This course is delivered by the Researcher Academy

Researcher Academy courses are very popular and the majority are run in both semesters to give you the opportunity to attend at a time of the year that suits you. Semester 1 courses will be available for booking from the second week of October and Semester 2 courses from the second week of February.

Target audience

Mid stage postgraduate research students [writing a doctoral thesis]

This course is used mainly by research students in their second year of full time study or part time equivalent.

This course is not for Masters dissertations.  Academic Support offer support for students writing dissertations.

Process

This is a one day participative small group workshop, with practical tasks and discussion.  It has a number of tasks that involve reading and writing.  

Aims

This course addresses some common questions and issues for people in the middle of their doctoral research. It aims to help you feel more confident about starting or continuing to write your thesis.

Objectives

By the end of the course you will have:

- looked at samples of writing from theses 
- considered what makes for 'good academic writing'
- considered the expectations of your readers and the external examiner
- taken stock of the material you have gathered so far
- considered a range of structures for a thesis
- thought about a structure that might suit your work
- used different approaches to writing
- thought about how researchers can support each other in the writing process
- discussed some of the obstacles that can get in the way of writing

Description

This is a one day participative small group workshop, with practical tasks and discussion.  It has a number of tasks that involve reading and writing. 

Related courses:

This course is one in a series that looks as aspects of writing for postgraduate students.  These are best taken in the following sequence:

- Getting into the habit of writing
- Shut up and write
- Finishing your thesis

Latecomer policy
Researchers should plan to arrive prior to the advertised course start time. Except for exceptional reasons, there will be no admittance to a Researcher Academy or Faculty Training Programme (FTP) course 15 minutes after the advertised course start time.

Importance of booking commitment
When booking on to a Researcher Academy short course you are entering into a commitment to attend. If you find that you are no longer available to attend you MUST cancel your place (on the system if more than three days before the course or if at short notice by emailing pg-training@nottingham.ac.uk). This will ensure that your place can be offered to another researcher on the waiting list. Failure to cancel a place results in other researchers missing out on places through the waiting list process.
It is unacceptable for researchers to just not attend when booked onto a course. Researcher Academy maintains records of those who repeatedly do not attend courses they have booked. This may affect future eligibility to book onto further Researcher Academy courses and will affect considerations for Researcher Academy funded opportunities.