Month: December 2012

The Effective Part Time Researcher – The ultimate balancing act?

/ Paul Spencer / Leave a comment

Old fashioned scalesThis week myself and Janet Wilkinson are running a workshop specifically for part time students. There are two significant new elements to how we’re doing this; firstly the workshop will be be split over two consecutive evenings (in the past we have run this on a Saturday) and secondly we are going to have some of the participants join in remotely via videoconference.

In the first part of the workshop I will be focussing on two main topics:-

  • What is it like to pursue a doctorate on a part time (sometimes very part time!) basis, what are the challenges?
  • How can we manage and balance the myriad of things we have to do – any hints and tips on how to keep the thing rolling?

I have to admit I am in awe of part time doctoral students because they achieve truly astounding things. It also has to be remembered that the majority of PhD students do it part time. It is a ruinous fallacy to believe that the norm is full time and funded – it just isn’t the reality for many folks.

So time and finances are the immediate hurdles.

I’m going to be drawing on some Vitae resources today around the part time doctorate including using some videos of successful part time researchers.

I’m also going to dip into some advice from Matt Might who has three qualities that he thinks make for a successful doctoral student

  1. Perseverence
  2. Tenacity
  3. Cogency

It’s the first of these qualities that I want to delve into and is probably the reason why on the one hand that many PhDers fall by the wayside but on the other hand makes for a highly skilled individual on the other side. Pursuing a doctorate is not like any other type of study, the researcher has to be prepared to fail every day, to pick oneself up again and keep on going. It’s not like learning for an exam, it’s a long game of learning new stuff, imagining solutions to problems that noone else has thought about and then convincing others that you have actually come up with a solution.

The second thing I will delve into is tenacity in terms of time – the continual battle to put the hours into a demanding doctorate whilst keeping all the other plates spinning. I love the example of the professor who illustrated by using the example of the mayonnaise jar and two cups of coffee:-

‛A professor stood before his philosophy class with some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous ‛yes’.

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

‛Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‛I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favourite passions – and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else – the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical check-ups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18 holes. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. ‛I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.’

The last of the qualities that Matt Might talks about is cogency – the ability to communicate your research, to persuade others of its value. That’s the topic for the second workshop that Janet Wilkinson will lead.

Effective part time researcher Part 2

So, if you’ve read Paul’s blog post on the first part of the Effective Part-Time Researcher, you’ll see that he has created a ‘to be continued tomorrow’ opportunity for me to fill around the topic cogency in research.

I too am in awe of those who take on a PhD part-time.   It is a major commitment in time, mental energy and flexibility.  From the work I’ve done in the last nine years with part-time PhD researchers, and through supervision of part-time Masters students in their research and dissertation stage, I also see that there is strong requirement for making good choices. These are as varied as how you spend your time when you are in research mode, how you allocate time to your PhD and other major commitments in your life, the conferences and researcher environments you choose to be part of and also how you choose to work with your supervisors.

The second part of the Effective Part-Time Researcher programme focuses on how you find and develop your voice, how you use it to communicate with different audiences about your research and how you make use of and contribute to the supervisor relationship.

I am a maven for collecting techniques that others have found, used and recommended.  I’ll share some of the top tips of others and take a practical focus around the subjects of:

  • Writing.  How, when and what do you write?
  • Communicating your research to a variety of audiences
  • How can you get the best value out of Supervision?

Like Paul I will also draw upon a number of different resources during the session.  The Handbook of Academic Writing by Rowena Murray and Sarah Moore will feature (and we’ll draw on Sarah’s YouTube video for a discussion about writing).

The Engaging Researcher from the library of Vitae resources will be something else we refer to and The Thesis whisperer has a number of excellent posts we’ll refer to but this one on supervision will get us started.

Being cogent and building relationships in our work is dependent upon good communication and this will be thrust of the workshop as will my overarching wrapper about having a strategy.  Both are important so that you have a personal framework to make good choices about what you do and how you do it effectively within the time you have available to devote to your research.

Looking forward to it!

The Effective Researcher – The middle years

/ Paul Spencer / 2 Comments
The middle years of a PhD?

The middle years of a PhD?

This week we ran a workshop entitled “The effective researcher- the middle years”. This is a workshop aimed at those who are midway through their doctoral degrees and are looking for reassurance and guidance about how to keep things on track. It is well known among PhDers that there is a period of difficulty – some will call it the second year slump, others give it the nom de plume of “The Valley of Shit” – where progress is hard to come by, perspective falls by the wayside where it’s easy to question why you thought it was a good idea to sign up to undertake a research degree. Most people I know who have finished a doctorate will tell you that this is part and parcel, goes with the territory and so on. But should it be and how to break out of the funk?

I set out in this workshop to discuss some strategies to aid researchers in navigating this difficult period, to allay some fears and offer the chance for folks to connect with each other. What was surprising about this workshop (and maybe the title had something to do with it?) was that all of the attendees were part time doctoral students.

Here’s the slides I used to support the session with acknowledgement to Dave Filopovic-Carter (Dave F-C to most of us!) who compiled most of the materials used.

One of the most pressing problems for doctoral students is understanding what the standard to be achieved is. One way of articulating this is to familiarise oneself with the Doctoral Descriptors. UWE has its own (derived directly from the QAA descriptors) which I’ve embedded below:

A further issue for doctoral students in the middle years is the feeling of disconnectedness, an inability to see how the various strands of an often messy research project fit together to make a coherent argument from an individual perspective; to make your thesis clear. This is quite neatly summarised in the work that Professor Gina Wisker presented at UWE on conceptual thresholds and learning leaps in doctoral study.

Doctoral students in the middle years also feel like they are not progressing, either intellectually or research outputs (or outcomes?). This is why I believe it is important for researchers to be given the time and space to reflect on how much they have developed since starting the journey. Participants who come to the UWE residential gradschools (which we run in Buckland Hall in the Brecon Beacons) report back how useful it was to reflect on just how much one develops throughout this process.

Vitae have developed a framework for researchers to map out their development that places a focus on the knowledge, behaviours, attributes and competencies that make for successful researchers. There’s more info on that framework below.

Useful links

The UWE Graduate School website

Vitae (Researcher Development) website for postgraduate researchers

Vitae Researcher Development Framework and planner (a PDP online application)*

*if you want to sign up to this as a UWE researcher then get in touch 

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Why? and the pyramid of purpose

/ Paul Spencer / Leave a comment

Why?At the end of November my good friend and colleague Janet Wilkinson from Three Times Three helped me to deliver a session for the UWE Researchers’ Forum. The theme for the forum was “toward a research active lecturing post”, a topic that concerns lots of researchers and academics. On the one hand there are staff employed on contracts to undertake research only but would like to acquire more teaching experience for their professional and career development. On the other are some early career academics who are battling with hectic teaching schedules and would like to redress the balance by devoting more time to research, again to enhance their career development.

So I asked Janet to facilitate discussions between staff from these two groups to help illuminate what they would need to think about and act upon to achieve their goals. I then asked Janet to write about it, so with permission here are her thoughts on how to frame that discussion.

I’m the kind of person who regularly craves change – I chase new experiences, new learning in new destinations and the opportunity to meet interesting people in new surroundings.  I’m really lucky that my working and home life accommodate this craving.

In 2012 I’ve noticed the emergence of a different craving – that of more stability and consolidation.  How to blend both?  Searching for a model to frame my future planning I’ve turned to books and blogs, friends and colleagues and a day spent at the Guardian TEDx in Bristol.  My work in progress is an adaptation of the ‘pyramid of purpose’ that I’ve been working with, adapting for my own needs and sharing with others – most recently at the Researchers Forum at UWE.

pyramid of purpose

Influenced by Paul Spencer’s recommendation of Simon Sinek’s TED talk and book I’ve been ‘Starting with Why?’.  Why do I want this change?  Why do I need this new experience? Why do I think I will find what I want in the direction I am proposing?  It has been helpful to start here as sometimes the lack of an answer has stopped me chasing a change that was ultimately a superficial whim; similarly it has helped me to clarify why I really wanted the change in the first place.  Drive and passion help you to get to where you want to go but are more gainfully employed when you understand why you want to go there in the first place.

Identifying why you want to do something or change something then facilitates the more practical questions of what constitutes that change and how you are going to bring it about.   If ‘why?’ is the bigger picture the ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ start to dig into the detail to start to make the change.  A big picture person by nature I’ve found that David Allen’s Getting Things Done book has helped me take larger tasks and goals and to consider them in more detail right from the start make them all into a project with the concept of next action fitting neatly with the questions –

  • What do I want to do?
  • What needs to happen next?
  • How am I going to bring that about?
  • How long will it take?

The ever more practical questions of Who? Where? And When? Start to put definite actions around my goals and plans and with a clear purpose help me to structure how I am going to bring this change or plan about and where I need to be flexible and include others in the plan.

I’m keen to think about the questions Who can help me? or who would I need to know better?  I find it difficult to ask for help and yet know that I am always happy to help those who ask me.  I don’t think I’m alone here.

I’ve added discipline to the pyramid of purpose as I’m fascinated by the success I see around me when discipline is added to drive and passion to bring about the change that people identify and focus on.  My observation is that drive alone can be a powerful force but when combined with the discipline to return to the purpose, and the plan it generates, and to follow through on the actions you identify can bring about achievement for you (and those you lead) that sticks to an understanding of why you were doing it in the first place.

More to work on in 2013!