Skills and Knowledge Self-assessment: Doctoral Researchers |[pic] | |

INTRODUCTION

This template is designed to help you evaluate your own skills and knowledge, identify what strengths you have, and what areas you may need to develop.

You may find this particularly helpful to do at the early stages of your PhD, particularly if you have entered your PhD straight from a taught qualification, and have little experience outside of studying within a University.

It is based around the skills categories defined in our Skills Guide for Doctoral Researchers. You may therefore wish to have a copy to hand to refer to.

As well as the Skills Guide, you may wish to gather any additional supporting information available to you regarding the skills required for your current role. It may be helpful to use your project plan, and any other documents that outline what you are required to do i.e. tutorial plans, if you are teaching.

HOW DO I START?

First, it is important to do some preparatory work.

There are many reasons why you might want to review what you know and what you can do: • early on in your project when you need to ensure you have all the knowledge and skills necessary to complete your project; • when you are preparing for a review meeting; • at the end of / after your project, when you wish positively present your skills, knowledge and experience on paper as preparation for an interview.
Firstly, therefore, think of the purpose for doing your review. Make some rough notes in the space below:

|1. Why am I doing a self-assessment? |
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You may then want to think about your experience to date and start to make rough notes about your own achievements. For example, you might wish to think about skills developed through the following: • Previous research projects, tasks, objectives and goals you have completed. • What you specifically did and/or what your role was in an activity. • What you achieved and the impact of your work. • What has gone well, what has gone not so well and what you’d like to change.
|2. My experience to date: what have I learnt and achieved? |
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Many people, when completing such a self-assessment, also like to consider what skills and knowledge they need for the next steps in the career, i.e. skills that may be needed when applying for future potential job roles. You may wish to make notes on this too to help you complete the audit template.

|3. What will I need to know, and be able to do, for my future career plans? |
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COMPLETING THE SELF-ASSESSMENT TEMPLATE

Now you have made some notes, it will be much easier to complete the template.

We have headed up each area of the template under the headings in our skills guide. This is purely to give you some initial structure; you don’t have to have or show every skills area in the guide.

Take some time to go through this audit and reflect on your skill areas. For each section, complete the following:

For Skill Area: We have used headings from the Skills Guide, so there is not much to add here. We would encourage you think though of any additional skills areas not covered, specifically any technical skills that are particularly relevant to you. You can add extra skills area headings at the end.

For Skill Description: Use the Skills Guide and/or your supporting information to define each specific skill that you need in your research project and other activities in the University. Add as many skills in each area as you think is necessary; just keep adding more rows to the table.

For Evidence of Skill: Record activities, experiences or events you played a part in that shows your ability in each particular skill. It may be you have already lots of experience in an area. It may be you have just a small amount of experience or none at all (i.e. for those areas you wish to develop in future); that is fine. It is important that you think honestly and widely, and don’t just focus on skills you already have and do well.

How I Am Doing: Try to define what level you think you are at (i.e. doing really well, good basic understanding/competence, needs improvement, etc.)

Be honest and be careful not to underestimate yourself.

AFTER YOU’RE DONE

Hopefully, if you have taken some time doing this, you will have a good written overview of skills you have developed and of the real breadth of skills you hold. We hope you will find this a useful record to have.

You may also find it useful to highlight areas that you would like to work on and develop. Skills that you feel you need to improve in and are important to your current research project should be prioritised.

You will want to check out our courses and events pages to see what development options are available, and also look at self-study resources to help address knowledge gaps.

SELF-ASSESSMENT TEMPLATE

Skills, Knowledge & Attributes I need for my research project, other University roles (e.g. part-time tutoring), and my future career

EXAMPLE TEXT - this is just to show you what sort of ideas you might write

|Skill Area |Description of Specific Skill |Evidence of skill |How I am doing |
|Communication and |Demonstrate effective verbal presentation skills |I have presented my research at a number of small internal seminars; I get nervous |I am doing OK; room for some |
|Dissemination | |beforehand, though feedback from other researchers has generally been positive. |improvement |
|Personal & Interpersonal | |I aim to set some basic ‘to do’ lists every day; aim to set blocks of time aside to work on |I wish to improve |
| |Manage yourself, your time, and the priorities of your |specific tasks (though doesn’t always happen!) | |
| |research project. | | |

BLANK TEMPLATE FOR YOU TO COMPLETE

We would encourage you to complete this electronically so you can add/delete rows as appropriate.

|Skill Area |Description of Specific Skill |Evidence of skill |How I am doing |
|Research Skills | | | |
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|Skill Area |Description of Specific Skill |Evidence of skill |How I am doing |
|Personal and Interpersonal | | | |
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|Skill Area |Description of Specific Skill |Evidence of skill |How I am doing |
|Communication and | | | |
|Dissemination | | | |
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|Skill Area |Description of Specific Skill |Evidence of skill |How I am doing |
|Management | | | |
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|Skill Area |Description of Specific Skill |Evidence of skill |How I am doing |
|Teaching and Learning | | | |
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|Skill Area |Description of Specific Skill |Evidence of skill |How I am doing |
|Commercialisation, Knowledge | | | |
|Transfer and Exchange | | | |
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|Skill Area |Description of Specific Skill |Evidence of skill |How I am doing |
|Other Skill Area (complete | | | |
|as needed) | | | |
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Notes