Skills Training and Skills Monitoring for Postgraduate Students
To be successful postgraduate studies must not be narrowly focused on the speedy production of a dissertation but must comprise a wider spectrum of training in relevant research and career development skills.
The School of History and the Faculty of Arts are keen to offer postgraduate students a varied and effective portfolio of training courses to ensure that students are in a position to tackle their research tasks and develop their wider skills as scholars. These courses are available to all postgraduate students, but for students in taught postgraduate programmes and First-Year PhD students attendance at the Training Seminars is compulsory and will be monitored. [View Programme] There is also a requirement imposed by the University that all First-Year PhD students attend training courses totalling the equivalent of ten days. Postgraduate students are also advised to pay attention to the information provided by the office of the University Co-ordinator for postgraduate skills training (see: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/GRADskills)
At the beginning of their research PhD and 2nd-year MPhil students will meet with their supervisors for a formal Research Skills Assessment. On the basis of this assessment supervisors and students will agree a programme of skills training to be undertaken in the course of the first year of research. Students are required to account for the skills training undertaken by completing an individual Research Skills Training Log, which will be reviewed annually. At the beginning of subsequent years of PhD research, supervisors will conduct a formal Skills Development Assessment in order to monitor the effectiveness of the training programme and with a view to developing the student's skill set even further. During this assessment, the individual Training Log will be reviewed.