Live Sessions
Writing Productively
Presenter: Helen Sword
Prerequisites: None
View the recording: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/ra2022-live-sessions/lessons/40787597-writing-productively
“Publish or perish” is the mantra of the successful academic researcher. Yet few academics have been explicitly trained as writers, and fewer still have been schooled in the intricate art of maintaining research productivity without sacrificing work-life balance. In this lively presentation by international writing expert Helen Sword, you will learn about the BASE habits of successful academic writers – behavioural, artisanal, social, and emotional – and develop a customised blueprint for building a more productive writing practice from the ground up.
Accelerate Your Writing and Publishing with Citavi and NVivo
Presenter: Stacy Penna
Prerequisites: None
View the recording: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/ra2022-live-sessions/lessons/40790599-accelerate-your-writing-and-publishing-with-citavi-and-nvivo
In this session, we’ll demonstrate how using NVivo and Citavi can assist you throughout the writing process from literature review, outline, first draft to publishing. You’ll never have writer’s block again! Citavi will assist you to easily search databases and websites for references to include in your research. You can then efficiently organise and annotate literature, highlight critical quotes, comments, and ideas across many articles, while developing a detailed outline. Export this information into a Word document in seconds and use the Citavi Word integration to seamlessly manage your citations and reference list. We’ll also discuss how Citavi can assist research groups of any size to work together. For further information about Citavi visit: https://www.citavi.com.
Productivity Live Q&A
Presenter: Lyn Lavery
Prerequisites: None
Join us for this last session of Research Accelerator 2022 to ask any final questions, share your favourite learnings, and listen to our final tips for accelerating your research! Depending on your time zone, you might like to join us with an early morning coffee or an end-of-day cocktail.
On-demand Sessions
All on-demand sessions are presented by Lyn Lavery
Productivity Tips for Researchers
Session duration: 73 mins
Prerequisites: None
Session Link: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/productivity-tips
Finding time for research is one of the biggest challenges we experience as researchers. Being faced with large volumes of information to process and not enough hours in the day, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. This session covers a range of practical strategies to assist with your productivity, so that you have more time to focus on your research. Strategies will include techniques for prioritisation, managing emails and information overload, finding focus, and dealing with an overflowing to-do list, just to name a few!
Organising Research Tasks with Trello
Session duration: 60 mins
Prerequisites: None
Session Link: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/trello
Trello is a task/project management application that can help you keep track of what needs to be completed for your research. This session will introduce the basics of using Trello for research purposes. We’ll teach you how to organise your research project using Trello and then demonstrate some of our favourite tips and tricks for researchers. Trello is much more than a fancy to-do-list and this session will outline why! You might like to sign-up for a free Trello account before watching this session at: https://trello.com.
Organising Information with Evernote
Session duration: 41 mins
Prerequisites: None
Session Link: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/Evernote
Evernote’s tagline is “remember everything”. Given the information-overloaded world we live in, that certainly makes Evernote sound pretty appealing! Evernote is a free note-taking application that helps you store, organise, and most importantly, find your information. You can use Evernote as a research journal to store field notes, documents relating to your research, meeting notes and more. We’ll begin the session by discussing the overall structure of Evernote, and then walk you through the types of information you can store. Techniques for organising your notes and searching for key information will also be covered. You might like to sign-up for a free Evernote account before watching this session at: https://evernote.com.
Organising Ideas with XMind
Session duration: 53 mins
Prerequisites: None
Session Link: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/xmind
XMind is a mind-mapping and brainstorming tool that can be used for a variety of research purposes such as note-taking, developing coding frameworks, presenting research ideas, creating outlines and much more. In this session we’ll provide an overview of different use cases and take you through step-by-step how to use XMind to create your own maps and other types of visuals. If you’re looking for a more efficient way to keep track of complex ideas, then this session is definitely worth watching! You might like to download and install the free version of XMind before watching this session at: https://www.xmind.net.
Note-taking: What’s Your Style?
Session duration: 49 mins
Prerequisites: None
Session Link: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/note-taking
Note-taking is something we do a lot of as researchers and it’s an area that many people struggle with. If you’re finding your current note-taking system isn’t working for you, this session will outline a range of styles that you might like to explore. We’ll cover a range of different note-taking styles including mind-mapping, column systems (such as Cornell), outlining and matrix systems. We’ll also explore note-taking applications such as Evernote, OneNote, Roam Research and Notion.
Excel Tips and Tricks for Researchers
Session duration: 81 mins
Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with Microsoft Excel
Session Link: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/excel-tips
Excel can be used for a range of useful research purposes, yet many researchers fail to utilise its full potential. This session is not a general introduction to Excel, but rather focuses on time-saving features. Topics include tips for data entry, techniques for cleaning and manipulating data, graph creation and formatting, and using formulas.
Saving Time with TextExpander
Session duration: Duration TBC
Prerequisites: None
Session Link: https://www.researchaccelerator.nz/courses/take/textexpander
TextExpander is a productivity tool that helps you save time by eliminating repetitive typing tasks. It works by allowing you to set up shortcuts or “snippets” that expand to replace sentences or phrases that you use often. TextExpander can be used to speed up data entry, write repetitive emails, quickly create detailed student feedback, and so much more. This short tutorial will take you through the basics of using TextExpander and suggest some practical scenarios for its use – you’ll wish you’d discovered it years ago!