The IAD researcher development team have been working hard over the summer to finalise the research staff and postgraduate researchers training programmes, and both are now open with workshops available for booking.
New brochures for Academic Year 2024/25 are also available to access on our web pages, which provide further information about our programmes and support.
The summer is always a time where we plan our provision and get everything set up for the next academic year, and a key part of this planning is using the course feedback we receive from our participants. Requests for feedback are sent out straight after a workshop and are used to review what we offer, to check if the workshops remain useful and current, are pitched right, and whether the researcher is confident that they will be able to apply what they learned to their future practice.
We review feedback from each workshop and take it seriously when considering what to add to or change in our programme each year. Feedback is crucial to support what we offer, so we always encourage researchers to provide it.
If you attended something that was great, let us know, equally if you attended something that didn’t quite work for you, let us know and tell us why. Also, we are also really keen to get feedback on what you would like to get training on, or changes we can make. We very much use the feedback in a ‘You said – We did’ way.
In our core programme the feedback we received determined what we’ve included in our 2024/25 programme, with new workshops added, such as; Generative AI, Unsuccessful Fellowship Applications, Planning and Preparing for Research Funding Proposals, Interdisciplinary Collaborations and Interdisciplinary Careers.
In our Careers programme we have increased our 1:1 Consultations to 45 minutes based on feedback that researchers would like more time with our career advisors at a consultation, and also have added in 1hr Briefing Sessions to incorporate more careers-based topics researchers are keen to find out about, such as Career Decision Making and Narrative CVs. We are keen to add in more briefing session topics, based on what researchers are keen to know about so do let us know what you would like to see.
This year our Researcher Realities event was tailored and adapted from the previous year based on feedback we received. In 2023, it ran as a full day online conference, but feedback showed that an in-person aspect would be something researchers were keen to have, so this year the day had a mixture of both in person and online elements. There was also feedback that there could be more time for Q&A at the end of the panel sessions, so that was also taken on board and incorporated into timings.
As we start the new academic year, we want to continue to hear from our researcher community, so please do continue to provide us with feedback on the courses you attend and let us know what you think.
