What is Enterprise and why is it in the RDF?

There is often confusion around the term enterprise.  It is sometimes used interchangeably with entrepreneurship and so has connotations of starting a business.  But enterprise simply refers to the generation and application of ideas to address practical situations (QAA definitions).

Enterprise sits within the Engagement, Influence and Impact domain, however enterprise skills feature in all four sections of the RDF.  Enterprise isn’t a stand-alone skill you can develop in isolation, it requires a whole host of competencies and attributes.  In fact I have identified 38 descriptors within the RDF which relate to enterprise.

This is not bad news.  It does not necessarily mean enterprise is a more difficult skill to develop.  On the contrary it means that whilst developing your enterprise skills you are simultaneously acquiring many other abilities.  It also means that you are already half-way there to becoming more enterprising…

Writing productively during #AcWriMo

Image credit: Raul Pacheco-Vega

November is Academic Writing Month or #AcWriMo.  Set an academic writing goal, and work alongside the online #AcWriMo community to achieve your goal.  We have talked about setting an appropriate goal for #AcWriMo in a previous post, so this year, we’re going to look at being a productive writer, to help you reach those carefully set goals.

International Open Access Week is coming up!

Once per year, open access advocates (such as myself) get excited about International Open Access Week (this year running from 22 – 28 October).  This event highlights the movement working to make research outputs freely available for re-use, to raise awareness for issues around making outputs available and answer questions that you might have.  If you’re not sure why you should care about this, Suzanne Atkins summarised the benefits of Open Access to PGRs in her blogpost back in October 2016.

Spotlight on the RDF: “Synthesising”

In this series of “Spotlight on…” posts, we’ll be delving into the detail of the descriptors in Vitae‘s Researcher Development Framework (RDF).  Each one of the sixty-three descriptors is a characteristic of an excellent researcher, and we’ll be looking at how UoB PGRs can develop these characteristics.

Image credit: National Eye Institute

Synthesis has a number of meanings in the OED, but the one that is relevant here is “the putting together of parts or elements so as to make up a complex whole” [1] and being able to put together parts and elements from the research literature and create a complex whole is a critical skill in literature review.  It’s relatively straight-forward to write a summary of the literature in your research area, but a proper literature review goes further and uses the existing literature to create a “complex whole” where new knowledge or understanding has been created.  

Welcome to the University of Birmingham!

Are you a new postgraduate researcher at the University of Birmingham? Do you feel a bit daunted at the thought of starting this new adventure? If so, fear not. Lucky for you the University of Birmingham has lots of resources to help you. Here are a few tips to start you off on the right foot!

Next week is Peer Review Week 2018

Peer review is an essential part of maintaining quality in scholarly publishing.  It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best we’ve got at the moment, and therefore various organisations including publishers, ORCID, Publons, and Sense about Science are getting together to celebrate all things peer review in Peer Review Week 2018.  This year’s theme is diversity in peer review.

Rewards from Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Faculty of Arts Buildings, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.  Photo credit: Peerawat.b

Change is inevitable in life and often perceived unfavourably, since it frequently takes our lives out of our comfort zones.  I used to perceive change as previously mentioned. However, I started to alter my perception of change to be rewarding, particularly when it takes me out of my comfort zone, after a decision to pursue my PhD study here, at the University of Birmingham.  I have had a good opportunity of being back to the University campus again after my first Master’s degree from here, but this time, as both an alumnus and a PhD candidate.

I must admit that studying a PhD together with working as a full-time lecturer is a decision which took me out of my comfort zone indeed.