting those responsibilities

•Be aware of strategies for dealing with pressures and difficult situations.

Before the workshop, participants will be asked to work through one of the on-line Epigeum modules on research integrity which are available on Duo. The suite of Epigeum modules includes separate courses for natural sciences, social science, arts & humanities, engineering and biomedical sciences. Participants will be asked to work through the course that is most appropriate for their research discipline. It is expected that a participant will need to spend about half a day working through this material.

The participants will then attend the workshop where they will apply the knowledge they have gained by working through the on-line material by means of facilitated discussion using appropriate case studies. The case studies will be tailored to the discipline mix of participants.

9:00 -12:00Moving on with Excel 2013

Trainer: Sarah Dodds

Target audience: First, second and third year research postgraduates.

This course is designed as a follow on from the introductory course. Participants should be familiar with cell referencing, constructing simple formula, charts and formatting worksheets for printing.

The new concepts introduced in this course aim to enable further use of the spreadsheet including some functions which can be used to carry out simple day to day activities. Topics covered include:

•Working with multiple worksheets

•Linking cells

•Absolute and relative cell referencing

•IF function

•LOOKUP function

•Filters

•Pivot Tables

10.00 – 12:00Critical Reading

No matter which academic discipline you are working in, reading will be a central part of your life while you're working on your doctorate. Reading large amounts of text will almost certainly be necessary for your research, but the quality of your reading will be at least as important as the quantity. The success of your doctoral studies will depend on your being a 'good' reader, and reading in the appropriate way. In the context of academic research, good reading is critical reading.
'Critical reading' does not mean taking an unreasonably negative or hostile attitude towards a text; rather, it means moving beyond simply understanding the texts you read, and evaluating them and assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Critical readers do not read each text in isolation; they develop strategies for comparing different texts, seeing the relationships between texts, and evaluating each text in terms of the larger academic context.

This session will:

introduce the concept of critical reading, and explore what 'critical' means in this context
* equip you with a set of basic critical reading questions, which you can ask about any text
* give you some practice in applying these questions to a variety of academic texts
* look in detail at the use of evidence, and the ways in which a critical reader can analyse a writer's use of evidence
* consider context, and how to think about the relationship between a text and the other texts around it.