Are you doing your PhD or at the beginning of your research career? Discovery Learning, an EC-funded project, organises a series of special webinars that may interest you.

These are online training sessions, open and free registration for all doctoral students or young European researchers. The objective is to delve into the so-called transversal competences (which allow you to develop in different professional environments or situations, beyond technical knowledge, such as leadership capacity, teamwork, creative problem solving and entrepreneurial potential). The focus is on those most directly related to open science and innovation and are accompanied by useful learning in the day-to-day research and development. For example, on the 25th a webinar on project management and leadership is organized.  Other topics foreseen are career planning, scientific communication and project ideation (all the information available on the Discovery Learning website).

At present, transversal competences directly influence employability, and are one of the main points of attention in the review processes of the educational programs of countries and institutions. They are also a powerful element of differentiation when several candidates opt for a job or want to change organizations, and of course essential when you want to create or run your own business.

And why do we say they are special webinars?

Discovery Learning is an EC-funded research project under the H2020 Programme, which studies new ways of developing cross-cutting competences for open science and innovation that are more efficient. Specifically, it focuses on 3 fundamental mechanisms:

1) Learning through the generation of experience (what is usually called work-based learning), and as a special idea of Discovery Learning, that experience is real (what we are called real-work-based learning).

2) Collaboration side by side with active and specialized professionals in the topics addressed.

3) The possibilities offered by gamification.

So, one or more of these mechanisms will be used in all planned webinars. For example, in the project management of the next day 25, we will work with Eva García Muntión, a professional in R + D + i project management  with 20 years of experience, in a real case among the projects in which she has worked. Throughout that process, you will share experiences in other projects and contexts, tricks in the use of the tools, etc. And this process will also be framed in what we call “The great game of the goose of R + D + i project management”, which allows us to advance in a more structured and faster way, in an almost 100% practical way.