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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

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.

We have developed a bespoke questionnaire to capture the views of late-stage, science, engineering and medical discipline PhD students on a programme of transferable skills development.