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ADEPT is a career development and employability service for doctoral researchers. One of the key features of the service is the involvement of doctoral researchers in the design, promotion and delivery of the services. The service provides career management support to help doctoral researchers with the transition from their PhD to the next stage of their career. Tailored provision is developed to meet the needs of doctoral researchers in each of the five Colleges.

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.

Building Impact into Social Science Research was funded by vitae innovate fund applied for and successfully awarded to Professor Richard Thorpe and Dr Paul Ellwood. The event was supported by the Staff and Departmental Development Unit at Leeds. Much of the following text formed part of a proposal to Vitae written by Paul Ellwood and Richard Thorpe, with summary and context written by Jenn Chubb at the University of York. This Vitae Innovate funded project enabled the development of a module to be integrated into postgraduate training programmes – it contained both concepts and practical tools aimed at helping students understand and connect with aspects related to the impact of social science research. The Innovate fund supported a two day Leeds University Business School course entitled Building Impact into Social Science Research followed by a two day Social Science- wide White Rose residential event at Bodington Hall with input from academics reporting on the impact of their research and interactive group work activities. Building Impact into Social Science Research aimed to provide an introduction to this increasingly important aspect of a researcher’s life. Through a mixture of presentations, specialist speakers and practical exercises, the workshop provided a grounding in the emerging UK policy environment, appropriate research design and practical engagement mechanisms with research stakeholders.

The Social Media sessions demonstrated a successful integration of a student-led initiative within a formal graduate training provision. The initiative underlined the importance of engaging PhD students in their own learning and training needs, in both sharing expertise with peers and in contributing to their own professional development. In doing so, it demonstrated to other postgraduate researchers how they might utilise their own areas of expertise to develop further student-led initiatives.

Open competition to fund projects relating to research staff development

As a follow up to our ‘SmartStart’ PhD inductions (see practice 929) that we organise or the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD; in collaboration with the University of Plymouth) we hold an ‘Annual Researcher Event’. All doctoral students at PCMD are required to attend the two-day residential event, where they present on an aspect of their research to an audience consisting of their peers and academic staff from PDMC. Each year two students receive an award for their outstanding presentation and abstract. The event is also complimented by an annual dinner.

Three-day business plan competition for researchers to produce a business plan for an imaginary start-up company, engineering-based.

We have developed a PGR progress tracking system called ‘MyPGR’ which is an online tool capable of managing and monitoring PGR students. The system provides a record of interactions between students, supervisors and professional services staff. It also allows for the prompt provision of management information related to PGR students. The system will be operational for all students on MPhil/EdD/Phd programmes from commencement of the 2010/11 academic year.

The Jubilee Graduate Centre (JGC) has been exclusively developed for postgraduate students and early career researchers. It works closely with Schools on the Jubilee Campus to develop Faculty-specific training and careers events for PGRs/ECRs focusing on transferable skills, and which reflect the requirements of the Funding Councils.

The programme aims to develop communication skills for researchers in the context of communicating science to the public. It is delivered through a two-day training course composed of a series of lectures, group exercises and workshops. This is followed by a visit to a local school (Years 11-13) where small groups of researchers work together to present their research. After the school visit researchers are invited to a debrief session where they hear the feedback from the schools, reflect on the skills they have developed, and consider how to best present those skills to potential employers. Many additional outreach opportunities are provided, including the chance to develop and deliver longer on-campus workshops for A-level students and to contribute to community events and festivals.