Academic Skills
ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT AND LEARNING DEVELOPMENT (AELD) PROVISION
Useful Library guidance and resources can be found on the DRDP Library Guide. You can also access services from:
- Academic Learning DevelopersWorkshops and individual appointments available to help you develop your academic writing and study skills to succeed in your studies and in your career.
- Academic Engagement LibrariansYour subject librarian can help you get the resources you need for your research, and offer guidance and training on databases, managing your references, copyright and more.
Further useful AELD resources:
Recording: Introduction to Library and Archive Service
Session recording: Introduction to Mendeley Reference Management Software
ACADEMIC ENGLISH FOR DOCTORAL RESEARCHERS (8ALDS001W)
The module will run twice in 2024-25.
Semester 1 referral deadline: 7th October 2024
Semester 2 referral deadline: 20th January 2025
This is an accessible and inclusive module for all students who would benefit from extra support with expression in English at doctoral level.
The module is delivered in the first semester of each academic year. It is delivered in the form of seven taught group sessions followed by three individual tutorials. The latter will be based on your own written work.
The taught group sessions will take place from 2pm- 4pm. All classes will take place online via Microsoft Teams.
The module will run in Semester 2, 2024-25, as follows (all sessions run from 2pm – 4pm):
Week 1 28th January 2025
Week 2 4th February 2025
Week 3 11th February 2025
Week 4 18th February 2025
Week 5 25th February 2025
Week 6 4th March 2025
Week 7 11th March 2025
If you would like to register for the module in semester 2, you will need to be referred by your Director of Studies. They will need to complete the referral form and email it to Richard Paterson (r.paterson@westminster.ac.uk). Once you have been referred, you will be contacted to make sure that the module is right for you.
Referrals from DoSs will need to reach Richard Paterson by 5pm, 20th January 2025. You will receive an emailing confirming your place on the module.
Doctoral researchers can also access support around writing through the Academic Engagement and Learning Development Team. One to one sessions are available through them. Information on all they offer can be found here
DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY
A new programme of sessions designed for doctoral researchers is set to run in 2024-25. More information will be published soon.
LITERATURE SEARCHING
4th March 2025, 1.00pm-2.30pm, Online
Not sure where to look for literature? Overwhelmed by endless, useless search results? Trying to read but nothing’s sinking in? Confused by your own notes that you spent ages writing? Don’t worry, help is at hand!
In this interactive workshop, we will show you various literature search tools and other resources that you have access to at Westminster and beyond. You will learn tips and tricks to use these to your advantage and find relevant sources for your PhD. You will discover reading techniques that will help you work through your reading pile effectively and efficiently. You will also learn note-taking tips that will help you extract the crucial information from the literature in a way that it can be smoothly integrated into your writing.
Learning Outcomes:
• By the end of this session you will be able to:
• Decide where to search
• Develop a search strategy
• Filter your search results to isolate the most relevant
• Use effective reading techniques
• Use effective note-taking techniques
• Know where to get further support
DIGITAL TOOLS TO HELP YOU WITH YOUR RESEARCH
7th February 2025, 11am-12pm, Online
There are many useful digital tools that you could be utilising to help with your research process. This session will explore these tools, some provided by the University, some freely available. Bring your laptop along if you wish to try these out during the session.
This session will cover:
- multimedia/accessibility functions in databases
- Useful browser extensions
- Microsoft Office shortcuts
- GrammarlyGo (GenAi) – ideas from a non-expert.
This workshop will be followed by Lunch.
AN INTRODUCTION TO REFWORKS REFERENCE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
6th February 2025, 11.00am-12.00pm, Online
By the end of this workshop, you will know how to:
- Create a RefWorks account
- Import references into RefWorks from a variety of sources
- Use RefWorks to create a bibliography in your preferred referencing style
- Use the RefWorks Write-n-Cite plugin to create references within a word processing programme
- Know the advantages and disadvantages of using RefWorks as a reference management tool
AN INTRODUCTION TO ZOTERO REFERENCE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
7th February 2025, 1pm-2pm , Regent Street
Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. In this session we will introduce you to Zotero and it’s functionality.
This workshop is followed by an optional QA& session with the AELD Team, 2pm – 2:30pm
EFFECTIVE USE OF SOURCES IN YOUR WORK
20th March 2025, 2.30pm-4.00pm, Online
Integration and synthesis of sources in postgraduate writing requires greater skill than at undergraduate level. One must master the literature within a given field, rank and organize sources in relation to one’s research question and deploy those sources strategically and judiciously, emphasizing crucial works and glancing over others. This session looks (briefly) at how to organise one’s research harvest, how to signpost the logical relationships between pieces of evidence and how to rhetorically integrate academic works into one’s presentation.
ACADEMIC VOICE AND LANGUAGE
4th December 2024, 1.00pm-2.30pm, Online
OR
3rd April 2025, 10.00am-11.30am, Online
What is a good academic writing style for your PhD? How can your writing add value and achieve depth while being clear and accessible? How can your writing be formal and sophisticated without sounding too dry and mechanical? What are the right levels of abstraction and concreteness?
This session will discuss these and other questions on academic language and voice.
The workshop will be delivered in a friendly and interactive format so we will welcome your questions and contributions!
CRITICAL THINKING AND ARGUMENTATION
27th March 2025, 1.00pm-3.00pm, Online
To achieve a PhD you will need to master critical thinking. The workshop will review definitions and descriptions of critical thinking and will discuss how (and if) the notion of critical thinking changes across disciplines and according to the ontologies and epistemologies of different research philosophies.
The workshop will provide tools for critically analysing and evaluating information. Special attention will be given to the analysis and evaluation of research methods considering, among other things, sample representativeness and confirmation bias.
The workshop will help you demonstrate critical thinking in your academic writing by reaching conclusions from evidence, creating meaning, contributing to knowledge and presenting your arguments effectively.
This online workshop will be delivered in a friendly and interactive format, and we will welcome your questions and contributions!
DEFYING WRITER’S BLOCK: USING MIND MAPS TO GENERATE, VISUALISE AND STRUCTURE IDEAS
12th December 2024, 10.30am-12.30pm, Regent Street
OR
18th March 2025, 10.30am-12.30pm, Regent Street
A mind map helps generate ideas before you make a formal plan and can reveal themes, gaps and links between ideas. This workshop will help you to develop a mind map on key words or themes so that you can use it as raw material for your earliest thinking and research. Mind maps are also a fantastic way to get started without the pressure of producing beautiful sentences, as such they can be highly beneficial in defying writer’s block. Additionally, they can also become the basis for creating a possible structure for your ideas!
Lunch will be available at these workshops at 12:30pm and will be followed by an optional Drop In Q&A session with members of the Academic Engagement Librarians Team.
THE CREATIVE RESEARCHER
4th February 2025, 2.00pm-4.00pm, Online
or
12th June 2025, 2.00pm-4.00pm, Online
Research is a cyclical form of structured enquiry that begins with an open-ended question or hypothesis and ends with the creation of new knowledge that answers the question and progresses the field of enquiry.
There are several distinct stages in the research cycle that present different kinds of challenge, and the researcher needs to draw on a variety on skills to meet these challenges and make progress in their research. Some of these challenges require a greater emphasis on the critical appraisal of existing knowledge, observations and data, but creativity always works symbiotically with critical thinking.
Other challenges are more speculative and open-ended, requiring a greater emphasis on creativity. These include identifying the initial research question, ideas to proceed with addressing the question, and the design of the investigation.
This workshop, though covering some aspects of critical thinking, will focus mainly on creativity. Everyone is creative to some extent, but little emphasis has been placed on the importance of creativity in research, perhaps because it is less well understood than critical thinking. This workshop will illustrate how creativity is at the heart of progress in research, and how individual creativity can be nurtured and developed further. It will explore the nature of creative thinking and the factors that both nurture and inhibit it. Some ‘tools’ for nurturing creative thinking in research will be applied, and a framework will be described in which the various tools for critical thinking and creativity can be applied in a systematic way.
This workshop aims to describe the nature and nurture of creativity in the context of doing research. It will describe a framework for creative problem solving and will cover some tools, techniques and behaviours that can help access individual and group creativity. Some of the influences that inhibit creative thinking will also be discussed.
WRITING YOUR LITERATURE REVIEW
11th March 2025, 2.00pm-4.00pm, Online
The main purpose of a literature review is to situate new research (to be described in detail later), within the existing body (or bodies) of published knowledge. This requires the author to first undertake an analysis of all the relevant earlier and current research. This analysis is concerned with first describing the established knowledge, and then with identifying and articulating the earlier and current debates, inconsistencies, and tensions in the published work.
The analysis is followed by a synthesis, in which the new research is integrated creatively with the existing knowledge. This requires the development of arguments for justifying the new research undertaking, in terms of its contribution to progress in the field. Given that there are no precedents for the new research being described, this necessitates a greater presence of the author’s unique ‘voice’ in the writing.
Whilst the literature review in journal papers may be relatively brief in some academic disciplines, in a thesis it is always a more comprehensive undertaking. This requires the researcher to work continuously, in terms of planning and writing the review. Initially this may begin as an annotated bibliography, but later on it takes the form of an outline review that will be revised, edited and updated continuously as the research progresses.
This on-line presentation will describe how to write a literature review in five stages, and examples will be shown of reviews from different disciplines. In addition it will provide information and examples of some of the pitfalls that have been observed in reviews from the perspective of the reader (i.e. examiner/peer reviewer).
WRITING RETREATS
Writing retreats are a fantastic opportunity for researchers to concentrate on writing in a supportive atmosphere in a way that can increase both productivity and confidence. The DRDP supports two different kinds of writing retreat – residential and on campus.
Both kinds of writing retreat follow the model of the structured-writing retreat (Murray and Newton, 2009), and are facilitated by colleagues who have been trained in this method. The retreats are designed around a well-being model, and the aim is to provide and enforce writing time in a relaxed, supportive and peaceful environment. The group writes together, during prescribed time-slots.
The residential writing retreats are held twice each academic year (December and July). There will be 10 places available for doctoral students. Travel costs (train/taxi) will be reimbursed after the retreat.
Instructions on how to apply for the residential retreats will go out via email in the middle of the first semester for the December retreat and early summer for the summer retreat.
WINTER RESIDENTIAL WRITING RETREAT 2024-25
ON-CAMPUS WRITING DAYS
These take place monthly throughout the academic year. Lunch will be included. You can book as many of these as you wish.
If you cannot attend in person, you can book to join in online. Simply select the online option booking page in Inkpath.
- 11th October 2024
- 8th November 2024
- 6th December 2024 Book in Inkpath
- 10th January 2025 Book in Inkpath
- 14th February 2025 Book in Inkpath
- 14th March 2025 Book in Inkpath
- 3rd April 2025 Book in Inkpath
- 16th May 2025 Book in Inkpath
- 26th June 2025 Book in Inkpath
FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Where foreign language proficiency is deemed essential for carrying out doctoral research projects, the University will facilitate relevant training through Polylang, the university’s open language programme, which is open to all students as well as to members of staff, our alumni community and members of the public. All levels are catered for, from beginner to advanced. Doctoral researchers should seek advice from their Director of Studies and discuss support needs with their School DRDP Coordinator.
You may also want to learn a language beyond the demands of your doctoral research, but if you wish to learn a language beyond your research, you will need to cover the fees yourself.
For more information on what Polylang offers, see here.