Category / Guidance

School of Tourism’s Adele Ladkin on her FIF Staff Mobility Project: Visiting the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Themis Foundation in Andorra

Professor Adele Ladkin has received £5,000 funding from the FIF staff mobility strand to undertake two week long visits to the UNWTO Themis Foundation Headquarters in Andorra.

As part of its Capacity Building Programme, the UNWTO.Themis Foundation provides educational courses and workshops for tourism industry experts.  These are in a range of subjects, for example tourism marketing, adventure tourism and sustainable tourism.  Because of the nature of these courses and the demand for different topics, subject experts from the tourism industry and public sectors are recruited as tutors to deliver the courses.

Adele and Ms Sònia Figueras, the UNWTO.Capacity Programme manager at the UNWTO Themis Foundation are engaged in collaborative work to produce a teaching guide and intensive training course for tutors responsible for delivering tourism capacity building courses and workshops as part of the UNWTO.Capacity Programme.  The Themis Foundation enables UNWTO Member States to devise and implement education, training and capacity building policies, plans and tools that fully harness the employment potential of their tourism sector and effectively enhance its competitiveness and sustainability.  Working with Ms Figueras, Adele will provide input into teaching methodologies commonly used in tourism programmes.

The collaboration has arisen as the School of Tourism is part of the Themis TedQual Network and aims to support activities undertaken in the areas of education, training and tourism capacity building. The impact of the collaboration will be practical through the dissemination and use of the teachers guide and the training course by highly experienced tourism subject experts. The collaboration and pedagogic approach will also be presented at an appropriate tourism educator’s conference. This knowledge exchange opportunity demonstrates the Schools commitment to supporting tourism education initiatives.

Adele will be spending time in Andorra at the headquarters of the Themis Foundation to work directly on the course materials as well as on-line collaborative working. The visits will enable Adele to spend a concentrated period of time working on the project, and will also give her further insight into the activities of the Themis Foundation.  She plans to undertake the first visit later this year – weather permitting as the mountain roads into Andorra are often covered in snow!

Would you like to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN? Then come along to one of our workshops!

The aim of these workshops is to support academic colleagues to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN, and how they can use these systems to monitor their publication impact, identify where to publish, identify potential collaborators and also to help them to ensure their Scopus and BRIAN profiles are up to date and optimised.  Matthew Bennett will do an initial presentation about the two systems and this will be followed with the opportunity for participants to look through their own Scopus and BRIAN profiles together with Library and RKEDO (formerly RDU) staff.

They will take place on both the Lansdowne and Talbot Campuses on the following dates:

 15 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus

23 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus

31 October 9am – 10am S102 Lansdowne Campus

 Please book a place if you would like to attend by following this link

Changes to the external Staff Profile Pages

After helpful feedback from staff, we have agreed to temporarily remove the charts that appear on your external staff profile pages.  These were a snapsnot of your publications, co-author network (which only showed current BU staff), and map of science (which isn’t clear as to what it shows).  We will consider re-activating the available charts when they have been improved and become more meaningful.

The staff profile pages are currently not mapping across all ‘Authors’ listed within BRIAN for publications.  Therefore, the staff profile pages have been amended so that publications now have an author title of ‘Authors at BU’.  Development is underway for a complete list of authors to be shown and this will be provided shortly.

FIF Launch Week – Focus on Co-Creation and Co-Production strand

 The popular Co-Creation and Co-Production (CCCP) strand is open to applications.  This strand was most popular of the three open to staff in the July round with 38 applications.

 A total of £246, 102.96 was awarded to successful applicants, to get ahead of the competition please note an important addition to the strand policy:

Successful bids will need to have benefits to the student experience at the core – and be able to demonstrate how this will occur, so hitting the Education point in the BU Fusion triangle is now more important than before.

Applications that do not satisfy how education at BU will be improved will not be looked at favourably by the panel.   To review the full strand developments and how this has affected the policy, you can view the updated FIF CCCP policy sept.

Our successful CCCP applicants have been blogging about their activity on our Research Blog, I hope that you will be successful in securing funds in this round and will join them!  Read their blogs below:

Sarah Bate who has used Fusion Investment funds to develop the Centre for Face Processing Disorders at BU – Watch out for the Centre’s regular updates on the Research Blog, and also check out www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org for more information.

Hossein Hassani is leading an inter-disciplinary project to characterize the socio-economic drivers underpinning change in freshwater host biodiversity that lead to the emergence of immuno-suppressant related human disease.

Don’t forget to take advantage of the intervention programmes running this October and November!

For further details about the fund please see www.bournemouth.ac.uk/FIF

Best of luck!

Adele Ladkin secures Fusion Investment Funding to visit the United Nations World Tourism Organisation in Andorra

Professor Adele Ladkin has received funding from the FIF staff mobility strand to undertake two week long visits to the UNWTO Themis Foundation Headquarters in Andorra.

As part of its Capacity Building Programme, the UNWTO.Themis Foundation provides educational courses and workshops for tourism industry experts.  These are in a range of subjects, for example tourism marketing, adventure tourism and sustainable tourism.  Because of the nature of these courses and the demand for different topics, subject experts from the tourism industry and public sectors are recruited as tutors to deliver the courses.

Adele and Ms Sònia Figueras, the UNWTO. Capacity Programme manager at the UNWTO Themis Foundation are engaged in collaborative work to produce a teaching guide and intensive training course for tutors responsible for delivering tourism capacity building courses and workshops as part of the UNWTO. Capacity Programme.  The Themis Foundation enables UNWTO Member States to devise and implement education, training and capacity building policies, plans and tools that fully harness the employment potential of their tourism sector and effectively enhance its competitiveness and sustainability. Working with Ms Figueras, Adele will provide input into teaching methodologies commonly used in tourism programmes.

The collaboration has arisen as the School of Tourism is part of the Themis TedQual Network and aims to support activities undertaken in the areas of education, training and tourism capacity building. The impact of the collaboration will be practical through the dissemination and use of the teachers guide and the training course by highly experienced tourism subject experts. The collaboration and pedagogic approach will also be presented at an appropriate tourism educator’s conference. This knowledge exchange opportunity demonstrates the Schools commitment to supporting tourism education initiatives.

Adele will be spending time in Andorra at the headquarters of the Themis Foundation to work directly on the course materials as well as on-line collaborative working. The visits will enable Adele to spend a concentrated period of time working on the project, and will also give her further insight into the activities of the Themis Foundation.  She plans to undertake the first visit later this year – weather permitting as the mountain roads into Andorra are often covered in snow!

FIF Launch Week – Focus on Staff Mobility and Networking strand

The Staff Mobility and Networking (SMN) strand exists to fund £1k-£10k projects enabling networking. In round one the committee funded 13 applications, awards totalling £72,771.33. 

A development for the second round of the strand is the inclusion of an Erasmus Staff Mobility strand which has been added to the scope of the SMN committee. Erasmus Application and Guidance (Word 2010).

The SMN strand of the FIF saw exciting initiatives from staff across BU, staff are starting to share their experiences and hopes for their projects using the Research Blog.  I hope you will be inspired to apply yourself to this strand! 

 

Read blog posts from funded applicants in round one below:

Chris Pullen – In this post Chris explains the background for his project entitled ‘A ‘tool kit’ to address Bullying and Name Calling in School: Teaching Practice and the use of Media in the Classroom’.

Some great research has already taken place looking at LGBT identity issues in school, Chris is looking to extend these ideas, looking at how media is used in the secondary school classroom. Exploring name calling that goes unchallenged within diverse social environments.

Jian Chang – who will establish a strategic partnership between the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) of Bournemouth University and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), and to create opportunities in joint research, enterprise and education endeavours. UESTC has been among the top ranked Chinese universities, and has been the best educational base in China for computer science and electronic engineering. It is located in Chengdu, one of the largest cities in Western China

Dont forget to apply before the 1st December deadline!

Fusion Investment Fund Launch Week – Focus on Study Leave strand

 The Study Leave (SL) grants are designed to buy individuals out of one semester/term of teaching and provide support for overseas travel and subsistence or for expenditure associated with distance working within the UK.  Opportunities for paid study leave include undertaking or participating in:

  1. A period(s) of business or industrial secondment.
  2. International staff exchange or periods of overseas research, professional practice or educational activity.
  3. In staff exchange or periods of research, professional practice or educational activity at other Universities or Government research establishments in the UK.
  4. Secondments within different parts of BU, for example within different Schools. 

Study Leave was the most undersubscribed strand of the Fund in round one with 5 applicants taking the £45,661.50 allocated in July.  To give some clarity on what will be funded by the committee please see the FIF Study Leave policy Sept V1

Matthew Bennett writes in his blog piece ‘Jumping Trains’ how Study Leave can help in building networks. Periods of study leave need not be contiguous but can consist of a series of short visits or secondments at one or more institutions. An application for Study Leave may be combined or linked to a bid to the Staff Networking and Mobility Strand where additional travel and subsistence costs are required. Periods of Study Leave are normally between 2 or 6 months, but some flexibility for both shorter and longer periods will be exercised by the committee where there are good reasons for doing so. 

The normal cycle of applications is two per year – June and December – however the Committee recognises that opportunities arise at other times and is prepared to take out of cycle applications at any point during an academic year.

I hope you will see the diversity of possibilities available from this strand – by reading the Dr Lai Xu post on securing the maximum £15,000 funding.  The project  ‘Strengthening Service Computing Research in BU’ is enabling inward mobility into the School of Design, Engineering and Computing.

As part of the intervention programmes in October and November the committee members are all contactable for help, please details on intervention activity here.

Good Luck!!

Fusion Investment Fund – 2012/13 December Round opens today!

The Fusion Investment Fund (FIF) is again opening the three strands currently available to staff!

At c. £3m per annum for the first three years the FIF represents the significant investment that BU is making in the development of staff and students, and the embedding of the Fusion philosophy. 

New Fusion Investment Fund online application form and general FAQ’s can be viewed on the FIF website www.bournemouth.ac.uk/FIF   

Also launching today is the Erasmus Staff Mobility scheme which has been merged into the Existing Staff Mobility and Networking strand, please see Erasmus Application and Guidance (Word 2010) 

 Follow the links below to be directed to the new strand policy documents as well as the new Application Form:

 Details of the intervention sessions can be seen here. Apply before the deadline on 1st December!

 If you have any questions about the fund do not hesitate to contact Sam Furr FIF Administrator.

Fusion Investment Fund – Intervention Programmes in October / November 2012

Fusion Investment Fund Intervention Sessions

Applications to the December round of Fusion Investment Funding is now open.  To support academics in making applications two series of interventions are now available!

Grant Writing Development here at Talbot! – Book now onto the “Strengthening your FIF Proposal” workshop led by Martin Pickard

Two half day sessions are running on Tuesday 6th November with Martin Pickard from Grantcraft visiting Talbot. To book click here and fill out the booking form, numbers are limited to 12 in each session so do hurry!

Tuesday 6th November 2012, 09:00-12:00 – The Octagon, Talbot Campus

Tuesday 6th November 2012, 13:00-16:00 – The Octagon, Talbot Campus

This session will be led by Martin Pickard from Grantcraft and will provide academics who have drafted their FIF proposals with the opportunity to have their proposals reviewed by Martin and to identify areas that could be strengthened. Max of 12 attendees per session.

The session includes a one hour introductory presentation Martin calls ‘Grantmanship’, followed by a group workshop. Lunch included for both morning and afternoon attendees from 12:00 – 13:00.

Max of 12 attendees per session.

 

Hear it direct from the horse’s mouth! – Individual one-to-one advice from FIF committee members

For the December round of Fusion Investment Funding the committee members from all three strands (open to staff) are available to contact to arrange advice and guidance on completing your applications, from today right up to the 1st December deadline.

Please note the CCCP committee members will be available by phone or email only.

To contact members from one of the panels send an email to a member, names found clicking on the following pages:

Co-Creation and Co-Production strand CCCP

Staff Mobility and Networking strand SMN

Study Leave strand SL

 

Don’t forget to apply by the 1st December deadline!

‘Oh no, I have to deal with HR!’

Dear Friends of the HR & OB Department within the Business School:

There is a third seminar scheduled this year under the umbrella of the Department of HR & OB, Business School.  You are more than welcome to join us Friday, October 12 at 2:00 PM, room EB202.

The title of the seminar is “‘Oh no, I have to deal with HR!’ On Human Resource departments and their ‘bad’ reputation”. Dr Gbola Gbadamosi and Davide Secchi will share some ideas to explore potentials for collaboration, papers, research projects, funding, etc.  Please come join us for this exploratory research talk!

Research Professional

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:

23rd October 2012: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/864991824

27th November 2012: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/326491841

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.

Have you been involved with an event designed for the external community?

Then we want to hear from you! 🙂

The University is currently compiling the data for the annual Higher Education – Business & Community Interaction survey (HE-BCI) due to be submitted to HESA in early December.

We are asked to submit details of social, cultural and community events designed for the external community (to include both free and chargeable events) which took place between 1 August 2011 and 31 July 2012.

Event types that should be returned include:

  • public lectures
  • performance arts (dance, drama, music, etc)
  • exhibitions
  • museum education
  • events for schools and community groups
  • business breakfasts

We cannot return events such as open days, Student Union activity, commercial conferences, etc.

If you have been involved with an event which could be returned, please could you let your contact (see below) know the event name and date, whether it was free or chargeable, and the estimated number of attendees:

  • if you are in a School – your Director of Operations or Deputy Dean (R&E) / equivalent
  • if you are in a Professional Service – please contact Julie Northam in the Research Development Unit

The data returned is used by HEFCE to allocate the HEIF funding so it is important that we return as accurate a picture as possible.

BRIAN Changes

BRIAN and the external staff profile pages have been amended so that they now only show your first name and surname.  If you have a ‘known as’ name within the HR database then this will be displayed instead of your first name.  If you would prefer a ‘known as’ name to be displayed then you will need to contact HR through HREnquiries@bournemouth.ac.uk to request a change to your ‘known as’ name.

Within the external staff profile pages the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) link on individual publications is now active as a hyperlink and will open the publication.  Also, when searching for a staff member the URL displayed at the top of the staff profile pages has been shortened to ‘http://staffprofiles.bournemouth.ac.uk/display/username’  and this address will also appear in the ‘link’ icon displayed under that persons photo.

The Professional Activity ‘Job Title’ has been removed from BRIAN as this information is pulled through from the ‘staff details changer’.  All job titles that were added into BRIAN have been updated in the staff details changer to ensure that your correct job title is displayed.

Would you like to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN? Then come along to one of our workshops!

The aim of these workshops is to support academic colleagues to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN, and how they can use these systems to monitor their publication impact, identify where to publish, identify potential collaborators and also to help them to ensure their Scopus and BRIAN profiles are up to date and optimised.  Matthew Bennett will do an initial presentation about the two systems and this will be followed with the opportunity for participants to look through their own Scopus and BRIAN profiles together with Library and RKEDO (formerly RDU) staff.

They will take place on both the Lansdowne and Talbot Campuses on the following dates:

1 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus

10 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus

15 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus

23 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus

31 October 9am – 10am S102 Lansdowne Campus

Please book a place if you would like to attend by following this link

New Library Resource: full text access to Nature.com

You will be delighted to discover that The Library have been able to make funds available to purchase a site licence to the full text of the journal Nature at Nature.com.  Full text access is current year plus a rolling 4 year archive.  This is complemented by access from 1997 to date (with a 12 month embargo) on Academic Search Complete and Medline Complete.

Notes on access:

  • on-campus access is IP-authenticated (therefore automatic);
  • off-campus
  • via mySearch
    • for the latest 12 months the user will need to follow the LinkSource link and if off-campus login by following the Institution login links
    • earlier content back to 1997 there will be a pdf link to the content on Academic Search Complete.

For help using e-journals, e-books, bibliographic databases (such as Scopus and Web of Science), bibliometrics and reference management contact the Library Subject Team for your School.

BRIAN latest

Now that the summer has been (did you notice?) and gone, many of you are now turning your attention to your external profiles and how to make them look as impressive as possible to the outside world.  This has meant an increase in queries about how to use BRIAN and so I have created a list of answers to FAQ’s and these can be found in the link below.  Before I get on to this though, have you read the Blog article advertising the ‘Scopus and BRIAN Workshops’ that Matthew Bennett will be running shortly?  If not, click here for more details.

BRIAN FAQ‘s

There are a number of developments that are underway to improve BRIAN and so keep your eye on the Blog for more updates.

Support for your funding proposal from the RDU

Why is the internal peer review of research proposals important?

  • The competition for research funds is high and is likely to increase.  Research Council funding presents a particular challenge – with the ESRC having one of the lowest success rates.
  • In recent years funders have expressed their growing concern over the number of poor quality research proposals they receive, with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) taking the action to implement a ban on submissions from unsuccessful candidates who fail repeatedly and requesting evidence on steps institutions take to improve academic skills in producing research proposals.
  • Internal peer review has been credited with producing higher quality research proposals and increased success rates and is a process encouraged by the Research Councils.

What is the RPRS? 

  • It is a university-wide scheme, that manages the peer review of funding applications, and supports academics while they are developing or finalising their proposals.

Who reviews the applications?

  • The Peer Reviewers are a selection of BU academics who have a considerable track record in successfully gaining research funding, who sit on funding panels and who review research proposals for funders.
  • We select two reviewers to review your proposal.

Who can apply to the RPRS?

  • The service is open to anyone at BU and for any type of research funding.

What kind of feedback can I expect?

  • Peer reviewers will provide feedback on the proposed research in terms of topic selection, novel value, clarity of ideas proposed and advise on how the proposal can be further strengthened. They may also provide the names of potential collaborators where applicable.
  • The Research Development Unit will provide feedback on general structure and style, clarity of ideas, timescales proposed, estimated costs, potential funders, eligibility for funding schemes, and any potential ethical issues.
  • Feedback will be delivered within 3 weeks of submission – often before.

How do I submit an application?

  • Contact RKE Operations to obtain a rough costing for your proposal. RKE Operationswill guide you through the process
  • Send in a Word or PDF version of your electronic submission draft (such as Je-S) and submit to Caroline O’Kane
  • The Research Development Unit will undertake review of the proposal and forward to 2 experts
  • You will receive feedback within 2-3 weeks

Remember

  • Please allow sufficient time in your proposal development to allow for the  mandatory internal deadline of five working days for the submission of Research Council bids via the Je-S system.
  • This also applies to applications made via the E-Gap2 and Leverhulme Online e-submissions systems (affecting applications made to the British Academy, the Royal Society and the Leverhulme Trust).

Who can I ask for further help?

  • Caroline O’Kane in the Research Development Unit manages the RPRS and will answer any questions you have.