Student Study Support

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Student Study Support

We get many requests each year from students wanting to use our nature reserves for their studies, either for a small assignment or for their final year BSc or MSc projects. We accommodate many of these and as a science-driven organisation we support continual learning and development and have many research projects of our own running at any time.

However, as a charity we have a relatively small number of staff looking after our nature reserves and to help us help you we need you to have given some thought to what your study is going to be on before you contact us.

For all study enquires please fill in all parts of the below form,  Your request will be forwarded to the appropriate area team but bear in mind our staff are very busy managing our nature reserves so their response time may vary.

Incomplete forms will not be forwarded so please ensure all sections are complete.

Once received the relevant DWT staff member can review and feedback to you or perhaps suggest changes to help with your assignment.

Points to Note

Any data/studies gathered on our sites must be shared with the trust with the understanding that the trust can use the data/study to support the delivery of our work

 

Tips:
What is the title of your study and what hypothesis or theory are you trying to test?
What are your areas of interest or specialism and why do you want to investigate a particular theme? Avoid generalist titles such as ‘the impact of the beavers’ – what impact in particular and what have they impacted?

 
Tips:
What equipment do you need and do you have ready access to it when needed? What field work is needed and have you got the skills or support to carry

 
Tips:
Consider elements such as seasonality, time of day, frequency and amount of site visits, topography of the site, and security of leaving equipment on site and how long you need to get a meaningful data set. What is your study period and how will you manage your time.


 
Tips:
Which nature reserves are you looking at and do you know that site well? Do a recce first and think about where you will be working, where equipment might be used, where transects could be placed and whether it is safe. Consider where the public will be (our nature reserves are popular and have many tracks and trails) and if that will impact your work.


 
Tips:
Most academic institutions will want you to have a companion to avoid lone working. If you are lone working what procedure or policy will you follow? What skills do you need and do you have them? Have you done a site and task Risk Assessment? Who is responsible for your Health and Safety whilst on site and how will you mitigate any identified risks? Once confirmed a risk assessment will need to be sent and agreed wth the relevant DWT member of staff.

 
Tips:
Consider data requests, literary review. We host the Derbyshire Biological Records centre and get many requests for data searches every day. This is normally a paid for service and whilst we can help students for free a general request is not specific enough. There is a lot of information available on the internet already and other groups may hold data too so think about what data you require and in what format.


 
Your data
Here at Derbyshire Wildlife Trust we take your privacy seriously and will only use your personal information to administer your enquiriy. 

On occassions we would like to contact you to let you know about future events and offers that we think you may be interessted in. If you consent to us contacting you for this purpose please tick to let us know how you would like us to contact you. 

Please take a look at how we promise to look after your data here.
 

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Derbyshire Wildlife Trust supply data?

We host the Derbyshire Biological Records centre and get many requests for data searches every day. This is normally a paid for service and you can contact the records service directly.

Record Centre

We can support students with a small amount of data for free so please be specific on your form as to which data you need and why and we will let you know what we can support.

What is a risk assessment?

Is a review of the likelihood of an incident occurring and the severity of that incident for personal and other site users health and safety.

This is the responsibility of by the person doing the study to identify these risks and mitigate them where necessary. Your university may have forms you can use.