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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.

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

Open competition to fund projects relating to research staff development

Loughborough University uses an automated system for generating, storing and analysing workshop feedback forms. These include ILOs and questions about participants’ learning to provide more in-depth evaluation than a standard ‘happy sheet’.

We provide a number of online training courses to PGRs - this is especially beneficial to distance and part-time PGRs

This is a wide ranging study of existing and past post-graduates of Birkbeck College in order to assess whether our Skills Training Strategy (inplace since 2003) has had an impact upon researcher behaviour.

Cultural awareness

This is an on-going project designed to provide an indicator of the impact that Roberts-funded ptovision has had at the University. Participants in the central courses programme (PhD students and research staff) and the career coaching programme (research staff) are followed up and a case study is written that demonstrates in concrete terms how their participation has contributed to their professional development.

This is a collaborative project in which the Universities of Exeter, Bath and Bristol are producing online e-learning skills recourses to part-time or distance based PhD researchers at the three institutes.

During the 2008-09 academic year we instigated an institutional-wide evaluation of our ‘Effective Researcher Development Programme’ (ERDP). The aims were to demonstrate, institutionally, using a wide range of evaluation methods, that running skills development courses for PGR researchers are both beneficial and well received. Moreover, we aimed to demonstrate (based on highly positive feedback from both participants and academic staff) that PGR skills training programmes should continue to be supported irrespective of future RCUK funding.