DWLresearch

In 'Making information come to you (RSS)' training sessions in the last few years, one of the options we have suggested people use was Google Reader. Unfortunately Google Reader will be closed down on 1st July 2013, so we thought we would remind you of some of the alternatives: Use your University Staff Outlook email account There is automatically a RSS folder in the desktop version of Outlook. Right click on the RSS folder to Add a New Feed. You can then look at the feeds as you would an email. You can add, delete and view feeds in the desktop version of Outlook but you can only view them when using the Webmail version. Add RSS Feeds to RefWorks - see our previous post for instructions on RefWorks & RSS Want something that looks and works like Google Reader? Try The Old Reader This allows you to transfer your Google Reader feeds straight in as long as you do it by the end of June. Prefer a more visual reader? Then try Netvibes ...

On Tuesday 18th June we'll be welcoming Professor Pat Thomson (University of Nottingham) to the thesis forum. Pat will present her research on doctoral writing and look at strategies that doctoral researchers can use to help with common writing issues. These range from ways of thinking about the writing to be done, to setting up routines, to understanding the actual purposes and structures of academic writing. Come along to hear advice on ways to improve your writing. Pat will use doctoral researchers’ texts to show some common problems and suggest more authoritative alternatives. Join us on campus in the Library Seminar Room (3pm-5pm) or online via  https://connect.le.ac.uk/thesisforum18-6 Pat writes a very useful blog called 'patter' http://patthomson.wordpress.com   and has covered subjects such as publishing, research methods, planning your time, and dealing with the literature review. She also tweets as @ThomsonPat. Hope to see you next Tuesday! ...

Last week I ran a session on 'Communicating your research as a comic strip' for the second time. You can access my presentation above or via Prezi . A few things didn't quite work the first time I ran the session ( as blogged here ). Last time I got the attendees discuss their research in pairs and then have a go at starting a comic strip on their own. Feedback said it would be nice to discuss the ideas people came up with as a group. This time I asked them to pair up and try to draw a three panel comic strip about their research. I suggested they might want to use the structure of research idea (panel 1), current stage of research (panel 2) and what's next in their research (panel 3), as used in career story-boarding (Hooley, Law & Bentley, 2013). The attendees were a little anxious about drawing to start with, but seemed to enjoy it once they got stuck in. A few used the suggested structure and others used it as a jumping off point to look at how they...