Learning and Teaching | Key Contacts and Module Info | Assessment | Classes

Hello and Welcome to the University of Stirling!  You have reached the landing page for the online course on Preparation for Research in Publishing Studies, which we have designed for students from the Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication (BIGC).

We are excited that you are joining us and we look forward to meeting you all over the course of the next 12 weeks. This is your Canvas page, where you will find information about the module, key contacts, and resources for each week's learning. 

To find the syllabus and your weekly classes, including Login details, please click on Learning and Teaching, below.  Resources for each class (such as slides and worksheets) can also be found in the Units section, which can be located in the menu on the left. Our weekly seminars will be take place via Microsoft Teams and we will use the Microsoft Teams Channel Links to an external site.to communicate with you. We will also use the Announcements feature on Canvas, which is in the menu on the left.

The purpose of the programme is to help you to develop a proposal for postgraduate research in Publishing Studies, at a level appropriate for MPhil and PhD level study and to provide a thorough understanding of expectations for research at this level within the UK and internationally. The course is team taught by the Publishing Studies staff at the University of Stirling. All of our staff are active researchers in the field of Publishing Studies. Between us we also have many decades of experience in the publishing industry and we are thus able to assist you in developing a research project that is academically robust but also has the potential to make a contribution to publishing industry practice. We also have some sessions with guest speakers who are specialists in their field at the University of Stirling, including our subject librarian for Publishing Studies, Helen Beardsley. 

We will guide you through how to choose a research topic and to research and write a literature review. We will discuss the breadth of different methodologies available to publishing studies researchers and help you to consider the research design that will work best for your project. We will also introduce the important topic of ethics in research practice. In our final session you will have a chance to meet some of our current Stirling PhD students, to hear about their research and and to present your research ideas to them. 

Each week's teaching will involve a live, online seminar class on Microsoft Teams of approximately 1.5 hours (1 hour for the first session on 17 October). These are interactive sessions and we strongly encourage you to participate in discussions and to ask questions. You are expected to engage with pre-class preparation, which may include contributing to discussion forums, or making notes to bring to class with you. You are also expected to engage with the course reading, both to embed your understanding of the requirements of a PhD and to further research your proposed topic.

You will submit material for assessment twice during the course: the first exercise is to write a short literature review around your topic and the second is to write a full draft of your PhD proposal. You will receive feedback on your work including constructive suggestions for further development of your project from Publishing Studies staff.  

We look forward to introducing you to the dynamic research culture in Publishing Studies at Stirling  with you, and to learning about you, your research interests and your experiences of studying publishing in Beijing.