Tagged / collaborative research

Challenges and New Directions in Journalism Education

BU research, Featured academics, Fusion, Industry collaboration

“What journalism should we teach?” “How can the academy drive and lead change in practice?” These questions run like a red thread through a new publication produced by a collective of BU academics. Challenges and New Directions in Journalism Education (Routledge) draws on original and innovative contributions from educators, practitioners and students – including BU alumni. Its aim: to inform our understanding of journalism pedagogy in the context of ongoing shifts in journalism practice that often run deeper than merely technological change. Some observers describe journalism as broken – accused of elitism and often branded as too far removed from the reality of people’s lives. Beleaguered by a persistent crisis of trust, journalists and journalism are often portrayed as core to the problem, rather than the solution. Inclusivity remains an urgent issue with news organisations and industry councils, such as the National Council for the Training of Journalists intensifying protocols in a bid to create more diverse newsrooms.

Against this background, Challenges and New Directions in Journalism Education engages with a series of key themes and objectives: These include discussions around safeguarding, sustainability, journalism’s ‘democratic deficit’, integrating media literacy, podcasting and the ‘post-pandemic’ context. Each chapter draws on a research-informed approach: primary data, case studies and examples to describe and unpack the topic, and concludes with practical suggestions for journalism educators. The core tenet is the importance of listening — to the voices of students, the requirements of industry and to each other.

The book is accompanied by a podcast, in which the chapter authors expand on the final section of the book – Reflections. “ Journalists don’t often have time to reflect on their practice” says the book’s editor, Professor Karen Fowler-Watt “their work is tomorrow’s ‘fish and chip wrapper’ – so it was refreshing to have the time and space to discuss with each other the findings of our chapters and our own thoughts about the process of writing this book”. The book concludes with a Manifesto for Change, drawn up by the authors — it is intended to spark a conversation within and between industry and the academy.

The podcast (deftly edited by Jason Hallett) also includes the findings of a ‘call and response’ exercise with final year students of BA (Hons) Multimedia Journalism. Each chapter author devised a question for the students to debate and produce a call to action in response – this exercise was discussed further with journalism.co.uk. Senior reporter Jacob Grainger devoted the latest podcast to an interview with Karen Fowler-Watt, who is a former BBC journalist, about the book project, the students’ responses and ways of growing the next generation of journalists. They also discuss how journalism schools and news organisations can work together towards the shared goal of producing journalists that are ready to hit the ground running in industry. Never has this been more important than now – the conversation is only just beginning!


Challenges and New Directions in Journalism Education is published by Routledge.
Editor: Karen Fowler-Watt
Chapter authors – Members of the Journalism Education Research Group (JERG):
Andrew Bissell; Jaron Murphy; Graham Majin; David Brine; Michael Sunderland; Jo Royle; Max Mauro and Julian McDougall; Fiona Cownie; De-Graft Mensah (BBC Newsround presenter and BU alumnus); Daniel Henry (ITV News reporter).

The 2 part podcast: I Challenges and II New Directions is available under ‘Support Materials’ for the book.
The journalism.co.uk podcast is available here.

Media coverage BU’s kidney research in Nepal

BU research, Events, international, Research Centres, Uncategorized

This week Bournemouth University organised two dissemination events for our risk of kidney disease study in Nepalese migrant workers in the Middle East and Malaysia.  A previous blog reported on the first event in the capital Kathmandu (see details here!) .  These dissemination events have generated a loads of media coverage in Nepal, both in Nepali and in English. 

The study was led by Bournemouth University and a charity in Nepal which whom we have been collaborating for two decades, called Green Tara Nepal.  This important study, the first of its kind, was conducted among the Nepalese migrant workers and a comparison group of non-migrants from the same community.  This study was funded by The Colt Foundation, based in the UK. In the field it was supported by the Madhes Province Public Health Laboratory, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration and University College London (UCL).

Dr Pramod Raj Regmi (Principal Academic in International Health in Bournemouth University’s Department of Nursing Sciences) is the lead researcher and our team further comprises researchers Dr Nirmal Aryal and Prof Edwin van Teijlingen (both from BU’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences), and in Nepal clinicians: Prof Dr Arun Sedhai, Dr Radheshyam KC and Dr Shrawan Kumar Mishra.

 

 

 

Prof Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Proofreading your article accepted for publication

BU research, Featured academics, international, open access, Publishing, Research news, Research Training, Uncategorized, writing

It is always a pleasure to see your own paper in print.  If all is properly organised at the publisher, the first time you see you paper as it will look in its final version when you receive the proof copy.  It is the authors’ task to proofread this final copy and pick up any mistakes you may have made or the journal has made putting your word file into the journal’s layout.  More and more journals now ask you to do the proofreading and editing online.  The first message here is that proofreading is exact business and most certainly time consuming.  Moreover, feeding back mistakes you may find in the proofs is not without its trials and tribulations.

Yesterday we received the proofs for a paper accepted by BMC Health Research Policy & Systems [1]. The BMC is part of the publisher Springer , and it uses an online proof system eProofing to which the authors get temporary access, to read and correct text.  This system looks good online, but beware the online version you get to edit does not look the same as the version that will appear in print.  The draft print version generated by eProofing has line numbers which don’t appear online when you are editing the proofs.  So we had to write on the online system separately that we found a set of quotes glued together, as the system does not allow authors to change the lay-out (for obvious reasons). In this case,  we had to write details like: “There needs to be a space after first quote line 421.”  What might look okay in the eProofing version didn’t do so  in the print version, where it was it is wrong.  This is illustrated in the example picture below.

 

Last month we battled with the proofs of another BU paper forthcoming in the journal Women and Birth [2], which is part of Elsevier.  Again, it has an online system for proofs.  This system does not allow the authors to correct mistakes in in the line spacing.  So we ended up writing to journal manager, not the editor, things like: “There is a very big gap between the end of section 3.7. and Overview of findings section – please could the text be rearranged to get rid of this big gap.”  We also asked for a summary section to be kept on one page, not having an orphan two words on the next page, but that appeared to be too difficult a request.  We think we a little flexibility, i.e. a human intervention the lay-out could have been improved.  See illustration below with text as it appears in the current online-first version.

We like to stress our advice to set plenty of time aside to read and edit the proofs, and to send details instructions to the journal manager or editor about what needs changing.  Changes include typos, grammar and style, but also lay-out of text and illustrations, boxes in the text, tables and figures.  “It is also important to check tables and figures during the proof-reading as the formatting can often go astray during the typesetting process” as we highlighted by Sheppard and colleagues [3].  Also double check correct spelling of names of co-authors and the final author order in the proofs.  Many years ago, I received the proof of pages of a midwifery article [4].

I dutifully read and edited  the proof of the actual text, but I never check the short introduction with the authors’ names which an editor had added to the final proofs.  When the paper came out in print to transpired that this editor has changed the author order, i.e. my name was first, probably because I had submitted the paper on behalf of my co-author.  This cause some problems with my co-author, made all the worse since I am married to her.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

References:

  1. Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E., Rushton, S., Subedi, M., Simkhada, P., Balen, J., Nepal Federalisation of Health Team (2023)  Overcoming the challenges facing Nepal’s health system during federalisation: an analysis of health system building blocks. Journal of the Health Research Policy & Systems. (forthcoming).
  2. Arnold, R., Way, S., Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2023) “I might have cried in the changing room, but I still went to work”. Maternity staff managing roles, responsibilities, and emotions of work and home during COVID-19: an Appreciative Inquiry, Women & Birth (online first) 
  3. Sheppard, Z., Hundley, V., Dahal, N.P., Paudyal, P. (2022) Writing a quantitative paper, In: Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Hundley, V. with Shreesh, K. (eds.) Writing and Publishing Academic Work, Kathmandu, Nepal: Himal Books, pp.78-87.
  4. van Teijlingen E., Ireland, J.C. (2014) Community midwives on the go. Midwives 1: 54-55.

Introduction to Patient and Public Involvement

BU research, Clinical Governance, Guidance, nhs, NHS, Research communication, Research Ethics, research governance, research integrity, research methods, Research news, research opportunities, Research Training, Training

This half day course is an introduction to PPI and will:
1. Define PPI and why it matters
2. Explore the links between PPI and health equity
3. Explain how to deliver PPI and support those involved

It will be an interactive session, including input from someone with lived experience, talking about their involvement in research.

It will be delivered by Sue Bickler from the Involving People team at Help and Care, an organisation that ‘helps people and communities live the lives they choose’.

Sue has worked in the voluntary sector, local authorities, and health, and has substantial experience engaging with people and communities to ensure that services meet their needs.  Her current role brings together the four Healthwatch in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (HIOW), ensuring that patient voice is central to decision making in the HIOW Integrated Care System and that people are equipped to support effective Patient and Public Involvement (PPI).

The session is funded by Clinical Research Network Wessex and is open to all health and care researchers working in Wessex including public contributors and community organisations.

Book your place here.  A link to the online training will then be sent to you.

Improving information for people taking part in clinical research

BU research, Clinical Governance, data management, Guidance, nhs, NHS, Research Ethics, research governance, research integrity, Research news

The Health Research Authority (HRA) has launched new Quality Standards to improve information given to people who are invited to take part in research. The Quality Standards have been launched alongside Design and Review Principles, which show researchers and Research Ethics Committees (REC) what the important ethical considerations are for participant information.

  • The new HRA Participant Information Quality Standards will help research organisations to understand what good participant information looks like, and will make clear to researchers what the Research Ethics Committees will consider as part of the ethics review, including the review of participant information. The REC will support researchers to create information that meets the Quality Standards.
  • The aim of the Quality Standards and Design and Review Principles is to make participant information better, and to make the way that RECs review that information more consistent. The documents set out the basic criteria that all participant information must meet, and covers language, accessibility, and mandatory content.

Next steps

The Quality Standards and Design and Review Principles will be phased in from autumn 2023. As study materials are prepared in advance, REC reviews of participant information will initially be presented to research organisations as recommendations as opposed to actions required for approval.

From December 2023, the Quality Standards and Design and Review principles will become mandatory and will be applied to all research applications submitted for review.

Changes to participant information are currently the most likely reason for ethics committees to give a provisional opinion. Using this guidance will increase the possibility of receiving a favourable opinion.

Available templates

Remember that BU has Participant Information Sheet templates that provide much of the required wording to ensure your participants are making a fully informed decision before agreeing to participate.

It is vital that when compiling your information sheets that you remember to include the HRA GDPR transparency wording.

Questions or concerns?

If you have any questions regarding these new standards or about clinical research in general, please email Suzy Wignall, Clinical Governance Advisor – swignall@bournemouth.ac.uk or clinicalresearch@bournemouth.ac.uk

NIHR Be Part of Research platform

BU research, Clinical Governance, Guidance, nhs, NHS, Research communication, Research Ethics, research governance, research integrity, research methods, Research news, research opportunities, research staff

The NIHR Be Part of Research platform is an online service that makes it easy for research participants to find and take part in health and social care research. Participants may search for trials and studies taking place looking at certain health conditions and in locations accessible to them.

Clinical researchers may also make use of the service to extend their recruitment and widen their recruitment methods, as the platform has been designed to make it easier for researchers and potential study participants to find each other.

Using Be Part of Research to recruit participants

To use the service for your recruitment, the study must meet the following requirements:

  • Be funded or supported by the NIHR. This includes studies on the NIHR Clinical Research Network Portfolio.
  • Have Research Ethics Committee approval to use the service as a recruitment tool.
  • Have a dedicated point of contact such as a pre-screener or website for interested volunteers to engage with your research team.

Getting your study onto the Be Part of Research platform

Once your study has been registered on either ISRCTN, ClinicalTrials.gov, or on the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) Central Portfolio Management System (CPMS), your project will then appear on Be Part of Research. Given those visiting the site are mostly patients and members of the public, medical and scientific terminology should be omitted when writing your study summary, with plain English used to ensure the information is accessible to a broad audience. In order to do this, you should:
  • Keep it short – but don’t oversimplify it. The reader must understand what the study is trying to achieve.
  • Imagine you are talking to the reader.
  • Take out any jargon.
  • Make sure you cover the what, why, when, where and how so they have the basics of your study.

Additionally, to make sure that participants contact the appropriate person, the contact details provided on ISRCTN or ClinicalTrials.gov should be up to date and accurate. In general, the registry record should be monitored continuously so that any changes are reflected on Be Part of Research as soon as possible.

Further support/contact

If you have any questions regarding the platform or regarding clinical research in general, please email Suzy Wignall, Clinical Governance Advisor: swignall@bournemouth.ac.uk or clinicalresearch@bournemouth.ac.uk