Open workshops

As a masters student, you will need to demonstrate your critical thinking skills throughout your dissertation.

This interactive online workshop will give you some tips and strategies on how to plan for, practice and communicate critical thinking in your dissertation.

Students should have their dissertation title (it does not need to final) and the dissertation marking criteria if possible (this maybe in the programme guide or online).

Students are encouraged to comment and ask questions during the workshop.

This workshop does not include

• Subject or discipline-specific advice
• English Language advice

What does your supervisor mean when they tell you that your writing is ‘too descriptive’ or ‘not critical enough’? Are you supposed to criticise published work by more senior authors? In this workshop, we address these questions by exploring ‘critical reading’ in theory and practice: what it means, how to read critically, and how to develop a scholarly mindset.

This interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline-specific. You will be invited to engage and respond via the chat function, and encouraged to ask questions.

Writing ‘critically’ is a key academic requirement. How do you make sure your writing meets that expectation? In this workshop you will explore aspects of critical thinking that are central to academic discourse, and learn how to demonstrate critical engagement in your dissertation writing.

This interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline-specific. You will be invited to engage and respond via the chat function, and encouraged to ask questions.

This workshop is for suitable for all taught postgraduate (PGT) students who are about to start, or have started their dissertation or research project.

A dissertation is a key part of a Masters programme. It’s a chance for you to plan and undertake a significant body of your own research. This can be a very rewarding experience, but can present many challenges: What exactly is a dissertation and what does it look like? Where do I start? When do I stop? How do I do it?

This interactive workshop will focus on practical strategies for successfully completing your dissertation, including top tips to set you up to complete in time.

Discussion and questions are warmly welcomed and encouraged during this workshop.

This workshop will not cover

• Referencing
• Subject or discipline specifics
• Project or dissertation specifics
• English Language advice

This is the final in the Dissertation Toolkit series. This online workshop will be most beneficial for those students who have already begun to draft their dissertation. It will be all about the close work – or what writers like to call line-by-line editing. (This is not necessarily something to leave until you’ve finished writing – you can edit while you’re drafting). The session will be structured around the three Cs – clarity, conciseness, coherence – as benchmarks for constructing strong sentences and flowing paragraphs. Techniques for managing your word count will also be addressed.

This workshop is the final in a series of three. However, you don’t need to have attended the previous Dissertation Toolkit workshops to benefit from this session.

The workshop will not be discipline specific – the techniques will apply broadly to students of both the sciences and humanities.

This is the first in the Dissertation Toolkit online workshops. To benefit from this session, you should already be reading for your dissertation. You might have begun to plan or draft.

We’ll outline several ways to structure your dissertation. There will also be techniques to help focus your work after you start writing.  Participants can use the session to produce a working plan or to impose a structure on work already done. You might also use it to reconsider or re-work an existing plan. During the session, we will look at writing an abstract and how this can help you to focus your writing as your project develops. Come along to the workshop with your research question/statement.

This workshop is the first in a series of three. However, you don’t need to attend all of the workshops to benefit from this session.

The workshop will not be discipline specific – the techniques will apply broadly to students of both the sciences and humanities.

This is the second in the series of the Dissertation Toolkit online workshops. It is aimed at students who are already reading for their dissertation and who have perhaps begun to draft.

This workshop will present some ways of getting started and finding the ‘voice’ of your dissertation. It will include generative techniques – useful for anyone struggling with the blank page or stuck on a particular section of their dissertation. The techniques – including freewriting, effective paraphrasing and producing strong topic sentences – can help you to keep your focus or get you started again if you’ve slowed down halfway through.

This is the second in a series of three workshops. However, you don’t need to attend all of them to benefit from this session.

The workshop will not be discipline specific – the techniques will apply broadly to students of both the sciences and humanities.

Writing your dissertation can be a daunting task. It can be difficult to get started and really easy to put off! But no-one else can write your dissertation but you…

So how can you start, and maintain, writing your dissertation?

This online, friendly and interactive session will give you strategies:

• Thinking about writing
• Planning your writing and,
• Actually starting writing your dissertation.

Discussion and questions are warmly welcomed and encouraged during this workshop.

This workshop will not cover

• Referencing
• Formatting or software
• Subject or discipline specifics
• English Language advice

Are you currently writing your dissertation? Or are you struggling to make a real start? Maybe you’ve already started but have run out of steam? The Dissertation Writing Bootcamp will give you a time and space to focus on writing by introducing writing techniques, strategies and tips, followed by a dedicated writing session. 

Writing strategies

This bitesize session will focus on preparing and planning for your writing. A dissertation is a considerable piece of work and takes time and effort. Therefore knowing what you need to do and how you are going to do it will give you a good start and help you keep on track.

We will look at things you should think about when planning your writing and some writing strategies, and then introduce the goal setting and writing session.

Writing session

To get the most from the writing session please make sure you have something specific you want to work on, doing any necessary reading or planning beforehand. You will be asked this as part of the booking process to help you focus. It’s ok if you have to change this by the time the session happens.

Are you currently writing your dissertation? Or are you struggling to make a real start? Maybe you’ve already started but have run out of steam? The Dissertation Writing Bootcamp will give you a time and space to focus on writing by introducing writing techniques, strategies and tips, followed by a dedicated writing session. 

Beating writer’s block

Have you ever found yourself seemingly writing for hours but the page is still blank? This bitesize session will focus on why some of us struggle with writer’s block and look at some practical tips for overcoming and working around it. (Spoiler alert… it involves writing!). We’ll then introduce the goal setting and writing session.

Writing session

To get the most from the writing session please make sure you have something specific you want to work on, doing any necessary reading or planning beforehand. You will be asked this as part of the booking process to help you focus. It’s ok if you have to change this by the time the session happens.

Are you currently writing your dissertation? Or are you struggling to make a real start? Maybe you’ve already started but have run out of steam? The Dissertation Writing Bootcamp will give you a time and space to focus on writing by introducing writing techniques, strategies and tips, followed by a dedicated writing session. 

Being your own proof-reader

Most people get a complete draft of their writing together before proof-reading it. But given the size of a dissertation this can be too late. And most of us don’t proof-read effectively as we’ve never really been taught how to do it. This bitesize session will look at the difference between proof-reading and editing and introduce some effective strategies for proof-reading. We’ll then introduce the goal setting and writing session.

Writing session

To get the most from the writing session please make sure you have something specific you want to work on, doing any necessary reading or planning beforehand. You will be asked this as part of the booking process to help you focus. It’s ok if you have to change this by the time the session happens.

Are you currently writing your dissertation? Or are you struggling to make a real start? Maybe you’ve already started but have run out of steam? The Dissertation Writing Bootcamp will give you a time and space to focus on writing by introducing writing techniques, strategies and tips, followed by a dedicated writing session.

Being your own editor

Most people tend to think that once they’ve got a full draft together, the hard work is done. It just needs to be proof-read and then submitted. But writing is the easy part, it’s just throwing words on a page... the real work comes in re-crafting and refining those words, honing your argument. All writing, especially a dissertation, will benefit from proper editing where you step into the marker’s shoes. This bitesize session will look at the difference between proof-reading and editing and introduce some effective strategies for editing. We’ll then introduce the goal setting and writing session.

Writing session

To get the most from the writing session please make sure you have something specific you want to work on, doing any necessary reading or planning beforehand. You will be asked this as part of the booking process to help you focus. It’s ok if you have to change this by the time the session happens.

Want more from your dissertation? Think about a publication!

Your dissertation requires a substantial amount of time and effort from you, so how can you get the most out of it? One way to make your dissertation work for you is to publish it. Many dissertations represent significant additions and advancements to their field. Publishing is a way to get your work noticed and can lead to surprising opportunities. And it doesn’t have to be just journal articles!

This 1 hour, online interactive workshop will discuss strategies for producing a range of publications from your dissertation. It is open to online and on-campus students.

This workshop does not include

• Referencing and formatting
• Subject or discipline-specific advice
• English Language advice

This session will take place via blackboard collaborate (virtual classroom). Booking is required in order to receive the workshop link and further information about how to join the session.

The amount of reading you need to do for a Masters can be overwhelming. There’s a lot of information from a lot of sources that you will need to read, digest and then use to build your argument. Students often want to know how to speed read to get through it all. But is it about reading quicker or reading more effectively? And do you really need to read everything?

This workshop will focus on:

• Identifying the different purposes of reading
• Ways to prioritise reading
• Strategies for effective reading and note making

This workshop will not cover:

• How to search for readings or literature
• Subject or discipline specific advice
• English Language advice

This workshop aims to support participants in scientific and technical writing at a post-graduate and professional level. We will consider how effective communication can be achieved through well-crafted sentences, taking grammar and vocabulary choice into consideration. 

No prior knowledge of grammar is required. 

We will be dealing with such problems as tense, sentence length, signposting and punctuation, with a view to producing clear, unambiguous and readable academic writing.

Supporting materials will be emailed to participants after the event.

This workshop will not cover:

• Writing for specific purposes, such as a thesis, dissertations or abstracts
• Feedback on individual pieces of work or drafts
• Subject or discipline specific advice
• English language advice

This workshop is open to all postgraduate taught (PGT) students.

Getting started writing your dissertation can be a daunting task. It can be difficult to get started and really easy to put off! But no-one else can write your dissertation but you…

So how do you start, and maintain, writing your dissertation?

This online interactive session will give you practical strategies for thinking about writing, planning your writing and actually starting to write your dissertation.

This workshop does not include:

• Subject or discipline-specific referencing, formatting, or advice
• English Language advice

This session will take place via blackboard collaborate (virtual classroom). Booking is required in order to receive the workshop link and further information about how to join the session.

A successful research project does not solely depend on an important research question and a well-designed protocol, but also on the efficient execution of the project. Many research projects fail to complete on time and on budget and some struggle even to get off the ground. In this half-day workshop we will apply the principles of project management to research projects and show how by applying some simple tools and techniques we can solve many of the common problems we face and avoid others altogether. The workshop will consist of a series of short, interactive lectures, interspersed with practical exercises.

After the workshop each participant will:

• be able to define the different component parts of a research project
• understand the common challenges that arise when managing a research project
• be familiar with project management tools and techniques
• be able to put these into practice
• understand how to avoid the commonest problems that arise in management of research

What makes writing ‘academic’? Content (what you choose to include) and structure (how you organise it) are both key, and the two are closely related. In this workshop you will reflect on what research publications share in terms of content and structure, and explore how that affects your dissertation writing.

This interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline-specific. You will be invited to engage and respond via the chat function, and encouraged to ask questions.

Your dissertation needs to be written in a writing style that is appropriately academic. Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions about what that means in practice. In this workshop, you will explore the academic values that underpin stylistic choices in high-quality academic writing, and reflect on how to apply them in your own dissertation writing.

This interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline-specific. You will be invited to engage and respond via the chat function, and encouraged to ask questions.

Are you a taught postgraduate student working on your assignments or dissertation? Or trying to write for publication?  Would you like an opportunity to be able to learn some writing techniques, and have create some time to practise them? 

The aim of the ‘writing bootcamp’ is to facilitate a time for you to write without the distractions of emails, Facebook, twitter and everyday life. 

The session will begin with a short Bitesize style workshop to offer advice on writing techniques and motivate you to write. Following this you will have a writing session.  No distractions, just writing. 

Thinking of signing up? You’ll need to do any necessary preparation before attending the mini writing bootcamp (guidance will be sent out prior to the session). 

As places are limited please only book a place if you are able to attend the session in full. 

Great networking takes preparation and practice. This workshop will focus on practical strategies for effective networking both face-to-face and online to help you with your project and beyond!

The workshop will include the following topics:

• What is networking? Why network??
• Effective networking?
• Prepare for networking – who you want to speak with and what you want to say?
• Your ‘elevator pitch’?
• Events and meetings (including online)?
• Emails and online networks?
• Strategies and top tips?
• Links to further resources?

This workshop is open to all postgraduate taught (PGT) students. 

A dissertation is a significant piece of academic writing and a major investment of time and effort. It is also the defining feature of a Master’s degree, so it is worth presenting it well.

This interactive session will introduce strategies to help you incorporate revising into your personal writing process.  It will highlight tricky things which tend to catch students out, suggest useful tools and offer tips to help you submit your best work. 

You will be expected to produce significant pieces of academic writing for your Masters e.g. reports, essays and your dissertation! They are a major investment of time and effort, so it is worth spending time polishing it by properly proofreading and editing.

This interactive online session will introduce useful tips and strategies to help you incorporate effective proof-reading and editing into your writing process.

This session will not cover:

• Subject or discipline-specific advice
• English Language advice
• Feedback on individual pieces of work
• Proof-reading or editing of individual pieces of work

This highly interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline specific – the techniques can be applied in any subject.

Participants will be required to engage with the session via the chat function, and are encouraged to ask questions.

Research questions are critical to conducting research, yet the process of crafting questions has not advanced. This workshop takes research question design to a new level by combining principles of visual thinking, urban design, academic research, and critical enquiry. Bring your dissertation research topic and get ready to approach research question design in a radically new way!

This workshop will cover:

• Visual Thinking
• Fundamentals of Asking Questions
• The Four (Visual) Qualities of Urban Design
• Sample Research Topic and Application of Method
• Design Your Own Research Question Step by Step

Please have your research question (or draft version) to hand to use during the workshop.

This workshop is open to all postgraduate taught (PGT) students.

A dissertation is a significant piece of academic writing and the defining feature of a Master’s degree, so it is worth taking time to consider your structure.

This interactive session will help you step back from the detail of your writing and take an overview of your dissertation.  It will suggest practical ways you can isolate the main themes of your work and develop a convincing order to present your ideas.  We will also discuss the purpose of key sections of academic dissertations.  

This session will not cover:

• Subject or discipline-specific advice
• English Language advice
• Feedback on individual pieces of work
• Proof-reading or editing of individual pieces of work

This session will take place via blackboard collaborate (virtual classroom). Booking is required in order to receive the workshop link and further information about how to join the session.

The session is delivered using a blend of presentation, demonstration and hands-on practice to help participants understand the information research process and develop good practice in literature searching.

Participants are encouraged to follow along using their own device as presenters demonstrate online search strategies and techniques.

Learning objectives – as a result of this session you will…

• Develop an understanding of how the Library's print and electronic information resources are organised
• Be able to identify, select and use library resources appropriate to your research or study
• Develop the ability to search and evaluate research literature by performing advanced search strategies and techniques, such as using Boolean search operators
• Be aware of how to manage search results

This session will take place via blackboard collaborate (virtual classroom). Booking is required in order to receive the workshop link and further information about how to join the session.

All authors want to create text that flows – but that can be a challenge when writing a draft feels like wringing blood from a stone. In this workshop you will learn some simple yet effective techniques for generating fluency and writing more productively.

This highly interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline-specific – the techniques can be applied in any subject.

Participants will be required to engage with the session via the chat function, and encouraged to ask questions.

You were determined to start writing today – yet find yourself doing something else. Sounds familiar? In this workshop, we will look why so many doctoral students delay writing. You will work with some tools and exercises that bypass procrastination to help you start writing that review, chapter or paper.

This highly interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline-specific – the techniques can be applied in any subject.

Participants will be required to engage with the session via the chat function, and encouraged to ask questions.

All successful projects need to be actively managed.  This is true of writing a dissertation, planning a research project, gaining employment or even cooking a meal for friends.  In this online lecture we will look at how we should approach a project, plan it and execute it.  Along the way we will look at the commonest mistakes people make as well as a number of tips that will help us bring our project to a successful completion.

After the session each participant will:

•        be able to define the different component parts of a project

•        understand the common challenges that arise when managing a project

•        be familiar with simple project management tools and techniques

•        be able to put these into practice

This session will take place via blackboard collaborate (virtual classroom). Booking is required in order to receive the workshop link and further information about how to join the session.

Whether we like it or not, in modern academia we are judged by how much we publish and where it is published. Thus, all academics strive to get their work  accepted in the highest impact journals. However, this takes work and often requires persistence. In this online presentation, Allan Gaw, who has been an academic for over 30 years and who has published extensively, will give you his top tips for success.  

After the presentation, the attendees will:

• be aware of the importance of choosing the right journal

• understand the need to follow the instructions to authors

• know how to structure an academic paper

• appreciate the peer review process

• know how to respond to, and when to challenge, a review

Whether you are writing a Masters Dissertation, a PhD Thesis, a Grant Application or a Paper you will be required to produce a literature review. This aspect of academic writing presents many problems to those new, and sometimes not so new, to the task.  Some mistakenly think that a simple, and often exhaustive, catalogue of past research is what is required.  But, or course, a good literature review is much more than that.  This online presentation will guide the participants through a carefully plotted route, helping them to produce a winning strategy for writing their next literature review.

After the workshop each participant will:

• understand the key elements of a good literature review and its purpose
• be able to formulate a literature review writing plan
• possess the necessary critical skills to summarise & synthesise literature
• appreciate the need for editing and review of the written work.

A literature review is based on extensive reading and note-taking –– but do you do these activities in a way that helps, rather than hinders, the writing process? We explore what it means to engage effectively with individual publications, and take notes that will facilitate your review’s development.

This interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline-specific. You will be invited to engage and respond via the chat function, and encouraged to ask questions.

A literature review contextualises and motivates research; that makes it a key component of any publication. In this workshop, we take a step back and look at what’s involved in the process of developing a review. Keeping in mind the core qualities of a good review across disciplines, we will explore how you can approach relevant tasks without feeling overwhelmed.

This interactive workshop is open to all PGT students and is not discipline-specific. You will be invited to engage and respond via the chat function, and encouraged to ask questions.

This online workshop will be an hour session focusing on how to manage your exams by improving your exam technique.

The session will focus on issues raised by participants and so could cover, for example, exam preparation and participation; i.e. how to cope with stress, practicing your exam technique and a review of exam strategies.

This session is suitable for any taught student who wants to improve their exam technique.

This session is open to all UG, PGT, PGR and Online Students who would like to get help or advice for using Endnote to keep a database of literature sources and create reference lists easily in essays and other written work.

Learning outcomes are tailored to fit your aims and queries submitted when you register, but sessions in the past have covered:

• Why use EndNote (or any bibliographic manager)
• Getting started
• Adding records to EndNote
  • Manually
  • Exporting from literature databases
  • Creating citations in Word from EndNote
    • Inserting citations and reference lists
    • Changing the formats of citations and reference lists
    • Added value – managing your literature sources
      • Attachments to records
      • Adding your research notes
      • Alternatives to EndNote

EndNote is installed on all on-campus open access computers (like the Library) but you can get your own copy of EndNote desktop version via the UoE Licence https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/computing/desktop-personal/software/main-software-deals/endnote    Comparison chart of EndNote and other bibliographic management software options http://www.docs.is.ed.ac.uk/mvm/BiblioManagersTable.pdf

This session is intended for all UG, PGT, PGR and Online Students who would like to get help or advice for using Mendeley to keep a database of literature sources and create reference lists easily in essays and other written work.

Learning outcomes are tailored to fit your aims and queries submitted when you register, but sessions in the past have covered:

• Why use Mendeley? (or any bibliographic manager)
• Getting started
  • Overview: web and desktop components
  • Registration & downloading Mendeley desktop
  • Intalling plugins
• Adding records to Mendeley
  • Manually
  • Importing pdfs and using watched folders
  • Exporting from literature databases
• Creating citations in Word from Mendeley
  • Inserting citations and reference lists into Word
  • Changing the formats of citations and reference lists
• Added value
  • Searching records & attached files
  • Adding your research notes
  • Folders and Groups
  • Finding & merging duplicate records
  • Mendeley’s File Organiser
• Mendeley: comparative strengths & weaknesses

 *Before* the workshop, you should

1.Sign up for a Mendeley account and download the desktop client: http://www.mendeley.com/

2.Follow these video tutorials for getting started: http://www.mendeley.com/videos-tutorials/

3. Try to use Mendeley before the tutorial – you’ll get more out of the tutorial if you do.

This session will take place via blackboard collaborate (virtual classroom). Booking is required in order to receive the workshop link and further information about how to join the session.

This session is intended for all UG, PGT, PGR and Online Students who would like to get help or advice for using Zotero to keep a database of literature sources and create reference lists easily in essays and other written work.

Learning outcomes are tailored to fit your aims and queries submitted when you register, but sessions in the past have covered:

• Why use Zotero? (or any bibliographic manager)
• Getting started
  • Overview: browser, web and standalone options
  • Registration & installation
  • Intalling plugins
• Adding records
  • Manually
  • Importing pdfs and using watched folders
  • Exporting from literature databases
• Creating citations in Word
  • Inserting citations and reference lists into Word
  • Changing the formats of citations and reference lists
• Added value
  • Searching records & attached files
  • Adding your research notes
  • Organising into collections, sharing with groups, using tags
• Zotero: comparative strengths & weaknesses

 *Before* the workshop, you should

1. Sign up for a Zotero account https://www.zotero.org/user/register/

2. Download both the Firefox plugin and the standalone client: https://www.zotero.org/download/

 3. Follow these video tutorials for getting started https://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials

 4. Try to use Zotero before the tutorial – you’ll get more out of the tutorial if you do.

This session will take place via blackboard collaborate (virtual classroom). Booking is required in order to receive the workshop link and further information about how to join the session.