Information for PhD candidates
There are two main reasons why training is vital to you as a PhD student:
- It is a national requirement that all research students manage their own personal and professional development,
- We want to ensure you can access quality resources and opportunities which equip you with the skills necessary for your future career, whatever you intend to do.
There are regulations and guidelines that are in place to guide you, but the philosophy of the SAGE programme is not simply to meet them. SAGE is intended to provide relevant and useful opportunities to support you throughout your programme of study and help you prepare for life after the PhD.
What are the requirements?
- All PhD students in the UK are required to assess their personal and professional development needs in each year of their programme.
- The QAA states that researcher development programmes should support researchers in gaining the skills they need to design and complete their programmes effectively and to help prepare themselves for their subsequent careers.
- The AHRC specify that any training undertaken should be tailored to the needs of the individual and their research topic, and include a mixture of formal and informal learning.
- The Faculty of Humanities requires that all PhD students complete the online Skills Audit at the beginning of each year of their programme. The Audit can be accessed through the Researcher Development Team Website.
How do students meet the requirements?
Firstly, you need to reflect on the level of skills that you currently offer and then identify what new skills or experience you need to gain over the course of the doctoral programme. This should be discussed and agreed with your supervisory team. The skills audit is a good place to start because it provides an overview, however, it is not specific or individual. There will be skills particular to each research project which you will need to develop and all development activities contribute to an effective researcher development programme.
Once you have identified the new skills you need you should think about how best to gain them. SAGE is only one of a number of programmes open to postgraduates at the University. The Faculty of Humanities, IT Services, John Rylands University Library and Careers Service all offer courses for postgraduate researchers. You should also look into and take advantage of opportunities available outside the university. Further information is available in the Non-SAGE Training for PhD section.
It does not matter how you learns new skills as long as you learn them.
They key questions you need to ask are:
- Can I now do something I couldn't before?
- Have I increased my confidence or experience?
The aim should be to be able to answer 'yes' to these questions after training, not to say I have been on 'x' number of training courses. If you focus on what you need to learn, the requirement will meet itself.
How does the School monitor training completed by PhD students?
This information only applies to SAHC students. SLLC students should see the SLLC training pages for their School's requirements.
All PhD students are asked to complete a log of training undertaken throughout the year. The log contains basic information about the activities you have undertaken and the skills gained. All students will be asked to produce this form at their panel meetings for submission with the panel report (required for new students, requested for existing students).
The purpose of the log is to monitor how students are meeting the training requirement. This is especially important because we encourage you to take advantage of a wide range of opportunities as appropriate for you, rather than having a compulsory list of courses you must attend. The information gathered will inform the ongoing development of the School's training provision. It will not be used to penalise you for not completing the minimum requirement. This is not a compulsory requirement for existing PhD students (though it is required of new students from September '07), but the information would be extremely useful if you were to provide it and keeping the log may also be a useful way of recording the work you have done. As of September 2010, the majority of PhD students will have access to the eProg system which records doctoral progression. Many researchers are now completing PhD research blogs as a way of recording their progress through a doctoral programme. Blogs are easy to establish, can be kept public or private, and (if used correctly) can help to raise the profile of researchers.
Download the Training Log