Research Skills Online

Introductory video - Irish version

Narrator: Welcome to this video on Research Training. In 2001, the Roberts Report identified a mismatch between skills of graduates and postgraduates and the skill set required by employers. There was a concern that graduates would have no place in the wider economy. Epigeum set out to create solutions to this problem. Other researchers and graduates will introduce you to the role that training plays in the research environment, and what research training might mean to you as an early career researcher in any discipline. Part of the wider picture that the modern researcher has to understand, is that engagement with their own development is a vital part of the research environment. Research is about discovering new knowledge, and this will invariably require learning new skills and upgrading existing ones in order to understand, communicate and evaluate the outcomes. You can compare your research to a voyage where you are the captain, crew and vessel sailing towards a new destination. This port of call will represent your finished research project, but the journey itself will represent your own learning as you navigate the tricky waters ahead. Like any explorer setting out for unexplored territory, you need to check you have the tools required to get there safely and on time.

Philip Nolan: I'm Doctor Philip Nolan. I'm the Registrar and Deputy President at University College Dublin. One of the things that people need to do is think about their own futures. At this time, they're working in my team, in five years time they're likely to be working somewhere else. So they need to think about their own long term goals and objectives, and how through working as part of my team, they can develop themselves towards their overall long term goals and objectives.

Carrie-Anne Kennedy: My name's Carrie-Anne Kennedy and I'm in my final year of my PhD studying Molecular Microbiology. In our institution, we actually have a structured PhD programme currently going on, so along with the work you do, say in your lab or in your office, you actually have training courses and modules. So you effectively still go to class, you still go to lectures where they teach you how to write efficiently, how to reseach your topic efficiently online, different resources that are available within the campus.

Patrick Wall: My name is Patrick Wall. I'm Professor of Public Health Medicine in University College Dublin. Some academics are very focused in the academic area and, as supervisors and mentors, keep their students focused on the actual project that they're engaged in, but I think we have an obligation to all of the students. They're on a journey with us, and if you're a student's mentor, you have to bring them to a better place, and they have to leave at the end of four years and they have to be employable because they have to survive. It's a big, bad world out there and you've got to prepare them for that. So I think it's crucial that people develop as individuals and as scientists.

Philip Nolan: The very core skills that a researcher has are applicable to a very wide variety of problems. The core skills of understanding and framing a problem, having methodologies to address the problem and understand solutions and putting solutions in place are the core skills of research. It is a core objective of universities to ensure that doctoral students graduate not just with the basic research skills,but also with these wider skills that are required to use their basic research skills in a wider range of settings.

Narrator: Introductory or induction training is the equivalent of learning the ropes in sailing. It allows you to understand the techniques, handle the equipment and have a go at writing a paper, giving a presentation, or presenting a poster at a postgraduate conference. Imagine this as sailing round the harbour with the pilot representing your supervisor. They can show you how to handle the rudder and introduce you to the tools and resources that can help your research voyage. Once you've learned enough to take charge of the boat, it's time to head out into open water. The sea of the research environment. It's big and deep, full of the waters of researching, writing, experimenting, field work, whatever it is that gets you closer to your completion and your final destination. There are many hazards of course in open water, but training resources are there for almost every eventuality to steer you clear of the rocks.

Peter Cahil: The thing I found that I had to learn most quickly would have been to be able to read technical documents, where literature from different groups, particularly between maybe the UK and the US, they'll normally use different vocabulary to describe the same things.

Pedder Grant: One of the hardest things I had to learn was to actually, when I write down something or when I do an experiment or run a simulation or run a program, is to go back and actually read through, read through the data again, read through the specs again and just make sure that what I actually did was what I really thought I was doing.

Peter Cahil: The biggest achievement would probably be to be able to give presentations by technical English. You learn to present yourself differently where you can, if someone asks you what you're working on, you can tell them at their level.

Pedder Grant: One thing that you really, I really had to learn as a particular skill is to just drill it all down and say, ‘what's the gap? What don't we know?’ And then once we know what we don't know, then it's actually to go and say, ‘well what do I need to do to find that out?’

Claire Hookham-Williams: Yeah. Claire Hookham-Williams. I did a PhD at the University of Liverpool in the Managament School, and I think I've developed quite a lot during my research degree. I think I've developed as an academic, also as a student and hopefully as a teacher. And also, as a member of an academic institution, I feel that the research community is very accepting and very communicative, and we share a lot together.

Philip Nolan: The fundamental skills are the technical skills required to pursue research in your discipline. Not necessarily just the research you're doing, but the broad range of technical skills that apply in your subject area, be it history or biochemistry.

Pat Guiry: There are a vast number of opportunities available for researchers in the university, and in particular since we've moved towards structured PhD programmes and the possibility of thematic PhD programmes. So it's now possible from a sort of buffet of modules available for graduate students, to choose ones that are specifically useful to research it themselves. So you have a core amount of things that perhaps many researchers will do, but then you would choose the particular modules that are of interest to yourself.

Philip Nolan: The fundamental way in which people learn in a research environment is that they learn by doing. You learn by doing your research, and the key input to that learning is from other researchers. It's from your peer doctoral students, from post doctoral fellows. That's how ninety percent of the learning actually occurs within the PhD programme.

Aoibhan De Burca: I think training is crucially important for my research in general. If you're looking at how do design a research question, design a research design, how to plan, how to work in advance, how to go about conducting interviews, getting through ethics committees, dealing with issues of presenting, dealing with getting publications out there. These things are absolutely fundamental in terms of what you're pursuing in terms of your career.

Connel Vaughan: My name is Connel Vaughan. I am a Researcher in Philosophy in the Philosophy of Art here in UCD. My working environment I would describe as very fruitful. Thorough research really is encouraged, there is no drive towards producing papers and working towards rigorous deadlines.

Aoibhan De Burca: I think the training that we get shows us that, while initially we may be looking at personal development or career development, once you have a certain amount of knowledge, it's very important to use that knowledge for greater good, if I can say that. So the knowledge that you gain, you need to use it in a way that is targetted in terms of, if you're working on conflict resolution, you should be doing policy work as well as cutting edge research.

Narrator: Like many travellers, you'll look back on the journey as a whole as being the highlight of the experience. ‘It is better to journey than to arrive’, as the saying goes, but it is your experience, your learning experience along the way that is the real treasure. Your particular research project is complete, but during the journey you have gathered extremely valuable skills, resources and talent that you can now use to plot your next research. You have arrived, but your journey continues.

Philip Nolan: What I'd fundmentally like to see is the development of the range of training opportunities available to early stage researchers. I'd like to see much broader uptake of those opportunities by researchers, and I'd like to see much more flexibility and much more customisation, adapting the training opportunities to the very different needs of very different early stage researchers. But most importantly, I'd like to see a lifelong element to this. I'd like to see us involved, not only in the early stage formation and development of researchers, but in their lifelong professional development, giving them new skills or changing their skills over time. And of the reasons I'd like to see that, is by bringing more advanced professionals together with early stage professionals, the capacity to build up mentoring relationships and the capacity for people early in their careers to see all of the range of possible futures available to them.