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Being a Digital Researcher: Digital Skills for Effective Research

Develop the digital skills you need to ensure your research is efficient, impactful, and accessible, no matter what your field, with this online course from the University of Hull.

Duration

3 weeks

Weekly study

4 hours

100% online

How it works

Unlimited subscription

Learn more

Established

1927

World ranking

Source: Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021

Discover the different and diverse forms of scholarly communication

Good research is only effective and impactful if it is shared and used. Researchers need to understand how research is validated, published and shared with diverse audiences. This includes communicating with other scholars, the public and businesses.

You’ll be taught about the different aspects of scholarly communication: research, data collection and analysis; authoring; peer-review, publication and discovery and dissemination. This includes aspects of copyright, licensing and intellectual property.

Use networking to create opportunities for collaboration with other scholars

Academics depend on one another to develop and share research successfully. Research benefits from different bodies of work, ideas, and discoveries, as well as an audience to provide reviews and feedback.

This four-week course from the University of Hull will introduce you to digital research skills and concepts, and help you build your online identity as a researcher to gain access to knowledge, new audiences, and potential collaborators.

Delve into research ethics and data management

Researchers have a responsibility to ensure that their data is well preserved, organised, accessible, and sharable, to allow for dissemination and knowledge transfer.

Your educators will guide you in the process of data management to show you how to successfully manage and store your research data to ensure its longevity.

Boost your digital research skills with the University of Hull

The educators at the University of Hull are experts in research and learning, and have been running this course successfully for students both online and on campus.

With the combined knowledge of the university’s specialists at your fingertips, you’ll be equipped with the strategies and techniques you need to be a successful digital researcher.

Week 1
Scholarly communication, research promotion and digital identity
- Introduction to The Digital Researcher
  Welcome to The Digital Researcher. Find out more about this course and what we will be covering in our first activity.
- Digital identity
  This activity focuses on your digital identity - the sum of everything about you on the internet. How you manage and construct your digital identity is an essential aspect of scholarly communication.
- Peer-review and publication
  This activity will introduce how research is validated and shared as part of scholarly communication.
- Research dissemination
  Knowledge exchange is an important aspect of scholarly communication. In this activity we will consider some of the audiences you may be communicating to and why.
- Communicating with non-specialist audiences
  This activity will introduce public communication and visual communication for research dissemination beyond academia.
- Summary and discussion
  As we wrap up the first week, here is an opportunity to reflect on what you have learned so far and join in discussions with other participants.
Week 2
Online social networks and scholarly communication tools
- Introduction to social media
  Find out more about the tools we will be exploring this week.
- Using established social media for scholarly communication
  This activity will focus on popular social media networks and how they can be used for scholarly communication.
- Using professional social networks for scholarly communication
  Find out more about the use of professional and research social networks for scholarly communication.
- Managing social networks and exploring further
  Following the introduction to a range of different social networks, this activity will look at how you can explore these further and manage your time.
- Summary and discussion
  Discuss which tools you think will be best for you and reflect on the week.
Week 3
Conducting research
- Scholarly discovery: Searching the literature
  No new knowledge can be created without appreciating what has happened before. This activity will focus on how you can search the literature to find existing sources.
- Scholarly metrics: Measuring impact
  This activity looks at ways in which you can view and assess the impact of research publications. (Image by Claudio Rocchini)
- Internet-mediated Research: Online data collection & analysis
  While data collection & analysis are rooted in disciplinary approaches, this activity will focus on the methods and tools you can use when working with online, computer-mediated and social research data.
- Ethics and research data management
  Research ethics and robust data management processes ensure we protect our participants, ourselves, our institution and our data for future use. They are essential aspects of the research process and need thorough consideration.
- Summary and discussion
  As the week draws to a close, this provides opportunity to revisit key learning and reflect on your next steps.