Engineering: Skills and Training

Postgraduate students

For postgraduate automotive and mechanical engineering students, searching skills are introduced in your Research Methods module, ENG7142.

Undergraduate students

For undergraduates, effective searching is included as part of the first year module ENG4093 Engineering Practice. It is then included as how to conduct an effective literature search as part of your undergraduate project, ENG6200. 

Recent literature reviews in mechanical, automotive, manufacturing and electronic engineering (Ahkami et al., 2023; Gawde et al., 2023; Hossaini and Purdy, 2023; Matin and Dia, 2023) follow the 3 stages (9 phases) of Tranfield et al. (2003) or the 11 stages of Briner and Denyer (2012) or they follow the 27-item checklist in the PRISMA statement (Page et al., 2021).

The key steps in building a systematic review consist of:

1. Planning the review

• Identify the need.
• Specify your research question.
• Develop the review protocol.

2. Conducting a review

• Identify research
• Select studies
• Quality assessment
• Data extraction
• Data synthesis

3. Reporting and dissemination of the review

• Specify dissemination mechanisms.
• Format the report. 

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.

Moodle

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.

Moodle