An opportunity has arisen next week for PGRs, alongside other students, to engage with ICE as advertised below. The events are spread out over the 3rd to the 7th of June. To register, please follow the links to VITAL in the Poster below.
Monthly Archives: May 2013
Sense About Science Media Workshop – London 14th June
If you are in London on Friday the 14th of June Sense About Science will be holding a Standing up for Science media workshop at the Society of Biology. This full day event is free and for early career researchers in all sciences, engineering and medicine (PhD students, post-docs or equivalent in first job).
During the workshop Sense about Science will combine discussion about science-related controversies in media reporting with practical guidance and tips for how to deal with the media. Confirmed speakers include Dr Deirdre Hollingsworth, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, University of Warwick and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine; and Jason Palmer, Science and Technology Reporter, BBC. Please find further information at http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/VoYS/London_June_workshop_flyer_2013.pdf
These workshops are very popular and places are limited. To apply send a CV and cover letter explaining your reasons for applying to Victoria Murphy vmurphy@senseaboutscience.org.
Closing date for applications is Friday 31st May.
Staff and Postgraduates Health & Wellbeing Fair Tuesday June 4th – 11.00 – 2.30
Tuesday June 4th 2013 in the Sports & Fitness Centre
The first Staff and Postgraduates Health & Wellbeing Fair will take place in the 1st floor Sports Cafe area on Tuesday June 4th
This event will run from 11am to 2.30pm and is designed to raise the awareness among our staff and postgraduates of healthy living and wellbeing. The stallholders present can offer information and advice within their area of expertise.
The following groups will be present at the event:
•Staff Networks
•Addaction
•Shisha Awareness
•Community Food Workers (Healthy eating)
•WHISC (Women’s Health)
•EFC in the Community (Men’s Health)
•Adult Learning Service
•CHATS (Community Health)
•Cancer Collaborative and iVan
•Liverpool Community Alcohol Service
•Cycle Works including the Bike Doctor
•Inclusion Matters
•Sport Liverpool
•Counselling
•Brownlow Group Practice
We are offering cholesterol testing at ten minute intervals between 11am and 2pm in the Meeting Room. Those who wish to book on to this are asked to contact Emma Swinney at evmcghie@liv.ac.uk All who attend the Sport Liverpool stall will be put into a draw for two 12 month Premium memberships.
The first 25 will also receive free two day passes to the Sports Centre. Hand, neck and shoulder massages will also be on offer.
In addition the Cancer Information Van (iVan) will be parked in front of the Sports & Fitness Centre. iVan is a mobile cancer awareness, information and support service providing information and education on all aspects of cancer. Basic mole and skin checks are available and a qualified specialist nurse is present to discuss any lumps or bumps and advise as necessary. Blood pressure checks are also available.
The Bike Doctor gazebo will also be located outside and will offer bike checks, diagnosis and basic fixes from qualified mechanics and maintenance demos. For further information contact Stuart Wade at swade@liv.ac.uk
Depositing your thesis in the University Research Archive: Training Workshop
Did you register as a research postgraduate after 1st August 2008? If so, you need to know about submitting your thesis electronically.
Training event: Tuesday 4th June, 12:00pm – 1:00pm, Wolfson Suite, Harold Cohen Library.
All research postgraduates who registered for an MPhil, PhD or MD since 1st August 2008 are required to deposit an electronic version of their thesis in the University repository, the University of Liverpool Research Archive (UoLRA). Research postgraduates who registered before this date may also choose to deposit their thesis in the UoLRA.
This hands-on workshop examines the process for depositing an electronic copy of your thesis in the UoLRA and provides guidance about issues that students should consider during the preparation and deposit of their thesis, including information on copyright.
Places on this workshop are limited and must be booked in advance. Please REGISTER to book a place.
Report on PGR Toolbox Survey February-April 2013
Thank you to all of you who completed this survey. The aim of this survey was to gain information on how PGRs use this software and to learn of any specific problems with the software that we needed to address. Your comments have provided useful feedback that we will use to help inform future development of this software and informed us of bugs that have been passed to CSD.
We had completed forms from 159 respondents and the results can be viewed in the documents below (UoL password required).
– Summary Report
– All written responses
What is happening Now:
Bug fixes: A number of bugs have now been solved, including an issue with dates in the Portfolio of Activity that we were unaware of.
The ‘save’ facility in the post-meeting record should now work without any loss of text.
However, while the survey suggested that a number of PGRs have problems with the Outlook facility in the Record of Supervisory meetings, we do not have sufficient information to report this onto CSD, but would be happy to pursue these problems if you contact us at pgro@liv.ac.uk.
Character count issue in the Post-meeting record: CSD have now increased the word length for components of the Post-meeting record to make this 1000 characters for most fields and 4000 characters for the final section, which you may use as a general meeting report if the other parts do not meet your needs.
The layout of these fields has also been improved in the emails and should display line breaks correctly.
New Guidance notes: Many respondents requested more advice on using the software, particularly for the new Portfolio of Activity. Other comments implied a confusion over the requirements or seemed unsure of features currently implemented in the software. Consequently, we have now created new 1 page help notes that supplement the videos and information on web-pages and which hopefully will clarify many issues:
Record of Supervisory Meetings
PGR Portfolio of Activity
Record of Formal Training.
Spider Portal: A new portal for spider is in preparation by CSD that we hope will be released in Aug-September. The portal will provide a more modern interface for spider and make the components with spider easier to navigate. Significantly there will be a direct link to the PGR Toolbox on the list of tabs on the opening page.
The new portal will also include a new design/interface for the toolbox, which should will includes news and information sections, through links to directly relevant web-pages or recent blog posts, in addition to the required access to the key components currently in the PGR Toolbox.
Ongoing work: We expect to progress on further issues for the coming year. We are in dialogue with CSD to allow meetings to be recorded with the ‘Whole supervisory team’, although we do not expect this to be available before June 2013. We will also be reviewing the need to enter supervisory meetings chronologically since this is proving an issue for many PGRs.
If you have any further questions, or want to report bugs in the software, please contact PGR Development at pgro@liv.ac.uk.
Invitation to the 5th Research Staff Conference 20th May 2013
Liverpool Postgraduate Researchers are invited to the 5th Research Staff Conference at our University, on the 20th May 2013 at the Foresight Centre.
If you have applied or are thinking of applying for a post-doc you are welcome to join us at this free event. For further information, please visit the conference website at http://www.liv.ac.uk/researcher/conf2013 , where you can download the conference programme and reserve a place.
Registration closes on Thursday 16th May 2013. Places are limited to 20.
This year’s event will explore research collaborations; networking; career development opportunities for researchers.
A series of plenary and parallel sessions have been organised to give participants an overview of a range of research related matters. Presenters are established researchers with proven expertise in their research discipline and wider research processes. The conference is also an opportunity to meet up with researchers across the University of Liverpool.
Professor Dinah Birch, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange will present at the PVC’s forum and will also participate at the Q&A session
For more information, please email researcher@liv.ac.uk
We hope to see you at this event.
Best wishes,
5th Research Staff Conference Organising Committee
PRES Survey: Postgraduate research students have their say (Closing date 16th May)
The University is taking part in the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) for the second time. This is the only national survey to evaluate postgraduate research students’ experience of their programme at the University and provides a valuable opportunity for research students to comment on their time at Liverpool.
Run in partnership with the Higher Education Academy, this important national survey helps the University to improve the quality of its provision to research students, based on their feedback. 31,202 postgraduates from 102 institutions participated in the PRES 2011. The results are also used nationally to help advise policy and improve the research postgraduate experience across the sector.
The survey invites research students to feedback on a number of areas; Supervision, Resources, Research Culture, Progress and Assessment, Responsibilities, Research Skills and Professional Development. Students are also given the chance to evaluate their experience in more depth across a number of areas. All responses are confidential and are used at an aggregate level only in the reporting of results.
The PRES was launched on the 5th March and will close on the 16th May. All eligible students will by now have received an email with a link to the survey from the Student Opinion Team, based in Student Recruitment and Admissions (SRAO). Another email will be sent on Monday 18th March, again containing the link to the survey.
For further information about the PRES survey, please contact the Student Opinion Team, studentopinion@liv.ac.uk.