Tag: phds

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news

Interesting Things, June 8th 2015

Hello! How are things in your part of the world? Since I last shared an interesting things post I’ve had a strange series of weeks. First, I was ill – and being ill sucks! I got better after a couple of days, but I realised that I have very little in the way of relaxing strategies. And as I write that I realise how odd it sounds: why would someone need strategies for relaxing? People talk about strategies or systems for time management or planning all of the time, but it feels wrong to think about strategies for relaxing.

I’ve also had a couple of weeks where I’ve been working from home. I’ve missed being out and about delivering workshops, but enjoyed the extra time around family. It’s also meant that I’ve had time to start planning for the next writing project, which I’ll probably be in a position to share something about soon. I’m aiming to publish again by mid-to-late-September I think, but this is contingent on me getting first drafts done by the end of July. I’ll need to use this last week of non-workshop time to really get a good plan together, and also break some ground on chapters……..

…….but I think it’s doable 🙂

Anyway! What have I been reading?

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quick thought

Hard To Find A Gap In A Chasm

I remember reading somewhere once, I don’t know if it’s true or not though, that if the Earth was the size of a golf ball it would be almost entirely smooth. Holding it in one’s hand we would not notice any mountains, the Grand Canyon would be indistinguishable and so would the deepest ocean trenches.

Seen from a great distance or a different scale, the massive seems inconsequential. Yet from inside the Grand Canyon, you’re dwarfed by what’s around you. On a workshop once, a postgraduate researcher shared with me that they loved their research field, but that they were struggling to find something to focus on.

“After all,” they said, “It’s hard to find a gap in a chasm.”

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quick thought

Bad Powerpoint

A short post and a few thoughts for today. I was reviewing my business notes a few days ago and realised that I have delivered nearly 40 First Year Development Workshops at the University of Liverpool. That means I’ve met and worked with over 1000 new PhD students at the university! A key component of the workshop is communicating research ideas, and one way we do that is through a group Powerpoint presentation. We help participants think about how to do this well, and start that process by sharing the following video:

I don’t use Powerpoint a lot for my work any more; I like the spontaneity of having a few key points in a talk or workshop that I’m trying to explore with participants, and being free to work towards those points in a variety of ways. I think that I can do this better with flipcharts and boards rather than a pre-determined series of images and text.

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news

Interesting Things, May 18th 2015

A few weeks back I did the first of these regenerated round-up posts. A lot has happened since then, not least of which I published my second book. I also had a busy couple of weeks, working on the Manchester GRADschool and a First Year Development Workshop at Liverpool. With finishing a project like publishing a book, my brain is at once happy that it’s done, sad that it’s over and curious to know what I’ll be working on next. As a way to try and wrap things up I wrote a couple of posts about writing The Viva: Who? What? How? last week that you might be interested in. Meanwhile, elsewhere…

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viva

Viva Research 2015

Last year I asked seven questions about the viva, got 302 responses to them, and used the results to start to get an idea of what the viva in the UK is like. I did this because I’m passionate about helping PhD candidates prepare for the viva, and I thought that I could:

  • find out more information to help them have reasonable expectations;
  • see if there were negative aspects in the experiences, then find ways to overcome them for future candidates;
  • see what positives were emphasised, and share these to help people prepare better.

As my previous series of posts showed, I think that there are some interesting results in the data, and I know that in my work personally – both on the Viva Survivors Podcast and on the viva preparation courses that I run – this has had a huge impact in terms of helping people. At the same time, I view last year’s survey as a starting point. This is the beginning, and not the conclusion of my research into the viva experience.

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creative thinking quick thought

Heuristic Ideation Technique

I’ve had a little time off from working on my second book on the viva (coming soon!), and this has given me some time to check through my records. I’ve been a skills trainer since September 2008, and have accumulated a lot of stuff – some of it is worth keeping and refreshing myself on – some of it I’ve been happy to chuck into the recycling bin in the last few weeks.

I recently found my notes from a workshop that I ran for Vitae a couple of years ago. The session was on blogging and social media, but the idea that jumped back to the forefront for me was the icebreaker for the day’s workshop, which we used as a way to get people thinking of ideas for blog posts. The process is called Heuristic Ideation Technique:

Heuristic Ideation Technique, which I saw first in Gamestorming.
Heuristic Ideation Technique, which I saw first in Gamestorming.
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work

Workshop: Viva Survivor

Earlier this week I wrote about two of the workshops that I deliver, How To Work With Your Supervisor and Creativity for Researchers. Aside from some of the Grad Schools that I’m a facilitator for, the workshop that I deliver most often – and which I think I am most well known for – is Viva Survivor. So in the last post for this week I’ll talk a little about how I came to do this, what I do – and most importantly why I love doing it.

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work

Workshop: Creativity for Researchers

I started writing about some of the courses I deliver on Monday. First up was How To Work With Your Supervisor. Today, I want to muse a little on Creativity for Researchers, which is a workshop I’ve been developing since 2010.

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work

Workshop: How To Work With Your Supervisor

To get back into the swing of writing here regularly, I thought that this week I would talk about my day job, which is delivering workshops to postgraduate researchers. I’m aiming to make these a mix of the why and the what – why I do the workshop and what I see and do. First up, How To Work With Your Supervisor, a session I regularly run to help PGRs explore working with their supervisor.

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news

Catch Up, 26th January 2015

Previously in this sort-of link round-up slot I’ve had some kind of format where I talk about things in certain orders and so on. But after having spent a lot of time writing out to a clear structure lately (he says, conversationally referencing his next book) I thought I would write as things occur in this post.

Work

I spent some time away last week at my first KESS Grad School of the year; it was great to work with a group of MRes scholars, hear about their research and look at some interesting case studies. Very happy that I have some more of these in the coming six months. This week I’m away in Bangor for a couple of days, talking to staff and PhD candidates about vivas, and on Friday morning I’m at LJMU to talk about viva prep there too. Busy times!

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