Built Environment and Construction: Skills and Training
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In addition to your course, the Library offers online resources, courses and workshops to help you develop your information literacy.
Effective Information Searching
For final year built environment students, effective information searching is included in week two of the Individual Research Project module.
For final year architectural technology students, it is included in your Research in Practice module.
For final year civil engineering students, it is included in your Undergraduate Project module.
For postgraduates, it is included in your Master's project module.
Literature reviews
Recent systematic literature reviews in construction (Sanchez-Garrido et al., 2023; Tennakoon et al., 2023; Zhang et al., 2023) in planning (Abduljabbar et al., 2022; Ezennia and Hoskara, 2022; Wang et al., 2022) in quantity surveying (Cao et al., 2022; Miranda et al., 2022) and in real estate (Abidoye et al., 2022; Saari et al., 2022) follow the 3 main phases of Kitchenham and Charters (2007) in software; Xiao and Watson (2017) in planning or the PRISMA statement (Page et al., 2021).
The key steps in building a systematic review consist of:
A. Planning the review
- Identify the need.
- Specify your research question.
- Develop the review protocol.
B. Conducting the review
- Identify research
- Select studies
- Quality assessment
- Data extraction
- Data synthesis
C. Reporting the review
- Specify dissemination mechanisms.
- Format the report.
E-Learning Courses
Foundations of Academic Research
The ability to find information is the foundation to successful career.
This e-learning course will give you an overview of the library and teach you essential skills about finding information for assignments and beyond.
Time required: less than 2h
Part of the Graduate+ Bronze award.
Enhancing your Researching Skills
As part of your course or professional projects you will need to research a topic of your choice. Conducting research on your own can be daunting and it is sometimes difficult to determine where to start.
In this online course you learn how to expand your horizon with a structured approach of researching, how to diversify sources and use advanced search techniques.
Time required: ~1h45
Part of the Graduate+ Silver award.