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The online personal development record is a learning tool to encourage postgraduate research students to engage in personal development planning - an activity that can be both useful to success in the research and career progression. All postgraduates research students log generic skills activities that fall outside of the formal training programme and record details of formal meetings with supervisors. There is also a skills audit based upon the Joint Skills Statement of the Research Councils.

Newsletter delivered by email to all PGRs in the university. Compiled by the Graduate School Skills team and the Student Guild (Union) the publication is a unique attempt to blend the training and generic skills agenda with social activities. In this regard the publication is also assisted by the Postgraduate Society and PGRs themselves who contribute articles.

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.

This is an online forum that provides Postgraduate Research Students at Loughborough University with an opportunity to develop a sense of shared community. Any topics from research to social events may be discussed. The group is moderated but we rarely intervene or take part. It creates a mechanism for us to highlight new aspects of our skills development workshops and other provision.

One-day annual conference for Loughborough University Research Staff, focussing on local & national support, personal development and careers.

A website dedicated to research staff informing of local & national events & opportunities such as research, training & careers.

Our Loughborough Local GRADschool is now well established and ready to increase in size. We run a three day, non-residential model. This gives us a good balance between sustainability and impact. It is held open primarily for third year research students and has a real empahsis on what happens next after the PhD.

Open competition to fund projects relating to research staff development

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.