Skills training and the Researcher Development Framework

It is a requirement of the QAA and the responsibility of you and your colleagues in the Affiliated Research Centre to ensure that your students have opportunities to develop a full range of generic research skills, discipline level research skills and project-level research skills, during the course of their registration.

As research degree coordinator, you have an important role in ensuring that your supervisors are equipped with the knowledge and the tools they need to support students in identifying and developing the generic research skills , discipline level research skills and project-level research skills.  We have put in place some guidance and tools to help your students identify the skills they may need to develop, plan how to acquire them, and record achievement, with the support of their supervisors.

The Researcher Development Framework (RDF), developed by Vitae, is designed to articulate the "knowledge, behaviours and attributes of successful researchers and encourages them to aspire to excellence through achieving higher levels of development."  The framework gives researchers (including research students) a comprehensive map of all of the areas of skill and competence that a researcher will need throughout their career. The QAA requires skills training for research students to be aligned with the competencies set out in the RDF.  Although this competency framework was developed in the UK, the skills described are useful for researchers, including research students, wherever they may be located in  the world.  Please engage with the Researcher Development Framework and spend some time considering and articulating how the research degree training opportunities in your Affiliated Research Centre align with it.

The Open University is also developing a set of on-line training modules in generic research skills, aligned with the Researcher Development Framework, to supplement the research skills training available through the Affiliated Research Centre. At present the modules available are targeted at students who are starting their research projects and in the first year of registration (first two years for part-time students).  The Starting your research theme is a good place to begin exploring what’s on offer.

Supervisor skills training

It is the responsibility of you and your colleagues in your Affiliated Research Centre to ensure that supervisors have the supervisory skills necessary and access to information to ensure students are supervised effectively. The Open University has plans to develop an on-line supervision skills training module to supplement supervision skills training available at your Affiliated Research Centre.

Aligning your skills training with the RDF

We have developed some materials to assist ARCs in navigating the principles and practice of the Researcher Development Framework (RDF) in relation to your ARC’s research degree student training programme.

This guidance will help you to identify appropriate research degree learning outcomes for your research degree students, aligned to the RDF.  We also points to resources and tools available to you through the OU’s virtual research environment and through the Vitae website.

We hope that you will find this information useful as you develop your RDF aligned training programme for students.