Target audience 

Early stage Engineering postgraduate research students

Pre-requisites

To study this course you must have internet access.

UK researchers: to book onto this course in Moodle please see the available dates at the bottom of the page and click on the 'Book' link. More detailed information on how to join the course will be sent to you shortly before the start of the course. 
China and Malaysia researchers: to book on this course please make sure that dates are available at the bottom of this page and use this email link: pg-training@nottingham.ac.uk to request a place. Please make sure that you add the start date of the course to the email.

Please note: the course topics and discussions will change daily and follow-on from one another. Before registering for the course please ensure that your schedule will allow you to sign-in and post comments daily. 

 In order for this course to be included on your certificate of attendance and gain the training points you must post your answers to the task questions in each of the discussion forums and also aim to respond to the post of another person in at least three of the discussion forums.  You will be awarded three training points on successful completion of this course.

Process

Timeframe: 1 weeks (6 working days)
Your time input: Approximately 90 minutes per working day at a time of your choosing. If you register for this course you must log in regularly and complete the course tasks.

There will be a number of learning exercises delivered through several discussion forums. Your contributions to the discussion forums are your means of 'assessment' and you should expect to post messages and respond to the posts of others. Guidance will be provided by the course tutor.

You will receive an email with a link to the course in Moodle a few days before the course starts and you must use this link the first time you log in. Please log in and post a message to the socialisation forum before the course commences if possible.

 

Description

The course runs over two working weeks. This gives you time to complete the tasks required. You will learn by reflecting on your own experience; sharing ideas through discussion forums; looking at 'real' examples of literature reviews in theses; videos of other researchers' experience; feedback from the course moderators.

By working through these materials and sharing your ideas with other researchers you will think about what will work best for you and your project. It is important that you are prepared to share your responses to the tasks with the rest of the group in an on-line discussion forum.

Aims

This course will focus on the process of reviewing literature – the various skills involved and the challenge of organising and synthesising all the material your have read. It will NOT cover library skills of literature searching or the writing skills involved in producing a review of literature.

Objectives

By the end of the course, you will have:

• Explored your concerns about doing reviews of literature
• Considered why this is part of a research project
• Thought about where reviews and discussions of literature sit in the overall structure of theses
• Looked at the various study strategies involved in the literature review process (eg relating to reading, note taking, recording information; analysis and synthesis of material)