This is an introduction to Adobe Photoshop which is a popular and professional package for working with images. This is an opportunity to become familiar with the Adobe Photoshop environment, and learn how to edit images - you will learn how to use the frequently used tools (e.g. marquee, lasso, crop, pen, paintbrush, shapes, erase, clone, eyedropper,...).

Familiarity with a Windows environment and with file management is essential.

This is a one day workshop for doctoral students in the middle period of their studies.There is no teambuilding and no icebreakers. All the activities are practical and relevant to finishing a thesis and have been shown to help research writers. Particular emphasis is given to difficult aspect of writing a thesis, such as managing an evolving structure, understanding the demands and structure of research writing and applying that knowledge.

This workshop looks at:

• writing introductions and conclusions;
• planning the structure of your thesis;
• developing your academic voice and good writing styles;
• critically evaluating and synthesising ‘the literature’.

 

Students must bring with them a research paper they have recently read.

 

This half day course is aimed at anyone interested in using social media, either personally or professionally.

The course will include an overview of the history and concept of social media and a discussion of popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.  Participants will be given the opportunity to compare social media tools and discuss the factors which should be considered when deciding which tool(s) to use.  The session will conclude with practical advice on setting up a social media account and protecting your online profile.

Induction workshop for new postgraduate research students. 

Content:

• What is a doctorate?;
• Team Exercise;
• The Rules of the Game;
• Working with Supervisors;
• Case Study: Teams;
• Managing your Degree;
• Questions to Panel;
• Plans of Action;
• Evaluation.

To introduce you to RefWorks, a web-based bibliographic management service which allows you to create a personal database of references and compile instant bibliographies in a variety of styles. 

It is essential that participants have experience using Windows and the Web, searching the Library’s bibliographic databases and using Microsoft Word.

The course will explore and critically evaluate methodological approaches to researching children’s everyday lives and experiences and assess the extent to which research with children is different from research with adults.

All years but particularly relevant to students prior to carrying out fieldwork.

This course is designed to help postgraduate research students understand when qualitative methods can be used in research and some practical issues that need to be considered.

Students are asked to come prepared with a short one page print-out explaining their research or proposed research.

This is an introduction to Adobe Photoshop which is a popular and professional package for working with images. This is an opportunity to become familiar with the Adobe Photoshop environment, and learn how to edit images - you will learn how to use the frequently used tools (e.g. marquee, lasso, crop, pen, paintbrush, shapes, erase, clone, eyedropper,...).

This course is designed to help postgraduate research students understand quantitative research methods and the selection of  appropriate statistical analysis.

Students are asked to come prepared with a short one page print-out explaining their research or proposed research.

The course is to provide basic shooting and editing skills to enable students to enhance their PHD research using video. Video Services have cameras and editing equipment available for students to borrow and this will allow effective use of this equipment as part of the students’ research.

This course is a multi-part course of three days. Attendance on all three days is compulsory. The first day involves video shooting training and the second two days involves editing training. Students will be required to make a short 1-2 minute video in the time between the shooting and editing sessions.

Students should have a video project in mind that they would like to develop.

For many, good graphic design is in the eye of the beholder – one person’s ideas around good design are abhorrent to another! However, these are a some basic principles that underpin the placement of figures and text on a page. Whether it’s a PowerPoint presentation, a conference poster, a PhD thesis or a website, it is really important that the elements of design do not detract from the message you want to communicate. In fact, good design should go a long way to grabbing the attention of your audience, allowing them to easily extract the relevant information.

In this full-day course, you will learn about the basic elements of good graphic design, including proximity, alignment, contrast, repitition and font selection. The course will primarily revolve around extensive hands-on computer tutorials (using Powerpoint or other preferred software) where you will first learn to recognise elements of good design and then have the opportunities to apply the concepts. Students have the option of using their own laptops, although desktop computers loaded with Powerpoint will be provided.

The Research Governance Team is offering IRAS training to staff and students:

• Are you planning research involving health and social care patients or clients?;
• Do you need to seek R&D permission from a Trust for research involving their staff?;
• Will you be undertaking a clinical trial of a medicinal product?If the answer is yes, you will be required to complete an IRAS application form.

IRAS is a single system for applying for the permissions and approvals required for health and social care research in the UK.  It enables you to enter the information about your project once by using filters to ensure that the data collected and collates is appropriate to the type of study and the permissions and approvals required.

Students should set-up an IRAS account before attending.

This course is designed to help postgraduate research students plan and conduct focus group interviews.

By the end of this session, participants will:

• Understand how to plan and prepare for interviews;
• Be aware of the issues involved in recruiting and preparing interview participants;
• Appreciate the skills required to facilitate discussion;
• Explore the range of techniques and methods used to investigate a topic area;
• Carry out a live focus group simulation to assist in identifying and overcoming potential problems.

 

This course is designed to provide clear guidance for those wanting to conduct thematic analysis. Using example transcripts, this course contains hands-on step-by-step guidance of how to thematically analyse data in a rigorous way.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Outline the three broad levels of qualitative data analysis;
• Define thematic analysis and outline each phase in the process;
• Know how to generate initial codes and search for themes within data;
• Understand how rigour can be maximised in qualitative data analysis;
• Understand the fundamentals of qualitative report writing.

This course provides an overview of how to present research material as a poster presentation, including tips on how to create an effective poster and on printing posters at the University. Participants will learn how to add text and images to a poster, how to create simple diagrams and how to format text boxes and poster backgrounds. 

This course provides a continuation of the Adobe Photoshop 1: Basic Digital Image Editing course for those wishing to further their knowledge of the popular image manipulation software. Topics covered include how images from Photoshop can be used in applications such as Word, PowerPoint or Publisher and how to save images using different image formats and colour modes for printing and Web content. Along with demonstrations, the session will involve practical work on projects (to be decided by the group) and will cover more advanced topics including working with layers, colour management, image repair and improvement, and other manipulation effects.

Pre-requisites:

Attendance at the Adobe Photoshop 1: course or a similar level of familiarity.

RefWorks is a reference management service that enables you to create a personal database of references, automatically format citations and compile instant bibliographies. This can save you hours spent interpreting citing and referencing styles and typing citations and references.

This introductory course will include demonstrations and practical work.

• Creating an account
• Importing references from databases, directly and from text files
• Inputting references manually
• Creating folders and organizing references
• Producing a bibliography in a Microsoft Word document

Please note that subject-specific versions of this course are available – contact your Subject Librarian for further details.

Pre-requisites

Experience of:

• using Windows and the web
• searching the Library's bibliographic databases
• using Microsoft Word

 

A PhD, in whatever discipline, is a large document and that brings with it a set of unique demands. The period of study is long, maybe three to five years. The research should be significant, comprehensive and original. However, your knowledge evolves over the course of the study: what you know in your third year is not what you know in your first few weeks after registering as a doctoral candidate. Many research students feel they have nothing to say in the early weeks and months of research, when they are still battling with ‘the literature’. The goal of this workshop is to show you that you can start developing yourself as a research writer even in the earliest days of your doctorate; in fact, it is better to start now as you can develop effective skills early on which with save you time and improve your writing in the long run.

There is no teambuilding and no icebreakers. All the activities are practical and relevant to finishing a thesis and have been shown to help research writers. Students should leave with a clear idea of what tasks that will help them in their first year of study.

This course incorporates:1) various useful tips for making better use of search engines. The session will 2) provide an opportunity to look at the issues around determining the quality of information on the Internet. Participants will review quality assured reference sites and will explore and discuss the factors which help users judge the relative quality of Web sites and Web-based material. Participants should have a basic familiarity with Web browsing. 

This is a one day workshop for doctoral students in the middle period of their studies.  There is no teambuilding and no icebreakers. All the activities are practical and relevant to finishing a thesis and have been shown to help research writers. Particular emphasis is given to difficult aspect of writing a thesis, such as managing an evolving structure, understanding the demands and structure of research writing and applying that knowledge.

This workshop looks at:

• writing introductions and conclusions;
• planning the structure of your thesis;
• developing your academic voice and good writing styles;
• critically evaluating and synthesising ‘the literature'.

This practical course is the essential starting point for anyone interested in learning how to produce Spreadsheets using Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and forms an ideal basis for further courses in Excel. As Excel 2010 introduces some changes to the user interface and some new features and enhancements, this course is also suitable for those needing to update their skills so that they can make efficient use of the latest version of this popular Spreadsheets application. Excel 1: Essentials covers the basics of how to create, save and edit Spreadsheets before progressing participants onto the creation of basic formulas and charts. The new cell and table styles will be introduced and participants will learn fundamental techniques such as sorting, naming ranges, find and replace, changing the page setup and renaming worksheets.

This course follows on from the Excel 1: Essentials course and will introduce participants to some of the more advanced feature of Excel 2010.  Through a series of practical exercises, participants will learn about a variety of techniques which can be employed to make spreadsheets more comprehensible, such as sorting, basic and advanced filtering, conditional formatting, and custom number and date formats. Participants will also learn how to create custom lists and how to apply data validation to cells to create dropdown lists or control what can be entered.

This course familiarises students with the grammatical, lexical and stylistic features of academic writing at sentence and paragraph level. It includes structure, organisation, coherence and cohesion, transition, introductions and conclusions.

It also addresses register, introduces strategies for avoiding plagiarism, and ways of combining sources to create coherent and cohesive texts.

Although the course is highly intensive, students are encouraged to raise matters relevant to the topic that may be of concern/interest to them and to the group.

By the end of the course, students will have a much greater awareness of the conventions of academic writing in a UK University environment.

This course is a continuation of the "Further Topics" course and it presents an opportunity to enhance your skills and gain knowledge on (as yet) unexplored functions that optimise your time whilst minimising repetitive keystrokes/mouse usage. Various technical, graphical, photographic and fonts skills will be covered within the course to help you best prepare images for inclusion in flyers, adverts, leaflets or as web buttons. Additionally the course will include additional image enhancements, colouring up and introduction to colour wheels, monochromes and paths (for selection and text).

To help make your Photoshop sessions more efficient you will learn how to:

• use and create actions for general purpose tasks (cropping, resizing, colour toning, inverting, saturating or de-saturating, bordering, etc.);
• create a web gallery using a folder of images that allow web users to view image information and provide feedback;
• use time savers such as Actions and Batch Processing.

Pre-requistites:

This course requires prior knowledge of the Adobe Photoshop 2 (or similar level of familiarity).

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Have you ever found yourself, stuck in a rut, having the same thoughts again, and again, when what you really need are fresh insights, new concepts and original ideas?

We are trained to be logical, rational and meticulous – and yet some of the greatest leaps forward in research and discovery reputedly have arisen through spontaneous thought:  Newton’s infamous apple / gravity moment;  Watt’s steam condenser was inspired by a walk in the cold countryside; Poincaré stumbled upon his one of his major functional theories as he boarded a bus; Kekulé happened upon the design for the benzene ring as he dozed by the fire.

What these convenient stories often omit is that the great academic ideas come because additionally the thinker had immersed themselves in the problem, studied in great depth and incubated their thoughts for many years.

This one-day workshop will:

• explore the relationship that you have with your creativity;
• help to build a toolkit of problem solving devices to help you to re-examine the world in fresh new ways.

This course is aimed at PGRs who would like to use Excel 2010 to develop interactive spread sheets for use as models and quizzes. In this practical workshop participants will be introduced to some of the advanced features of Excel 2010 which can be used to create interactive spread sheets suitable for simple quizzes or basic models. Participants will be given the opportunity to try out some of the form tools available in Excel including Combo Boxes, Check Boxes, Spin Buttons and Option Buttons. Practical exercises will also involve creating nested IF statements to generate feedback and how to format and protect worksheets in order to hide content.

This is an advanced Excel course therefore participants should have significant previous experience of using Excel 2010.

Microsoft Office includes a variety of tools for creating high impact text and diagrams in documents. This course will look at creating and formatting shapes including block arrows, flowchart shapes and callouts and inserting and formatting WordArt text for emphasis or headings. Participants will also be introduced to the SmartArt feature available in Office 2007/2010 which can be used to create high impact lists and diagrams.

RefWorks is a reference management service that enables you to create a personal database of references, automatically format citations and compile instant bibliographies. This can save you hours spent interpreting citing and referencing styles and typing citations and references.

This introductory course will include demonstrations and practical work.

• Creating an account
• Importing references from databases, directly and from text files
• Inputting references manually
• Creating folders and organizing references
• Producing a bibliography in a Microsoft Word document

Please note that subject-specific versions of this course are available – contact your Subject Librarian for further details.

Pre-requisites

Experience of:

• using Windows and the web
• searching the Library's bibliographic databases
• using Microsoft Word

This course is aimed at Postgraduate students who would like to learn more about the merging tools available within Microsoft Word particularly those who wish to optimise their survey administration or utilise merging techniques to bring together data and pro formas.

The course is highly practical and at the end of the course you should be able to  use Word’s mail merge feature in order to efficiently create, save and print personalised letters, envelopes and labels.

Delegates should be familiar with the basics of using Word.

What is reading? How do we read? What is its history and what are its mechanics? Reading is one of the activities associated with learning that most enthuses and discourages students: whilst exciting and accessible texts can increase your interest, difficult texts are a key reason why you may be put off a topic. Since much reading at an academic level is challenging, it is important to reflect upon how texts are best approached – doing this can increase your enjoyment and understanding of academic reading. This practical workshop addresses these issues by exploring the history, philosophy and nature of reading with an eye towards subsequently improving your reading comprehension and reading speed.

Those attending the course should bring: pen, paper, an unread trashy novel, and an unread difficult academic article.

This course provides useful tips and guidelines on how to use Word efficiently and effectively to manage long documents such as theses or dissertations. Participants will learn how to add figure and table captions, an index and a table of contents, all of which will update automatically. Cross referencing techniques will also be covered along with creating bookmarks and using heading styles to ensure layout consistency.

Participants must be familiar with using the basic features of Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010.

To provide participants with an introduction to data management and basic statistical output in SPSS. Participants will have the opportunity to complete a number of practical exercises.

This course provides a continuation of the Adobe Photoshop 1: Basic Digital Image Editing course for those wishing to further their knowledge of the popular image manipulation software. Topics covered include how images from Photoshop can be used in applications such as Word, PowerPoint or Publisher and how to save images using different image formats and colour modes for printing and Web content. Along with demonstrations, the session will involve practical work on projects (to be decided by the group) and will cover more advanced topics including working with layers, colour management, image repair and improvement, and other manipulation effects.

Academic plagiarism, accidental or otherwise, is of serious concern both to academics and to students, and detection has been facilitated by software such as Turnitin.  However, many students may not be fully aware of what constitutes plagiarism, nor do they have the strategies to avoid this.

Academic plagiarism, accidental or otherwise, is of serious concern both to academics and to students, and detection has been facilitated by software such as Turnitin.  However, many students may not be fully aware of what constitutes plagiarism, nor do they have the strategies to avoid this.

A one day workshop for students in the final stages of writing up a doctoral thesis.

The workshop will cover:

• Helping students produce a detailed plan of what they have achieved and what they have left to do;
• Create a timeline for a schedule of works;Create a synopsis of their thesis so far;
• Give tips on editing and formatting a thesis for examination;
• Shed light on important procedural issues around submission and examination.

There is no teambuilding and no icebreakers. All the activities are practical and relevant to finishing a thesis and have been shown to help research writers. Students should leave with a clear idea of what they have left to do and a plan to help them achieve it.

The workshop is for doctoral researchers in the final. This workshop is not for students in the earlier years of a PhD.

Students must bring at least 4 pages of a draft chapter they have already written, to practice editing.

This course provides participants with an opportunity to learn about more advanced features in PowerPoint 2010 in order to incorporate interactivity and multimedia in presentations.  Intended for participants who are already familiar with the basic concepts of creating PowerPoint presentations, this practical course will enable participants to create sophisticated presentations that make full use of the software's functionality.  Topics covered will include flow charts, tables, action buttons, working with images and shapes and using master slides and templates. Participants will also gain experience of linking to other documents, multimedia, creating customised slide shows and saving presentations as image files or to the Web.

A PhD, in whatever discipline, is a large document and that brings with it a set of unique demands. The period of study is long, maybe three to five years. The research should be significant, comprehensive and original. However, your knowledge evolves over the course of the study: what you know in your third year is not what you know in your first few weeks after registering as a doctoral candidate. Many research students feel they have nothing to say in the early weeks and months of research, when they are still battling with ‘the literature’. The goal of this workshop is to show you that you can start developing yourself as a research writer even in the earliest days of your doctorate; in fact, it is better to start now as you can develop effective skills early on which with save you time and improve your writing in the long run.

There is no teambuilding and no icebreakers. All the activities are practical and relevant to finishing a thesis and have been shown to help research writers. Students should leave with a clear idea of what tasks that will help them in their first year of study.

Participants will be shown how to create and edit various types of charts including bar, column, pie, scatter and line graphs. The course will also look at the different ways charts can be formatted in Excel and how to add features like legends, trend lines, equations and error bars.

Prior attendance on the Excel 1: Essentials course or experience of using Excel.

Microsoft Word can be used to create forms for completion on a computer that allow participants to enter text or select options without altering the structure of the form. This course looks at some of the tools available in Word 2010 which can be used to create forms, including text, checkbox and drop-down lists fields. Participants will also learn how to create tables in Word and how tables can be used in the layout of forms. Along with the basics of creating forms, the course will cover how to add intructional text to form fields, how to protect the form and how to export data from forms to a spreadsheet file.

This course is aimed at Postgraduate students who may have to devise user guides for software systems either as part of their thesis or to help them in their support of teaching.

Snagit is a popular application for capturing screen images for use in printed documents or the Web. Most training materials produced by the IT Training and Assessment Unit are created using SnagIt and Word. SnagIt can also be used to record mouse movements and capture onscreen activity in the form of a video file or to capture text from a screen or the images from a Web site.

This course provides an introduction to using Snagit and will cover topics such as capture profiles, profile settings, saving in different formats, resizing images, using special effects and paint tools. The course will also cover how to create a set of instructions/practical documents using Word and the Snagit captures.

The course is designed for students who have some knowledge of SPSS and statistical analysis.

Aim:

To provide participants with knowledge of how SPSS can be used to conduct data analysis.  Participants will have the opportunity to complete a number of practical exercises.

PivotTables are a popular Excel tool for dynamically exploring and analysing large datasets in order to summarise data and make informed decisions.  PivotCharts are interactive charts that can be used to visualise PivotTable reports to convey information about patterns and trends within the data.  PivotTables can take their source data from within Excel or from external sources like databases, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) cubes and text files, and allow users to analyse data without altering the original data source.  This course will provide participants with an introduction to PivotTables and will include topics such as adding and removing fields, applying styles, filtering data, changing field settings and creating PivotCharts. The course will involve using PivotTables to analyse large datasets and display information graphically. This is a half day course that includes a presentation and a variety of practical exercises.

Prior attendance at Excel 1: Essentials or significant experience of using Excel.

This course is a continuation of the "Further Topics" course and it presents an opportunity to enhance your skills and gain knowledge on (as yet) unexplored functions that optimise your time whilst minimising repetitive keystrokes / mouse usage. Various technical, graphical, photographic and fonts skills will be covered within the course to help you best prepare images for inclusion in flyers, adverts, leaflets or as web buttons. Additionally the course will include additional image enhancements, colouring up and introduction to colour wheels, monochromes and paths (for selection and text).

To help make your Photoshop sessions more efficient you will learn how to:

use and create actions for general purpose tasks (cropping, resizing, colour toning, inverting, saturating or de-saturating, bordering, etc.);
create a web gallery using a folder of images that allow web users to view image information and provide feedback;
use time savers such as Actions and Batch Processing.

This course requires prior knowledge of the Adobe Photoshop 2 (or similar level of familiarity).

This intensive course follows on from the previous Excel courses introducing students to more of the advanced features of Excel 2010.  Participants will learn how to use a variety of what-if analysis tools that can be employed in data analysis and decision making, such as Data Tables, Scenarios, Goal Seek and Solver. In addition, the course will cover a wide range of useful functions, including text, logical, financial, lookup, and date and time functions, which can be used to manipulate spreadsheet data. An introduction to PivotTable and PivotChart reports is also included.  The second half of the course will concentrate on statistical functions in Excel which can be used to produce frequencies and descriptive statistics.

Prior attendance at Excel 1 and Excel 2 is strongly recommended or significant experience of using Excel.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Have you ever found yourself, stuck in a rut, having the same thoughts again, and again, when what you really need are fresh insights, new concepts and original ideas?

We are trained to be logical, rational and meticulous – and yet some of the greatest leaps forward in research and discovery reputedly have arisen through spontaneous thought:  Newton’s infamous apple / gravity moment;  Watt’s steam condenser was inspired by a walk in the cold countryside; Poincaré stumbled upon his one of his major functional theories as he boarded a bus; Kekulé happened upon the design for the benzene ring as he dozed by the fire.

What these convenient stories often omit is that the great academic ideas come because additionally the thinker had immersed themselves in the problem, studied in great depth and incubated their thoughts for many years.

This one-day workshop will:

• explore the relationship that you have with your creativity;
• help to build a toolkit of problem solving devices to help you to re-examine the world in fresh new ways.

The Research Governance Team is offering IRAS training to staff and students:

• Are you planning research involving health and social care patients or clients?;
• Do you need to seek R&D permission from a Trust for research involving their staff?;
• Will you be undertaking a clinical trial of a medicinal product?

If the answer is yes, you will be required to complete an IRAS application form.  IRAS is a single system for applying for the permissions and approvals required for health and social care research in the UK.  It enables you to enter the information about your project once by using filters to ensure that the data collected and collates is appropriate to the type of study and the permissions and approvals required.

Students should set-up an IRAS account before attending.

This is a one day workshop for doctoral students in the middle period of their studies.

There is no teambuilding and no icebreakers. All the activities are practical and relevant to finishing a thesis and have been shown to help research writers. Particular emphasis is given to difficult aspect of writing a thesis, such as managing an evolving structure, understanding the demands and structure of research writing and applying that knowledge.

This workshop looks at:

• writing introductions and conclusions;
• planning the structure of your thesis;
• developing your academic voice and good writing styles;
• critically evaluating and synthesising ‘the literature’.

Students must bring a research paper they have recently read.

A one day workshop for students in the final stages of writing up a doctoral thesis. The workshop will cover:

• Helping students produce a detailed plan of what they have achieved and what they have left to do;
• Create a timeline for a schedule of works;
• Create a synopsis of their thesis so far;
• Give tips on editing and formatting a thesis for examination;
• Shed light on important procedural issues around submission and examination.

There is no teambuilding and no icebreakers. All the activities are practical and relevant to finishing a thesis and have been shown to help research writers. Students should leave with a clear idea of what they have left to do and a plan to help them achieve it.The workshop is for doctoral researchers in the final. This workshop is not for students in the earlier years of their PhD.

Students must bring at least 4 pages of a draft chapter they have already written, to practice editing.

A one day workshop for students in the final stages of writing up a doctoral thesis. The workshop will cover:

• Helping students produce a detailed plan of what they have achieved and what they have left to do;
• Create a timeline for a schedule of works;
• Create a synopsis of their thesis so far;
• Give tips on editing and formatting a thesis for examination;
• Shed light on important procedural issues around submission and examination.

There is no teambuilding and no icebreakers. All the activities are practical and relevant to finishing a thesis and have been shown to help research writers. Students should leave with a clear idea of what they have left to do and a plan to help them achieve it.

The workshop is for doctoral researchers in the final. This workshop is not for students in the earlier years of their PhD.

Students must bring at least 4 pages of a draft chapter they have already written, to practice editing.

The course is designed for students who have some knowledge of SPSS and statistical analysis.

Aim:

To provide participants with knowledge of how SPSS can be used to conduct data analysis.  Participants will have the opportunity to complete a number of practical exercises.