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Launch of the BU Undergraduate Research Assistantship programme

I am delighted to announce today the launch of BU’s Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) programme. Funded by the Fusion Investment Fund, this programme will offer paid employment opportunities for approximately 40 BU undergraduate students to work in clusters, centres and institutes, under the guidance of experienced academics, in a research position that is directly related to their career path and/or academic discipline. This will enable the students to assist academic staff with their research whilst also gaining valuable research experience.

Research shows there is a direct link between student satisfaction and research-based learning, particularly when the opportunity is in their field of study[1], and that the undergraduate student experience is improved by engaging them with research early and often.[2] URAs are common in North America and are offered in a significant number of universities, for example Harvard University, Northern Illinois University, Kent State University and Cornell University.

In 2014-15 BU is offering two modes of the URA programme:

  1. semester-based programme (c. 20 part-time positions running for eight weeks in semester 2)
  2. summer programme (c. 20 full-time positions running for six weeks in June/July 2015)

There are two stages to the application process: 1) School/Faculty application stage whereby BU academic staff can apply for URA positions, and 2) student selection stage whereby School/Faculty staff recruit to the positions.

We are now accepting applications from academic staff for URA positions for the semester-based programme. The deadline for applications is 14th November 2014. All applications received will be reviewed by representatives from the University Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee, with decisions on which positions to fund announced at the start of December. There will be a second round next year for the summer programme.
Further details, including the application form, are available here: Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) programme

[1] For example: Healey and Jenkins (2011) Linking discipline-based research with teaching to benefit student learning, available from: http://www.mickhealey.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Linking-RT-Handout-Website1.doc

[2] For example: Madan, C R & Braden, D T (2013) The Benefits of Undergraduate Research: The Student’s Perspective, available from: http://dus.psu.edu/mentor/2013/05/undergraduate-research-students-perspective/

Funding opportunity: solving urban challenges with data

Funding opportunities

 Up to £7.5million is to be made availabe to support research into “Solving urban challenges with data”. Funding is being provided by Innovate UK, ESRC and NERC. Funding will be offered for projects which aim to create solutions and services that offer specific commercial benefits or limit risks and increase the resilience, quality of life or economic performance of urban areas by integrating environmental, social and economic data with data from other sources. The focus is on better defining and solving problems through finding innovative ways to combine data sources.

Briefing events will be held regarding this call, as follows:

  • Glasgow – 27 November
  • Harwell – 4 December
  • Birmingham – 8 December
  • Cardiff – 11 December
  • Manchester – 16 December
  • London – 6 January

Further information and booking for events can be found at https://connect.innovateuk.org/web/solving-urban-challenges-with-data/overview

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the link for more information:

British Archaeological Association, GB. The Reginald Taylor and Lord Fletcher essay prize recognises the best essay submitted on any subject of art-historical, archaeological or antiquarian interest within the period from the Roman era to 1830. The prize comprises £500 and a bronze medal. Closing date: 01/11/2015

Harvard University, US. The Center for International Development at Harvard University invites applications for its fellowships in sustainability science. These aim to facilitate the design, implementation and evaluation of effective interventions that promote sustainable development. Fellowships are worth up to US$55,000 over a maximum of one year depending on the experience of the candidate. The competition is open to advanced doctoral and post-doctoral students and to mid-career professionals engaged in research or practice to facilitate the design, implementation and evaluation of effective interventions that promote sustainable development. Closing date: 02/02/15

Palestine Exploration Fund, GB. The Palestine Exploration Fund invites applications for travel and research and enable scholars to conduct research into the archaeology and history, topography, geology, natural sciences, and manners, customs and culture of biblical Palestine and the Levant. A total of £4,000 is available, of which up to three awards of £500 each are set aside for student travel to the Levant. Closing date: 31/01/15

Please note that some funders specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKE Support Officer.

You can set up your own personalised alerts on ResearchProfessional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s RKE Officer in RKE Operations or see the recent post on this topic, which includes forthcoming training dates up to November 2014.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on ResearchProfessional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

 

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional.  To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional 

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional.  They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional.  The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat.  Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month.  You can register here for your preferred date:

25 November 2014

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

REF 2020 update

Research assessment

In approximately 7 weeks we will know the outcome of the REF 2014 exercise. It is hard to believe that it is almost a year since we submitted to the exercise and that the results are round the corner. Whilst the expert panels have been assessing the submissions this past year, HEFCE have been working hard to design and shape the post-2014 REF, currently being referred to as REF 2020. They are currently midway through a review of the role of metrics in research assessment to ascertain the extent to which metrics could be used in the assessment and management of research. They have commissioned RAND Europe to undertake an assessment of the impact element of REF 2014, part of which will include recommendations to the assessment of impact in future REF exercises. They are currently consulting on whether an international REF exercise, rather than a national one, is the way forward. And, arguably the most important announcement to date, they have confirmed their open access policy for the next REF which stipulates that in order to be eligible for submission to the next REF from April 2016 all journal papers and conference proceedings have to be made freely available in an institutional and/or subject repository at the time of acceptance. Outputs not made freely available in a repository at the time of acceptance after April 2016 will be exempt from inclusion.

The Research Blog’s REF pages have recently been updated and you can read more of what we know about REF 2020 here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/ref/

As soon as we know more we will post it on the Blog. Until then we wait with anticipation for the REF 2014 results!

Signs of hope for getting interdisciplinary work published!

Post-award, Publishing

Phil Ward, the Deputy Director of Research Services at the University of Kent attended a British Academy funded workshop for early career researchers and promised signs of hope for interdisciplinarity in publishing.

Focusing on the work of Sarah Campbell, the Editorial Director of Rowman and Littlefield International(RLI), a small scale academic publisher, Phil wrote the following in a blog post on Research Fundermental:

Traditional Academic Publishing

Traditionally, academic publishing has replicated the silos of academia. Book lists mirror university departments, so you have lists for Philosophy, Sociology, Politics, Linguistics, and so forth. Each of those has a Commissioning Editor – somewhat akin to a Head of Department. The list is integrated into (and dependent on) the community it serves: the authors, reviewers and buyers are all, essentially, one and the same. As such, it tends to be quite inward looking: they know who will be interested in their titles, they know the conferences they go to, and if they happen to attract a reader from outside of the community it is (as Sarah says) ‘a fluke’. This insularity is exacerbated by university libraries. Academic publishing is expensive; it doesn’t have the economies of scale of mainstream publishing, and as a result it tends to be only the institutional libraries that buy the volumes. Thus, the publishers cater for the needs, the demands and the categorisation of the libraries.

The Times, They Are A-Changin’

RLI Core Disciplines and themes

However, technology is changing this, and RLI are taking the opportunity to rethink things. Rather than setting up twelve distinct lists, it has set up four ‘core disciplines’ (Philosophy, Politics, Cultural Studies and Economics), around which other disciplines and themes overlap, merge and rub. You have gender and anthropology, but also postcolonialism, social movements and the environment. This has inevitably created some problems internally amongst the commissioning editors as to what their remit is, but this shouldn’t be visible externally. What has made this possible is technology. Social media has allowed RLI to identify and advertise to people across and outside traditional silos, using key words, and ebooks, open access, and print-on-demand have all drastically brought down publishing costs and have made smaller communities, and cross-disciplinary ones, viable.

Getting Interdisciplinary Works Published

This is all very positive, and give me hope for the future of interdisciplinarity. But that doesn’t mean that those working across disciplinary boundaries have been given a golden publishing ticket. You still have to work at it, and Sarah offered the following tips to preparing your book proposal:

  • Define your book and your potential audience. Is it: 
    • an interdisciplinary work for a multidisciplinary audience? That, suggested Sarah, is hard to pull off; 
    • an interdisciplinary book for a multidisciplinary audience? Easier to make the case, but the potential market is smaller and more niche; 
    • an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary work for a single disciplinary audience? This fits more easily with the traditional publishing model, and would thus be easier to market; 
    • or a single discipline book with the potential to appeal to more than one audience?
  • Define your overall theme and objective. It might be interdisciplinary, but it still needs to cohere. 
  • Think about keywords. How will an interested audience discover your book? 
  • What are the existing networks? Are there conferences, or groups on social media? Demonstrate that they exist. 
  • How advanced is the dialogue within the network? Is it just beginning, feeling its way, and establishing parameters, or is it more established? If your planning an edited collection, this is even more important, as they tend to be, by their very nature, looser and less focussed.

**The full programme, including recording and powerpoint slides of sessions of British Academy sponsored workshop ‘Pushing the Boundaries: Early Career Research and Interdisciplinarity can be found through this link.

Paper added to CEL collection

Publishing

 

The latest paper of BU’s Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL) was published in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology.  The lead author Padam Simkhada (BU Visiting Faculty) together with BU’s Edwin van Teijlingen and three academic colleagues in Nepal published their paper: ‘Accessing research literature: A mixed-method study of academics in Higher Education Institutions in Nepal’ [1].

This latest paper reports on the knowledge of and practice in accessing electronic research-based evidence among university teachers in the health and medical field in Nepal.  This paper originates from a recently finished DelPHE (Round 4), British Council: award.  The study called Partnership on Improving Access to Research Literature for HE Institutions in Nepal (PARI Initiative) was a collaboration between Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal, the University of Sheffield and BU’s School of Health & Social Care.   This is the second paper to appear from the PARI study, the first paper reported on research methods teaching [2].

The paper argues that accessing electronic research literature provides an opportunity to gathering up-to-date research-based information that should be core to all health curricula in Nepal.  The authors call upon curriculum developers and university authorities in Nepal to revise health curricula and help build electronic searching skills among staff and students.

The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is a full Open Access journal which means anybody across the globe can access it for free.

 

References:

  1. Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E., Devkota, B., Pathak, R.S., Sathian, B. (2014) Accessing research literature: A mixed-method study of academics in Higher Education Institutions in Nepal, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 4(4): 405-14. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/11375
  2. Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E., Pokharel, T., Devkota, B., Pathak, R.S. (2013) Research Methods Coverage in Medical & Health Science Curricula in Nepal, Nepal Journal Epidemiology 3(3): 253-258. www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/9185

Prof.  Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health
Bournemouth University

Weekly HE Policy Update

Monday

EPSRC funding for dementia detection

Eight new research projects that will explore a variety of techniques and technology aimed at improving detection and diagnosis of dementias, are to receive over £8 million in funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). University’s £1m study of eyeball link to Alzheimer’s (BBC News)

Tuesday

Marking boycott over pensions 

The University and College Union says they will halt any planned exams and stop students from receiving; coursework, formal marks or feedback during industrial action, involving members at 69 UK universities which will start on 6th November. The row centres on attempts by Universities UK to reform the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).Marking boycott set to affect ‘thousands of students’ (The Daily Telegraph)

 Wednesday

International students

The government, and not the public is ‘afraid’ of international students, while the current policy on student visas is causing ‘terrible damage’, according to Keith Vaz MP. The home affairs select committee chair co-hosted a debate on the issue of student visas to help form the committee’s report, which will be published prior to the 2015 general election. Keith Vaz: Government Is ‘Afraid’ Of International Students (The Huffington Post)

Scottish Students

Scottish students are being forced to take out record levels of debt after the Scottish government cut the grants they could claim by 40%. Official figures show that total student borrowing jumped by 69% for the last academic year up to £430m, the highest ever level. The heaviest burden is being carried by the poorest students after ministers cut overall spending on grants for living costs from £53m to £36m last year. Ministers under fire as £35m of cuts to student grants revealed (The Herald Scotland), Scottish student borrowing soars by 69% to record levels (The Guardian)

Thursday

Postgraduate loans

A national postgraduate loan system would be ‘eminently affordable’, according to research from the Institute for Public Policy Research. The analysis models the impact on the exchequer of a loan scheme similar to that available for undergraduates. If postgraduates were asked to repay their loans on earnings above £15,000 a year (rather than £21,000 as with the undergraduate loan), the report estimates that only 6.9 per cent would not be recovered. The total cost of unpaid loans would be £44m, compared with £4.2bn for undergraduate loans. Postgraduate loan system would be ’eminently affordable’  (FT)

Private education salary boost

A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies reveals that state school-educated graduates are earning significantly less than their privately educated peers, even when they are employed in the same roles. Even among graduates who went to the same university, studied the same subject and left with the same class of degree, those who went to private schools still earn 7 per cent more than state-educated students three and a half years after graduation.  Private school graduates ‘out-earn state counterparts’ (BBC News)

Friday

Social Mobility

Research by the Institute of Education has shown that parents’ level of education has a particularly strong effect on men’s incomes in the UK and in a handful of other countries. Although the study focused primarily on men, it also found that women in England and Northern Ireland born to parents who were early school-leavers earn 11 per cent less than the daughters of graduates, even if they have the same qualifications. Parents’ education ‘has greater effect’ in unequal countries (THE), British men earn 20 per cent more if a parent went to university (Telegraph)

Congratulations to Wendy Marsh

Awarded & submitted bids

BU lecturer-practitioner Wendy Marsh based in Portsmouth has just been awarded The Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) Luke Zander Research Support Bursary. The prize of £500 and a year’s membership to the RSM was established to honour Dr. Luke Zander a founding member of the Forum and an innovator in maternity care.

Wendy Marsh will receive the prize on 25 November at a meeting entitled ‘Looking back to the future: Challenges and opportunities in maternity care’, which will mark the 30th anniversary of the Maternity & the Newborn Forum.

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

ESRC Transformative Research Call: internal competition

Funding opportunities

The ESRC expects universities to exercise demand management for the ESRC Transformative Research Call and therefore a special panel has been convened.Therefore, colleagues wishing to submit an application to this call should adhere to the following time scale:

You can find further information here: ESRC Transformative Research Call

The aim of this call is to provide a stimulus for genuinely transformative research ideas at the frontiers of the social sciences, enabling research which challenges current thinking to be supported and developed. Transformative research is an involving pioneering theoretical and methodological innovation. The expectation is that the transformative research call will encourage novel developments of social science enquiry, and support research activity that entails an element of risk.

If you have a queries please contact  Alexandra Pekalski

Three for the price of one: Keynote Talk, Outstanding Contribution Award and Media Appearance.

Prof Gabrys delivers a keynote talk at the KES 2014 international conference, receives the Outstanding Contribution to the KES International organisation award and appears in two popular Polish TV’s “Panorama” news programmes.

It was a very nice and productive trip to a beautiful Polish seaside city of Gdynia where the 18th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems took place between the 14th and 17th of September 20014.

I thought that I was only going to deliver a keynote talk which in itself was a nice recognition of the ongoing work that we are doing in the areas of robust adaptive predictive modelling and data science and a great opportunity to talk to over 200 delegates from over 30 countries attending the conference but as it turned out there were some other attractions awaiting.

This very well organised conference attracted the attention of the Polish TV and the topics of data science, artificial intelligence or big data, all in the focus of our Data Science Institute at BU, were judged to be of considerable interest to the general public. Not only I had an opportunity to talk briefly about the conference topics during the TV coverage at the conference venue (which was aired in the evening news programme on the 15th of Sep) but together with one of the local organisers we were invited to the “Panorama” programme studio to take part in the morning news programme the following day (aired on the 16th of Sep). The interaction with the journalists and the production teams brought to my attention how important is our role in informing and educating about this very dynamically changing field and related technological innovations which have already had such a huge impact on our lives and will play even bigger role in the near future.

So whatever next, I thought. Well, there was another surprise around the corner. Though I have been involved in the KES International for a number of years it has come as a very pleasant surprise and an honour to receive the Outstanding Contribution to KES International award during the conference dinner.

An icing on the cake, you could say. 🙂