Hello all,
Here at Bath we've had optional Research Management and Research Supervision
units running in the PGCAPP (...Academic and Professional Practice) since
January 2009. We're now just finishing the third cohort and about 85
participants have completed one or other of the two units. They have proved
popular in a research-intensive like this, although not always for the right
reasons (some established researchers taking an "easy option" when they
might be better served taking some more teaching units).
The delivery method mirrors the rest of the PGCert; PDP; a small number of
workshops (now more structured and integrated with the unit content), a
Faculty Learning Group facilitated by a more experienced academic, and
work-based portfolio assessment. Participants are expected to use ideas from
the literature, other resources and frameworks (e.g. the RDF) and cycles of
feedback from peers, mentors, supervisees, etc to inform and improve their
practice.
Research Management has three strands: establishing your research strategy;
getting funding &/or publishing; beginning to supervise.
Research Supervision can apply to doctoral students or research staff, and
aims to accelerate the process of learning the wide range of approaches and
skills you need to be a research leader (of other people). "We want you to
become seriously reflective professional supervisors, drawing on a wide
range of underpinning knowledge, rather than just doing either what was done
to you by your supervisor, or the opposite of it."
I must say the path hasn't been entirely smooth; the research management
unit for example asks people to work on a real grant or publication, and the
timing isn't always ideal. People also ask what value is added by doing the
unit, over and above the help they get in their departments. People who ask
that are usually in departments with good support for probationary
academics, and that's not all of them. But overall I'd claim a success, even
if just in the progress participants have clearly made when you read their
stories (portfolios).
If anyone would like to see more detail, please let me know.
Simon
Pp Jeanette Müller (Unit Convenor for Research Management)
PS Point to bear in mind that HEA accreditation depends on which path people
take through our programme; take two research units (out of three) and you
get no automatic HEA status.
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Dr Simon Inger
Head of Staff Development
Department of Human Resources
University of Bath
Bath
BA2 7AY
Tel: 01225 384385
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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