Courses and resources

Theme:

Education and Research

Category:

Education and Research

About this course:

This activity is for research active staff and would be particularly useful to Early Career Researchers.

There are limited places on this course, so you must commit to all four sessions.

It is a requirement that participants attend every session.

You may need to confirm your commitment to this with your line manager / principal investigator.

This 4-session course will be DELIVERED VIRTUALLY - joining instructions will be provided beforehand.

Course dates: Monday 9 June 2025 (9:30 am - 12:30 pm).

Thursday 12 June 2025 (9:30 am - 12:30 pm).

Monday 16 June 2025 (9:30 am - 12:30 pm).

Thursday 19 June 2025 (9:30 am - 12:30 pm).

Aimed at research-active staff in the early stages of their careers, this four-part series introduces key tools and techniques for managing any research project.

Delivered by Fistral Training and Consultancy Ltd (Dr Fraser Robertson), this series follows best practice project management principles linked to establishing good project foundations and scoping research projects, creating a robust and evidence based project plan, and tried-and-tested ways to plan for uncertainty and risk.

Sessions combine and build on each other to provide an introduction to the process of managing projects and the tools to assist in planning and tracking progress within the landscape of research projects.

This is particularly important where time constraints (e.g.funding period), limited budget (e.g.awarded grant), competing priorities (e.g.research, teaching, team or line management support) and scarce resources (e.g.individual or small team, access to equipment/facilities/data) compete to provide a challenging backdrop to the "real work", i.e.

the research itself.

Participants will begin to apply PM tools and techniques directly to their own work and thereby create `live? outputs.

Application and reflection to individual work ensures the series will be relevant and practical with opportunities in each webinar for hands-on activities.

Sharing individual experiences and reflection will be actively encouraged in each session, and participants will be asked to provide contributions throughout the series in the main forum and via the chatroom.

During this online programme participants will have: Webinar 1 focuses on establishing good foundations for your project and plan and by the end, participants will have: o Learned the importance of formally initiating every project regardless of size o Been introduced to the fundamental and ubiquitous concept of the project triangle o Considered the influence that stakeholders can hold over the work and how this will affect the direction and outputs of the project.

Webinar 2 the focus is the scope and outputs of the project, and the focus on understanding the tools and techniques, and on personal application.

By the end of this session participants will have: o Considered techniques for defining the scope of a project o Learned methods for identifying and managing differing project expectations o Been shown techniques to establish goals and deliverables to guide them through the project execution phase The third webinar in the series brings together all of the learning from previous courses, to create a rigorous and robust, evidence-based, project plan.

By the end of this session, participants will have: o Been introduced the work breakdown structure tool which is fundamental in the planning process o Considered methods that allow the introduction of uncertainty into task estimates o Been shown sequencing and resourcing techniques, and how to create a Gantt chart ?properly? so it becomes a useful tool and not just a paper exercise! The final webinar in the series considers uncertainty, something inherent to research.

The focus is on presenting tools and techniques to proactively identify and respond to ks during the planning process, rather than reactively during the project.

By the end of Webinar 4, participants will have: o Learned various techniques for identifying sources of potential issues and risks in their projects o Considered methods to deal with problems proactively and before they happen o Been shown how to integrate these solutions into a usable project plan and calculate time contingency for unforeseen events

Who should attend this course:

This course is recommended for research active staff and would be particularly useful to Early Career Researchers.

Presenter(s):

Dr Fraser Robertson of Fistral Training & Consultancy Ltd.

Before the course:

No preparation is required for this course.

Learning provider:

This course is administered by Researcher Development; please contact researcherdevelopment@exeter.ac.uk for more details.

If you have accessibility requirements, please contact researcherdevelopment@exeter.ac.uk in advance to discuss further.

Book your place or add your name to the waiting list