Bespoke, flexible workshops designed to help health and education professionals build research confidence, strengthen evidence-based practice and turn practice-based questions into high-quality projects.

Choose a themed pathway or book individual sessions to fit your role, experience and time available. Unlike some of our other CPD courses, these are non-credit bearing sessions and workshops.

What we offer

  • Flexible workshop programme: follow a theme to build capability over time or select stand-alone sessions for targeted development.
  • Evidence to impact focus: develop skills to find, appraise and apply research in real-world professional contexts.
  • Support for every stage: from critical reading and literature reviews through to designing, delivering and sharing your own projects.
  • Expert led learning: delivered by University of Worcester academics with session-specific research expertise.

Who it’s for

This programme is for professionals in health, education and related sectors who need to engage with research as part of their role—whether you are developing your own evaluation or research project, strengthening evidence-based practice, or leading and supporting research-active colleagues.

How it works

Programme structure

Workshops are grouped into themed areas so you can build a coherent pathway aligned to your development goals. You can also book individual workshops as discrete sessions.

Delivery options

  • Online workshops: sessions up to 2 hours (and selected 1-hour sessions) delivered live online.
  • In-person workshops: sessions covering more material run as 4-hour or full-day workshops on the University of Worcester campus, with refreshment breaks.
  • On-site delivery: we can discuss delivery at your organisation where appropriate.

Workshop themes

Theme 1: Skills for Evidence-Based Inquiry

Build the skills to find, understand, evaluate and implement high-quality research and data to support contemporary, evidence-based professional practice.

  • Reading, interpreting and implementing research (4 hours, in-person)
  • Literature Reviewing (8 hours, in-person)

Theme 2: From your Idea to your Research Project

Turn practice-based observations into robust project plans. Develop your research question, make design choices, consider your role, plan delivery, and explore funding routes.

  • Developing your Research Question (2 hours, online)
  • Designing ‘Close to Practice’ Research
    • Introduction to Realist Evaluation (4 hours, in-person)
    • Introduction to Participatory Research (2 hours, online)
    • Designing a Questionnaire (1 hour, online)
    • Designing an Interview guide (1 hour, online)
    • Designing a Focus Group guide (1 hour, online)
  • Doing your research ethically (4 hours, in-person)
  • Designing inclusive research
    • Engaging with People and Communities with Research (2 hours, online)
    • Creative approaches in research (2 hours, online)
  • Being an ‘Insider’ Researcher (2 hours, online)
  • Project Managing your research (2 hours, online)
  • Bidding for Funding (4 hours, in-person)

Theme 3: Strengthening your Research Skills and Techniques

Refresh and extend qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods skills, with practical guidance for common data capture and analysis scenarios.

  • Qualitative skills
    • Thematic analysis (4 hours, in-person)
    • Contemporary qualitative analysis methods (8 hours, in-person)
    • Doing Challenging Interviews (1 hour, online)
    • Running a focus group (1 hour, online)
    • Using reflection through your qualitative analysis (1 hour, online)
  • Quantitative skills
    • Introduction to quantitative skills (4 hours, in-person)
    • Basics of inferential statistics (2 hours, online)
    • Working with Big Data (2 hours, online)
    • Introduction to Jamovi (1 hour, online)
    • Introduction to R (1 hour, online)
  • Mixed Methods Approaches (2 hours, online)
  • Understanding Divergence and Convergence (Delphi) (4 hours, in-person)

Theme 4: Driving Change Through Research

Learn to articulate ‘why’ your work matters and to plan, evidence and communicate impact—from design through to dissemination.

  • Designing a Theory of Change
    • Understanding and Designing Logic Models (4 hours, in-person)
    • Understanding and Designing Theory of Change (8 hours, in-person)
  • Assessing Impact (4 hours, in-person)
  • Sharing your Research
    • Academic Writing (4 hours, in-person)
    • Designing a poster (1 hour, online)
    • Preparing a conference presentation (1 hour, online)
    • Writing a lay summary (1 hour, online)
    • Presenting research to public and community audiences (1 hour, online)

Theme 5: Developing yourself and your environment through Research

Strengthen your researcher profile, make the most of limited time, and develop supportive research cultures through career development, networking and leadership-focused sessions.

  • Using Time Effectively for Research
    • How to build research into your professional practice (2 hours, online)
    • Academic Career Development and Networking (1 hour, online)
  • Building your Research Culture
    • Identifying and Building your Research Culture (4 hours, in-person)
    • Leading and Managing Research (4 hours, in-person)

Talk to the team

If you’d like to discuss the right mix of workshops, cohort sizes, or on-site delivery, please contact the University of Worcester CPD team. We can help you shape a programme that fits your objectives, timescales and budget.

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