Organisational and Professional Development, 12 March 2018

OPD Training Opportunities Available to Research Staff - March/April

The following Organisational and Professional Development (OPD) workshops, taking place March/April, for Research Staff have places available. For further information, please follow the links provided after the workshop descriptors below, and make a booking by signing into your OPD account.

Workshops for which there is information below include:

• One-to-One Careers Advisory Session
• Mastering Academic Style
• Wow! Why? Aha! Communicating Complexity
• Introduction to R graphics with GGPlot2 [NEW]
• Finding Humour and Dealing with Stress in the Graduate Experience (Lecture) [NEW]
• Open Access and Publishing Practice [NEW]
• Infographics, Data Visualisation, Animation - New Ways to Illustrate Your Research
• Research Project Management
• Resilience in Research [NEW]
• Employability Beyond Your PhD/Postdoc
• Unconscious Bias Seminar
• Networking for Researchers
• Leadership and Teamworking for Postgraduate Researchers
• Layman's Abstract: Summarising Your Research for the Non-Specialist
• Maximising the Impact of Your Research [NEW]
• Intermediate Research Statistics for BioScience Research Staff and Postgraduate Researchers

Sessions are provided free of change. If you have any issues, please contact OPD@dundee.ac.uk.

Please note: We require sufficient notice of cancellation and non-attendance to allow others the opportunity to attend these workshops, or to allow the workshops to be cancelled if insufficient places are filled. Our Terms and Conditions are available to read on our website.

One-to-One Careers Advisory Session

Various Sessions

Careers guidance is the process that enables you to make well-informed, realistic decisions about
the next steps towards your future career. You do not need to know what you want to do before you come to see us – we see people at all different stages of their plans.

Previous enquiries have included: Understanding the academic career path; Alternative career options; Improving applications, CV and covering letters; Mock interview practice; Marketing transferable skills to employers.

For more information and to book.

Mastering Academic Style

19/03/2018 13:30 - 16:30

A half-day workshop for PGRs, exploring the characteristics of academic style, including developing an objective tone, and the use of references in a critical way, are explored and presented within the context of a research writing process. Participants are provided with a set of analytical tools aimed at analysing their own discipline’s standards and writing tasks suitable to all fields of study.

For more information and to book.

Wow! Why? Aha! Communicating Complexity

20/03/2018 10:00 - 17:00

This course is ideal for anyone wishing to develop their public engagement activities (public performance, workshops, press, TV or radio) through to those just wishing to improve their lecturing or speaking skills.

Delivered by international TV science presenter, performer and writer Tom Pringle (AKA Dr Bunhead from Brainiac).

For more information and to book.

Introduction to R graphics with GGPlot2

21/03/2018 9:30 - 16:30

This workshop will use the package ggplot2 in the R language to explore and visualise data as a prelude to formal statistical modelling

The exploratory analysis of data using graphical methods is an essential part of any statistical modelling exercise. This workshop will deal with the use of the industry standard package ggplot2, implemented in the language R, for the exploration and visualisation of data prior to carrying out formal statistical modelling, with an emphasis on the production of high-quality publication standard plots.

For more information and to book.

Open Access and Publishing Practice

23/03/2018 13:30 - 16:30

The Open Access movement has steadily grown to become a routine feature of the publishing landscape. This workshop aims to give an overview of the movement and how changes in the publishing environment have benefited both the individual researcher and society in general.

For more information and to book.

Infographics, Data Visualisation, Animation - New Ways to Illustrate Your Research

26/03/2018 9:30 - 12:30

This workshop will serve as an introduction to the vast field of data visualisation. Highlighting on-line tools, you will learn how to tell stories with your data. Examples of unique data visualisation projects will be shown for inspiration. Animation will be introduced as an alternative method to illustrate your research.

For more information and to book.

Research Project Management

28/03/2018 9:30 16:30

This participative workshop explores the challenges of managing the delivery of research within a higher education context from a pragmatic project management perspective and reflects the differing needs of funders.

Starting from the initial phase of developing research ideas into proposals with detailed plans, through to finishing the project and ensuring that outcomes are achieved, you will be introduced to a range of tools and approaches to support delivery of your research projects.

For more information and to book.

Resilience in Research

28/03/2018 10:00 - 12:30

This workshop will work on strategies and activates to build and maintain resilience in the research environment.

Resilience in Research is a new offering for our researchers. This workshop will relate directly to resilience building in the research environment whilst considering the individual actions we can/may take to develop and maintain our own resilience.

This workshop will consider a range of tactical strategies for the maintenance of resilience on a daily, monthly and annual basis.

For more information and to book.

Employability Beyond Your PhD/Postdoc

28/03/2018 13:30 - 16:30

This half-day workshop has a future focus to it. It will encourage participants to think about what their options and choices are beyond their PhD/current postdoc to be able to put a short to medium term plan together identifying the opportunities that they may need to seek or take to develop the skills and experiences that would be useful in creating employment in the next 12 months, 3 years or 10 years.

For more information and to book.

Unconscious Bias Seminar

29/03/2018 13:30 - 15:00

Unconscious Bias refers to the biases we hold that are not in our conscious control. Research shows that these biases can adversely affect key decisions in the workplace. The session will enable you to work towards reducing the effects of unconscious bias for yourself and within your organisation. Using examples that you will be able to relate to, we help you to explore the link between implicit bias and the impact on the organisation.

For more information and to book.

Networking for Researchers

19/04/2018 9:30 - 12:30

This workshop will focus on how to establish a network and build it to support your career and aims.

We will cover networking strategies, engagement methods and how to “pitch” yourself and/or your ideas. Participants will be introduced to various techniques that they can use in a variety of situations with a range of different audiences. How can we turn conversations to our advantage? How do we approach and engage with senior academics? When and how should we follow up with people?

For more information and to book.

Leadership and Teamworking for Postgraduate Researchers

19/04/2018 13:30 - 16:30

The workshop will cover different types and styles of leadership, how to find leadership opportunities and a leadership case study. The leadership case study will help students to recognise and relate to specific leadership practices and employ these in their own work.

For more information and to book.

Layman's Abstract: Summarising Your Research for the Non-Specialist

23/04/2018 13:30 - 16:30

Journals, funders and employers routinely expect academics to summarise their work for non-specialists. This workshop equips researchers with the skills required to produce eye-catching, non-technical summaries without compromising academic integrity.

What is a layman’s abstract and why do academics need to be able to write one? It’s part of the job description; it’s a transferable skill.

For more information and to book.

Maximising the Impact of Your Research

24/04/2018 13:30 - 16:30

Impact is currently the word on every funding agency’s lips. The economic pressures on the government mean that more and more public-funded research has to demonstrate value for money and impact. But what does this word actually mean? What do the funders actually want? Should demonstration of impact be more important than pure intellectual curiosity? And how could you maximize the impact of your work?

For more information and to book.

Intermediate Research Statistics for BioScience Research Staff and Postgraduate Researchers

27/04/2018 9:30 - 16:30

This workshop extends the introductory course, by broadening the treatment of core topics such as analysis of variance and regression, and introducing new material based on the implementation of generalised linear models with binomial and poisson error structures.

For more information and to book.

OPD Academic and Researcher Steering Group

Are you interested in providing input into the future direction of researcher development training on the OPD programme? Would you like to contribute to activities that support the career development of researchers?  If so, we’d like to hear from you, please contact opd-secretary@dundee.ac.uk for more details.

Research Leader's Impact Toolkit

This Toolkit is designed to help higher education institutions, research leaders and individual researchers to maximise the impact of their research.