Research Student Development Programme Dr Richy Hetherington medpg-dev@ncl.ac.uk www.ncl.ac.uk/fms The University and the UK research councils recognise the importance of providing researchers appropriate training in a broad range of skills and providing the mechanism for skills to be recorded and reflected upon. So the Research Councils require that all of their research students be involved in the equivalent of 10 working days of training and development each year and this is a policy the Faculty would uphold for all of its research students. The development programme is there to provide some of those opportunities and help point you in the direction of the others.

The Royal Society Scientific Century: securing our future prosperity 2010

Programme Booklet Mostly accurate but is subject to change Chemical Safety - Thursday 23/10/2014 was 3-5 is now 4-6 Translational Tales: Mitomics - was Wednesday 1st Oct, in Now 19th Nov. One of the things handed out today is a development programme booklet, your supervisors should also have received this. The booklet contains the majority but not all of the development programme sessions. The ability to take courses is nothing new and the faculty has always encouraged research students to find taught course programmes that would be of use to them. In most cases this is still done by contacting the module leader or the degree programme directly. A full list of taught course modules can be found at this web address. However the Programme is provided mainly to support researchers development in not research specific skills but transferable skills, the programme is continually evolving to help meet the needs of research students and their professional development. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/internal/module-catalogue/

Inside the booklet Events with identical names are duplicate events A few sessions are mandatory – Managing your PhD, MD or Mphil; Appropriate Safety sessions Academic Integrity Research Ethics Inside you will find a chronological list of events, with a page reference next to each, with links to a description for each session. As you can see some sessions are highlighted as mandatory you only need to attend any session once, preferably at your earliest convenience. Though there is an element of discretion within that if you are a member of staff and have been working on a project for a while and have already had the appropriate saftey training you to do the work you won’t need to attend similarly if your project is entirely desk based you won’t need to attend a chemical safety session. We don’t police this as we hope that your assessors will notice any training gaps during annual assessment. So sometimes people do manage not to attend these session we find that when if we do get instances of things such as plagiarism it is with students who have not attended sessions such as Academic Integrity and Plagiarism. We can also link attendance of sessions such as Managing your Research Degree to the timely completion of annual assessment and the thesis.

Session Details In information about each session there is a brief description of what the session is about with who is presenting or facilitating the session. There is a list of skills we hope the session will help you with, the skills are charted against a national framework the Joint Skills statement skills headings which you can find in the back pages of the booklet and some feedback on the session from researchers who have attended previously including ratings and comments. Then the date and the room the session takes place, there is a map of the rooms in the back page of the booklet.

Graduate School Website ncl.ac.uk/fms The booklet however is only a guide, the graduate school website is the place to find all the information. The front page will contain any major news items. Links on the left hand menu will take you to other items of interest. It is easy to get to the site from the Newcastle university home page and it is /FMS

Booking system Appropriate staffing Monitoring Evaluation Accommodate Changes Additions Taking the left hand link for skills development will take you to a list of workshops that should include all of those in the booklet, but throughout the year there may be additions to this list. It is important that all items are booked through this site. This allows us to make appropriate staffing arrangements, monitoring the uptake so we know whether to put more courses on or to cancel them. It also allows us to send out evaluations so we can see how to improve items. We may need to change rooms or times and those who have booked can be informed. You will be automatically sent an electronic evaluation after attending, please do take the time to complete this, we need this information to make improvements where they are needed but also as evidence that what we are doing is useful and appreciated. When you do attend a record of your attendance will be made in your ePortfolio, this will be important for those of you continuing on to a PhD as these records might be looked at. Your email address is the unique identifier for bookings so it is essential you use your Newcastle university email address for a record to be made. There is also an option to register your interest if you can’t attend or if a session is fully booked, we will endeavour to get back to everyone registering their interest in a session to see if there is a way they can get advice in this area.

Online Resources Where possible we have tried to make the materials delivered available online, we are trying to develop a system for login to access of these materials so we can updates peoples records but that is an ongoing process. The majority of the materials are presented open to access without any login.

IT training Library Information sessions (Endnote, Library Databases, Further Research Resources,) and IT sessions (Managing Your Essay, Data & Spreadsheets, Presentations using PowerPoint etc. Interactive materials accessed Online

Your development Personal Development Planning and the ePortfolio https://pf-postgrad.ncl.ac.uk/ Assessing your development needs Automatic ePortfolio updates Reviewing your own development All of the sessions you book up for and attend will be automatically updated into your CV, courses and conferences attended section. Allowing you to reflect on what you have gained from these sessions. More detail will be given in the ePortfolio & PDP session but essentially the skills attached to each of the sessions in the development programme will relate to skills in your Personal Development Plan and these are all linked to the Joint Skills Statement, Skills Headings. This will give you the opportunity to record and reflect on the skills you require and how you can develop them

Varied Development opportunities Research Seminars Other graduate schools (SAgE and HaSS) development programmes Library, ISS, Maths Aid, Writing Centre FameLab Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Biotechnology YES Vitae (UK Grad) Postgraduate Conference We are keen to promote the range of external development opportunities and relate them to the development programme sessions where possible. Remember to record the things you do in your ePortfolio

www.vitae.ac.uk (UK Grad) Finally an important resource to mention is Vitae which is what has become of UK Grad except it now deals with research students and research staff. It is there to provide a range of resources and support sessions. UK Grad schools have been cut back but are still available so if you want to attend one there are still funded places for UK research council funded students but you will have to book as soon as dates are released. 3 national grad schools this year.

I wish you every success in your research and your career Finally I’d like to wish you every success with your research but beyond that too, with your career and making name for yourself in research and beyond here are a few of our researchers who have done this in recently, here are some great examples just last month Rhys Anderson winning the people’s choice vote in the Vitae national three minute thesis competition, a couple of years ago Pete Chater presenting a poster of his research at the House of Commons, and Graciela Rocha and I after Gracilea had won a prize for her public engagement poster at a national event hosted at Leeds university. Thanks and any questions?