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The ‘your first three years’ programme for newly appointed research active staff provides training in topics relevant to academic practice, including:

• induction - an introduction to University structures, key people and support for researchers
• good practice in grant writing
• managing projects, project finances and staff
• training for teaching 
• training for supervising research and research degree students

A Roberts funded skills enhancement project entitled ‘Employing MATLAB to foster interdisciplinary cooperation: a training programme for early career researchers’ (ECRs) was proposed, organised, managed and evaluated by a team of five ECRs from the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton. The anticipated outcomes of this initiative were that the ECRs receiving this training would be able to work more efficiently, understand the differences and similarities between various methodologies, choose appropriate methods for acquiring, processing and presenting data, and communicate their work more effectively. In addition, it was hoped that providing training on a university-wide basis would allow opportunities for interaction between ECRs, encouraging collaboration between departments. The methods used to evaluate this programme are briefly described here.