Skills and development
Your research experience is about more than the research programme itself. It is also about the opportunity to work with your peers and to engage in training which provides skills which are essential to a successful researcher at the various stages of your career.
Employers often ask candidates to reflect on the skills they have developed and the training they have undertaken during their PhD. It is therefore important that PGR students actively engage in the programme and in determining the best ways to develop their skills.
Should you have any further training needs not currently addressed by our programme, or any further questions, please email the Graduate School at scieng-gradschool@glasgow.ac.uk.
Requirements
PhD students are required to engage in the equivalent of at least 10 days (70 hours) transferable skills training and development per year in years 1 and 2 of their PhD (pro rata for PT students).
MSc(Res) students, you should identify what training is useful to you in consultation with your supervisor, but the 10 days expectation is not in place.
Inkpath
Workshops offered by the University of Glasgow are hosted through the Inkpath platform.
Inkpath allows you to sign up for courses offered across the university. It also allows you to record external training opportunities such as conference attendance to track your training development.
- Inkpath (How to book and course calendar)
Mandatory Courses
Mandatory Courses for all students must be completed in the first year of study. Our mandatory courses include:
- Research Integrity
- Equality and Diversity Essentials
- Information Security Awareness
- Introduction to Research Data Management
Access courses via Inkpath
Mandatory courses are located in the Self Study area of the Activities page on Inkpath. To access these courses, click on the relevant Activity, and follow the link to external booking to arrive at the Course Moodle page.
For your records, use the self-certification option to mark the Activity as complete once you have completed the Course through Moodle.
We expect Mandatory courses to take a maximum of 2 hours each to complete.
Optional Courses
Students are encouraged to engage in a wide range of training opportunities, both internal and external.
A full list of our College of Science and Engineering Courses can be found on the Optional Courses (LINK) page and further optional courses hosted by our Researcher Development team can be found on the Optional courses page.
Additional Development Opportunities
- Conference attendance
- Departmental seminars
- Public engagement opportunities
- Student representation
- Organising meetings/events
- Science Slam
Adding Training to Inkpath
Training Opportunities not booked through Inkpath should still be recorded through the Inkpath system.
To add your own activity to your development record:
- Go to the "My Activities" page (click the Home icon in the navigation bar on the left-hand side of your screen)
- Click 'Create Activity'
Once you have logged your activity, mark it as complete by going to the ‘My Activities’ section and finding the activity under the past column, clicking on it and marking it as complete.
This will keep your development record up to date, and allow you to track your progress towards the completion of goals you are working towards.
In cases where training takes place over multiple days, you should create an activity for a single session and then duplicate this event for the required number of sessions.
Please be aware that Inkpath tracks up to 8 hours of study for a single event – in cases where you are tracking above this requirement, you follow above procedure and duplicate the event to reflect the number of sessions and hours worked.
How many hours can training opportunities count towards?
All training opportunities should be logged on Inkpath in full. Students are encouraged to undertake a wide range of training opportunities and personal development activities to meet their 70 hours.
Preparing for your APR
You should download a copy of your training record from Inkpath to upload within your APR Portal. Information on how to download this record can be found here.