Academic Writing Workshops (Co-developing STEM-related papers for publication)

Overview

Developing and writing a research paper has been proposed as a challenging task in academia and industry. This workshop has been designed as a response to mitigate this challenge by providing an opportunity to learn how to write a paper for publication, how to convert research ideas, project output, organisation achievements and research progress into a research paper in collaboration with other peers, identified during the workshop and prepare a high-quality paper for publication.

Why should you attend this course?

The workshop helps you to learn how to publish a research paper, initiate ideas, start to write, and prepare the first draft of the paper during the workshop. Moreover, the workshop facilitates several sessions for participants to help each other getting their research works published, by sharing their research experiences, implementing the learnings from the workshop, and getting support from their tutor. The target is to (nearly) submit at least one research paper per group at the end of the workshop.

The workshop sessions helps you to comprehend the meaning and identification of research gap, research question, aim, objectives, novelty, contribution, and so on. The course also provides an assistance to structure a research paper, do a literature review, primary research, data generation, analysis, and reporting techniques, discussion of your findings, choosing venue for publication, and in fact everything required to know and implement to publish a paper from start to end.

The course is also benefited from LEGO® Serious Play methodology to maximise interaction among participants for initiation, facilitation of sharing research ideas with metaphors, and structuring the problems for further research on the generated topics.

Who should attend this course?

The workshop will be useful for anyone who wish to publish, regardless of having done it before or not. You should particularly attend the workshop if,

You have an idea to write a paper but do not know how to start? Where to submit? How to write academically?
You have finished a project and would like to publish the outcome?
You want to share your thinking with wider audiences?
You want to publish your progress in a project?
You want to contribute to research section of your organisation?
You are a PhD researcher but have not published a paper yet.
You have done a research for your Master or bachelor degree dissertation but have not published it yet.
You are interested in doing a research and want to have publications in your profile

Course Overview:

The main course is delivered in 8 weeks, comprising 4 workshop sessions (3 hours per week) and 4 group meetings (1 hour per week with tutors and 1 hour per week with members). There is also an optional three months support from tutor, including weekly discussion meetings and guidance until the paper is fully published. You will have an opportunity to bring specific challenges of your project into the course to be discussed and resolved.

STEM refers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

STEAMhouse building exterior

Introducing STEAMhouse

STEAMhouse is a centre for technology, innovation, creative thinking, prototyping and business development. Our £70 million pound building is the home for all of our Computing courses.

Find out more

Fees & How to Apply

Register your interest

Please send all enquiries to Vahid.Javidroozi@bcu.ac.uk

Facilities & Staff

Curzon Facilities 1 600x400 - Accomodation Office

Curzon Facilities 5 600x400 - Garden terrace floor 2

Curzon Facilities 6 600x400 - Roof terrace floor 1

Curzon Facilities 7 600x400 - Canal view from roof terrace

Curzon Facilities 8 600x400 - Roof terrace view

[00:00:02] Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the computing tour for Birmingham City University.

[00:00:05] I'm Alex, a second year Computer Science student sitting here today, and I'll be taking you around the facilities here at BCU.

[00:00:11] Right now we're in STEAMhouse. If you're coming on to a computing course, you may be spending time here doing your Innovation Fest project, where you'll be presenting your project that you worked on to industry professionals. So STEAMhouse is a £72 million conversion of the old bike factory that used to be here.

[00:00:31] This is one of the larger learning spaces that we have here at STEAMhouse, completely built around computing. The entire building is modular. All these walls can be opened up and these classes can be made gigantic.

[00:00:43] So here's another space here at STEAMhouse for, sort of like, breakout rooms or for independent learning places you can go as a group to work on projects. To the left of us, there is the business space where visitors come in and they can work on projects there and also allows for students and staff members to integrate with the tech industry. If you'd like to learn more about STEAMhouse, the video link in description. And now I'm going to take you over to Millennium Point.

[00:01:13] Here we are at Millennium Point. This is the level four project space, the space you'll be using in term time to work on things such as the Innovation project. It is also the home of the Maker's Lab, which I'll be showing you in a little bit. It's a completely transformative and modular space.

[00:01:28] Recently, Birmingham City University has spent six and a half million pounds in revamping their Millennium Point building. It's also the area where we will be holding industry events. One of the things that I want to show you very quickly is the Lapsafe here. So Birmingham City University has one of the largest collections of Lapsafes in Europe. And they're not just here in the Millennium Point building. There's also ones over in Parkside and Curzon as well as STEAMhouse. You're allowed to take a laptop out if you haven't got one personally, and you can use it while you're at university for about six or so hours at a time. We also not only have Windows laptops, but also MacBooks.

[00:02:10] So here we are in the Makers Lab, and this is where you'll be spending time as a first year student working on the Innovation facilities there. Basically, this is where the magic happens, right? So in this room is a bunch of component parts and things to work with your systems such as 3D printers.

[00:02:24] So what you can do is you build a schematic up in the software. We send it to the machines and they can print out component parts for your project. It's also a bunch of different other components here at the university that it offers to students that they can use for their projects, such as Arduino, Mark Controllers, and Raspberry Pi is sort of like the heart of your system. You write some code, you flash onto the microcontroller, then it can control the system that you've attached it to. Over here, we've also got a bunch of component parts even using such as light sensors and motion sensors and buttons and keypads and things like that as well.

[00:02:59] So we've got a bunch of previous projects here as well. Here's Sign Genie which is a sign language interpreter, you sign in front of it and it will send back the sign language on the screen here. You can find out more about this project in description below, showing you how they built it from start to finish.

[00:03:16] We also have laser cutting services at University, so if you need, you know, a frame cut out for your project, for example, that we've got here, you can use the laser cutter and cut out little component parts that all fit together as a housing for your project. Okay, So now I think we're going to head down to level one, which houses the network labs and the games lab.

[00:03:42] This is one of the games labs here at BCU. This is more of a high spec facility to help with rendering animation and, you know, running the games that you create as a games development students as well as that. We've also got the different component parts. You need to build a project VR here so you can experiment with VR within the game called events such as Games Jam where students from across Birmingham City University come together to create a game within 24 hours or 48 hours and present it to a panel.

[00:04:14] So this is one of our networking labs here at BCU. It is a Cisco networking lab. All the hardware in here is industry standard and the majority of it is Cisco related. This entire room and several other rooms on this floor are complete separate LAN network from the rest of university. And you can, you know, run tests and simulations and try and configure and connect to of computers within the labs. The software that we use here is called Cisco Packet Tracer or Nethercutt. This is what we use to prototype our networks. And then you can actually physically build them using the hardware in the room to see how it works in practice.

[00:04:55] So this is one of our many computing labs here at Birmingham City University at the College of Computing. We have about 20 computing labs here at the University of all kinds of different software. And then depending on the course that you're doing, we have experts here from industry working as lecturers to have that real world experience and incredibly helpful with helping you to complete your coursework as well as get any additional advice and sort of guide you in the right direction.

[00:05:22] This is one of the big open communal spaces where you can come and catch up on work, but New Macs here that you can work on as well as Windows PCs out at the back can also see that there's more lab space here. So if you want to use a laptop, you can get those as well. Along with that, there's also the main I.T help desk here where you can come in and ask questions if you've got any issues.

[00:05:43] That was just a taste of computing at BCU. If you'd like to experience it yourself, come along to one of our Open Days or applicant taster days in the future. As well as if you'd like to know more about the computing experience. You can watch this video right here.

[00:06:03] You still here? Go watch the video.

Our Facilities

We are constantly investing in our estate and are currently in the process of spending £260 million on new learning facilities. This course will be taught at Millennium Point at the City Centre Campus.

The course is supported with a wide range of cutting-edge facilities in the City Centre Campus. We have a state-of-the-art computer games technology lab which contains high-performance PCs, Sony PlayStation development kits and a range of industry standard software including Unity, Unreal and a suite of professional Microsoft development tools.

We also have many open access areas where students can study together and even hire out laptops for use in these spaces and others within the university.

Within the University there are many internationally recognised research teams giving you the opportunity to collaborate with them on exciting interdisciplinary projects.

Computer networking

The laboratories are well-equipped for all our computer networking courses, as well as specialist areas for practical work such as voice-over internet protocol (VoIP), forensic and ethical hacking technologies, wireless and mobile technologies and radio frequency identification technologies to name but a few.

Software development and computer programming

There are a number of open access, software development and computer programming laboratories that can be used to develop systems and programmes, including database management systems such as MySQL, to name but a few.

Systems laboratories

Our embedded systems laboratories are used to develop real-time systems, such as specialist hardware training and development resources, and industrial-standard software development and simulation tools. These include microcontroller software and robotics design and development, to name but a few.

Electronic systems

To underpin the basic principles of electronic systems, we have a well-equipped laboratory of general and specialist test and measurement kits, including powered prototyping development boards, dual power supplies, frequency generators and counters and digital multi-meters to name but a few.

Forensic computing

Our successful development of forensic computing has led to a specialist forensics laboratory that is fully equipped with essential hardware and software for this sensitive area of study. The laboratory includes high-spec PCs with built-in multi interface Tableau write blockers, EnCase and FTK computer forensic software and steganography detection and analysis software, to name but a few.

Our staff

Dr Vahid Javidroozi

Associate Professor in Smart City Systems

Dr Javidroozi currently serve as an Associate Professor specialising in Smart City Systems and Information Systems Engineering (ISE). His research endeavours encompass a diverse array of projects, notably the development of a business process-centric framework for smart cities, known as "FABS", integrating principles from systems...

More about Vahid

Enquiries

Please send all enquiries to Vahid.Javidroozi@bcu.ac.uk