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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

This is a brief summary of the organisational model that we have adopted in order to work more closely with Schools, Faculties and Departments and 'partner' with them in understanding and providing for the needs of their particular staff in a ‘bespoke’ way where appropriate. This positions us better to target our resource towards meeting real needs, while striving for enhanced alignment between UCL’s research strategy and individual aspirations. This new model also enables us to work more closely in partnership with other key people deployed at a Faculty or Department level, such as Research Facilitators, Research Leaders, HR Consultants, Faculty Managers etc.

Workshops are facilitated by editors of high impact journals who discuss with participants key aspects within the writing process and the aims of the journal. Brief writing exercises on papers published by participants take place during the workshop. In addition, selected published articles from the journal are being discussed highlighting relevant points of interest that inform the writing process.

Ketso is an interactive, hands-on toolkit for bringing meetings and workshops to life. It is compact and portable, simple to use and accessible to everyone. Ketso extends people's ability to run effective and enjoyable workshops - virtually anywhere and in any setting. It encourages people to be creative and share in productive dialogue, while also generating real results that can be put into action. Ketso provides a set of tabletop tools that can be used to capture and display people's ideas. It consists of colourful 'branches', 'leaves' and other materials, which can be placed on a felt workspace and easily moved around in response to changing discussion. Ketso is robust and portable, and comes in a handy carrying bag, making it easy to transport to and from events. Ketso provides a series of free resources to help you run effective workshops and engagement processes - such as workshop plans and training videos in planning and running a workshop.

These sessions allow PGRs to deliver an upcoming presentation to an internal audience in order that their presentation skills and style of slides can be critiqued before they go off and deliver it "for real" Each participant is recorded to DVD and is given verbal and written feedback. Primarily about their presentation skills and style, but also about the style of their slides and, if the appropriate academics are in attendance - about the academic content of the presentation.

Online induction package for First Year Doctoral Researchers. DR Essentials is a stand-alone online course placed on the self-registration area of WebCT . Doctoral Researchers can access it by adding it to their university online profiles. The course contains five separate modules covering key stages of the incipient doctoral research career. Each module combines content with a number of embedded talking heads that capture the views of Doctoral Researchers and Supervisors across the institution. At the end of each module there is a check list of tasks that should be completed. DR Essentials in its original version was developed at the University of Melbourne in Australia. The version used at the University of Birmingham has been developed by a team of experts from the Centre for Learning and Academic Development (CLAD) and the University Graduate School to meet the needs of researchers at Birmingham. The course is self-paced and users can dip into or work through in its entirety as they may need.

The Short Introduction to Project Management is aimed at postgraduate researchers in the early stages of their research degree. It forms part of a portfolio of Project Management programmes of different lengths and levels of depth that postgraduate researchers can use to tailor their own development. Resources required are fairly basic - a training room with projection equipment and pen and paper for the interactive sections. The session is delivered by a single trainer.

Real Creativity is a highly experiential, developmental creativity course which allows participants to work in real time on real problems over a two day programme. It was developed by Skyward coaching and development.

This course introduces Endnote beyond the basics of simply adding references to documents, maintaining the database and changing and editing styles.

A two day summer school which provides research staff with a platform for development to do better research and to advance in their research careers. This programme is for new research staff, who are within their first 12 months of their first research contract. Day 1: Taking a Strategic View of Research: Getting Published and Seeking Funding Understanding the Vision and Research Strategy of the University Working Your Own Vision Personal Motivation for Research and Funding as a Career Strategy The Politics of Getting Published SWOT/ Skills Audit Day 2: Managing Projects, Teams and Funding Applications Project Management Approaches The Research Team – how you fit Getting Funding - What Works; What Doesn’t Esteem Factors & Your Researcher-Profile