Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, IAS, County South, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK.   Tel: +44 (0) 1524 592224   E-mail: Kate Horsley

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The FASS Virtual Research Training Pilot Programme

All of the course materials for Lynne Pearce's campus-based course on "Developing Thesis Writing Skills" and the interactive modules for the virtual course will be available week by week on password-protected LUVLE sites: students registered for either the face-to-face course or for the virtual Research Training course should log on to LUVLE to find their course materials and (in the case of online students) to participate in their discussion group.  Extracts from articles are also available on the LUVLE site.

There will be six interactive modules, providing a virtual version of Professor Lynne Pearce’s workshop-based course, ‘Developing Thesis Writing Skills’ (part of the FASS Research Training Programme). This is a course that’s aimed specifically at students who are in the process of moving from 'preliminary writing' (sample chapters, textual analysis, literature reviews, etc) to draft chapters of the thesis in its final form. The modules, which will become available week by week, are listed here in the right-hand navigation bar.

Those following the course virtually will have access to a range of case studies and other course materials; they will be asked to participate in carefully structured intranet discussions with fellow students and will be invited to contribute to online course assessment and peer mentoring. Please go to the LUVLE site at the start of the course for further instructions.

In addition, the pilot project provides five free-standing modules (see the right-hand navbar):

• library, online & archival research
• scholarly conventions
• academic & professional presentation
• writer’s blocks
• presenting conference papers

It is hoped that students will draw on these modules to meet their own needs – and that they will help us to judge and improve the effectiveness of such provisions.

The course provides valuable experience for both new and fully trained research students, giving them the opportunity to reflect on the whole process of developing research and writing skills and to feed their views into the structure, content and presentation of virtual forms of such training.