Postgraduate Researcher Development

At the moment I’m working my way through the fabulous book TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson (Head honcho at TED). I’m finding it a really inspirational read – both as someone for whom public speaking is an integral part of their job, but also as someone who delivers workshops on presentation skills! There’s lots of helpful tips and advice from the very best TED Talks, and I already have several new exercises to try in my training sessions next year.

One of the most useful pieces of advice I’ve come across in the book so far is how to use humour. It’s something PGRs ask me about all the time – and something I find quite difficult to answer. I use humour a lot when I present, as I am naturally quite sarcastic and self-deprecating. It’s a fundamental part of my personality, and it would feel strange for me to present and not show this aspect of myself. BUT I do so sparingly and cautiously – and almost always with myself as the target, so as not to offend. As an ex-performer, I am also adept at riding audience reaction and not being thrown when humour goes down like a lead balloon. And sometimes it does.  Some groups really warm to my humour and personality when I am presenting – as they do in life – and others don’t. But I don’t let that phase me.

So how do I distil these years of knowing my own personality and performance training in to helpful advice? Usually I advise students to do what they feel comfortable with – if they aren’t comfortable being sarcastic, making a joke or telling an amusing anecdote – don’t. Humour is largely about delivery, and if you aren’t confident in what you are saying your audience will squirm and it will throw you off your game.

Now I’ve got some more practical (and therefore, arguably, better) advice to share.

In TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking Anderson outlines the advice of the funniest person in the TED team, Tom Riley, on using humour in presentations:

‘Tell anecdotes relevant to your subject matter, where humour is brutal. The best humour is based on observation of things occurring around you and then exaggerating or remixing them.

Have a funny remark ready if you flub your words, the A/V goes awry, or if the clicker doesn’t work. The audience has been there and you instantly win their sympathy.

Build humour into your visuals. You can also have the humour be the contrast between what you’re saying and what you’re showing. There are lots of great possibilities for laughter.

Use satire, saying the opposite of what you mean, then revealing your intent, though this is really heard to get right.

Timing is critical. If there’s a laughter moment, you have to give it a chance to land. That may take the courage to pause just for a moment. And to do so without it looking like you’re fishing for applause.

Very important: If you’re not funny, don’t try to be funny. Test the humour on family and friends, or even a colleague. Are they laughing? If not, change it or spike it.’

(Riley in Anderson, 2016: 55-56)

How to avoid death by powerpoint

Does peer review terrify you? Don’t panic! It’s not as scary as you think, and is often a really valuable way of getting objective feedback on your writing and research, as well as the opportunity to develop your article to the highest quality.

ThinkWrite have produced a number of free downloadable resources covering a range of academic areas, including but not limited to conference abstracts and posters, public speaking and writing journals articles.

There’s a lot of focus these days on open access and impact factor in publishing. Impact factor particularly is a problematic factor to use in deciding which journal to submit an article too. Firstly, there’s a fair amount of debate about the credibility of these metrics (this article in Times Higher Education explains why). Secondly, it doesn’t consider the most important factor - whether your article is a ‘good fit’ for that particular journal. There are a number of things that determine ‘good fit’ - journal aims and scope,  methodology, and relationship and dialogue with existing articles in that journal being the three big boys.

I find this article from Elsevier really useful. Although STEM focused, the ‘8 reasons I rejected your article’ are relevant across all subject areas. One of those reasons is that all issue of not falling within the aims and scope of the journal. Another relates to the work not being of interest to that journal readership. All these are important considerations when deciding where to submit your article, and maximising the chances of having it accepted.

The lesson here: research your journal. You have the skills.

When I started working as a Researcher Developer, one of the courses I was dreading teaching was on preparing for your viva. I’m not sure why – perhaps because it is such a pivotal moment in a PGRs experience.

It actually very quickly became the session I enjoy teaching the most. The reason for this is students come in terrified of the unknown, and I am able to allay their fears and empower them to see their viva as a positive culmination of their research experience. One of the key concerns is ‘what will the examiners ask me?’ Like some many things in research, there isn’t a straightforward answer here. There are a number of topics they might address – choice of literature, methodology, originality, future research avenues – there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

That’s why I find this blog post ‘Is it a PhD…or not a PhD? Unpacking the viva’ by Richard Budd so useful. He has collated viva questions from various sources, including his colleagues and supervisors. The list is a great place to start preparing for your viva – making sure you can not only answer such questions, but voice them accurately and succinctly.

This morning I discovered this excellent blog post by Writing for Research on using storyboarding to plan the structure of your PhD.

A storyboard is essentially a comic strip of a film used to help visualise and sell a film before it is actually made.  A storyboard can map out the narrative of a film by identifying key moments – either in the plot or cinematic images. A research storyboard, as outlined in the blog post, can be used to map out the key components your thesis. This would include:

‘all of the headings and sub-headings that will structure the analysis, given in full;

at least quick verbal sketches of every main text section

or perhaps later on, summaries of every main paragraph or groups of paragraphs;

images of all long quotations; and

versions of every Figure, chart, table or case study boxes planned. At the beginning these might just be made up sketch graphs instead of charts, or simple pictures of a planned diagram, or a set of empty boxes that is the same size as a planned table. With time these components get fleshed-out (e.g. using interim data in tables, or just quickly drawn charts). Late on they will be clickable images of the now finished exhibits.’

(Writing for Research, 2014)

I always promote mindmapping in my training sessions because it enables students to collate the material they have – be that data, literature or ideas – and to visualise that material, seeing it from a helicopter view and thus make different connections. But when it comes to writing, I know from my own experience that the mapping of multiple connections can tie you in knots when it comes to a chronological structure of the material in written form.

I am currently knee deep in organising the University of Exeter #PGShowcase - our annual poster competition. It promises to be an exciting event, with 68 posters being presented by postgraduate researchers from across the University. As such, I thought it would be a good time to share some resources on designing conference posters that I find really useful. 

A lot of the literature I have been reading about writing recently has emphasised how unproductive it is to start out try and write something coherent and well-structured. I will hold my hand up to having spent agonising writing days over the years trying to order my thoughts before or as I wrote them. And then you get to the end of that agonising day only to find I had made very little progress - both in your writing and your thinking. Vitae (2009) outline a three draft approach:

Get the big ideas down

Structure and fill in the gaps

Proof

I wanted to share a task I use in my Publishing Your Research in Journals session for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences students. The task asks students to draft an abstract for their next journal article in four sentences, and is from The Thesis Whisperer’s slideshare presentation ‘Write that journal article in 7 days’ using the following prompts:

Aim (Start with ‘This paper explores…’)

Main Argument (Start with ‘In this paper I argue that…’)

Method (Start with ‘The study was conducted…’)

What’s new (Start with ‘The paper contributes to debates on…’

(The Thesis Whisperer, 2012)

Last week I posted about some practical tips for working effectively with your supervisor. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying all supervisors are great, or even ok. Some are really, really bad. You only need to take a glance at the ‘you and your supervisor’ tag on The Thesis Whisperer to read some horror stories. As recently as December 2015, a post on The Guardian’s Academics Anonymous blog discussed how Bad PhD Supervisors Can Ruin Research. Whereas I think the rhetoric of ‘managing’ your supervisors isn’t helpful, these online fora are. They enable discussion, debate, the sharing of advice and more importantly a sense of community.

So this week, I want to begin collating online discussions, blog posts and resources that deal with supervision – both good and bad. The aim is to draw together these stories, which all contain useful advice and guidance.

Bad PhD Supervisors can ruin research. So why aren’t they accountable? From The Guardian’s Academics Anonymous blog A demoralising and sarcastic professor left me wondering if I should be doing a PhD at all – and I’m not alone

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle … of two supervisors who don’t agree for The Thesis Whisperer

Most universities that go down the two supervisor’s route do so because they believe it to be beneficial for the student however, it can also lead to an interesting set of issues, especially if they don’t agree.

How I broke up with my supervisor for The Thesis Whisperer This post, written by a PhD student, who wishes to stay anonymous, was sent to me late last year. I think you will find it an interesting story that highlights the tensions we all experience around the ‘finish at all costs (and on time)’ mentality.

How to email your supervisor (or, the tyranny of tiny tasks and what you can do about it) by The Thesis Whisperer Ah email… blessing or curse of contemporary academic life? The letter below describes a common email problem between students and supervisors. My response to this letter dwells on the importance of lunch, amongst other things.

How to tell your supervisor you want a divorce by Sarah-Louise Quinnell for The Thesis Whisperer This week’s guest post comes from Dr Sarah-Louise Quinnell, who gained her PhD from the Geography Department at King’s College London in 2010. Sarah is also the managing editor of ‘PhD 2 Published’ – a blog all Research students should have on their list.  Here Sarah talks about the delicate matter of ‘supervisory divorce’

Learning to Fly by Jess Drake for The Thesis Whisperer This guest post is by Jess Drake who is doing her PhD in soil science at the Australian National University. In this post Jess offers some advice for the next time your supervisor says “Just do it”.

Managing conflicting feedback on your thesis by Alison Crump for The Thesis Whisperer We rarely have posts from our North American academic cousins on the Thesis Whisperer, so it’s a pleasure to bring you this one from Dr Alison Crump. Alison is the Academic Projects Officer in Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at McGill University where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Second Language Education at McGill.

Mum and Dad are fighting – what should I do? By The Thesis Whisperer This is prompted by what feels like the 1000th time I’ve had a discussion with a PhD student about conflict with a supervisor. This particular conversation touched on one of the little discussed, but most common problems in research management: supervisory panel members who don’t get along.

PhD students: what to do if you don’t work well with your supervisor by Gina Wisker for The Guardian Supervisors can be enabling and supportive - but they can also be bullies. Gina Wisker offers advice on how to manage this sometimes tricky relationship

PhD supervisor sadness: the empty nest by Pat Thomson for The Guardian Pat Thomson experiences mixed feelings at this time of year – it's not just doctoral researchers who find the final deadline hard

PhD supervisor: the perfect one doesn’t exist, so where else can you find help? By Gwen Boyle for The Guardian If you’re struggling to get the support you need from your PhD supervisor, there are online communities that can help fill the gap, say Gwen Boyle

Please stop telling me to ‘manage’ my supervisor! For The Thesis Whisperer This post is really an email, sent to me be a student who was responding to a Facebook conversation I started on the theme of ‘managing’ your supervisor.

Please treat me like a grown up! By The Thesis Whisperer Over the years I’ve become a kind of thesis ‘agony aunt’. Students from all over see me as someone to whom they can pour out their tales of woe to and ask for independent advice. I want to help. My sympathetic ear is what got me the nickname of Thesis Whisperer in the first place, but writing these emails is time consuming. When it’s possible I prefer to reply publicly as the problem is usually common enough that what I have to say to one person can be useful to many. This is the latest one.

Supervisor wanted (must have own car) by The Thesis Whisperer  A couple of weeks ago @emilyandthelime sent me a link to a job advertisement which was posted on The Conversation jobs board. The ad had been posted by an anonymous PhD student who described themself as “an industry veteran”.

The Missing Links by John Wakeford for The Guardian Too many postgraduate students suffer from inadequate support and end up failing. John Wakeford has investigated a number of complaints about shoddy supervision. Here he details some of the worst cases

The PhD supervisor is a mentor by Raquel Da Silva for Patter This guest post is written by Raquel Da Silva. Raquel is  a PhD student at the University of Birmingham at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences. Her research is about the life stories of former political violent activists in Portugal. She can be found on twitter as @RaquelBPSilva. Raquel’s post is about the importance and nature of the doctoral researcher’s relationship with their supervisor(s). 

The tyranny of the Awesome Supervisor by Dr. Catherine Ayers For The Thesis Whisperer  This post is by Dr Catherine Ayers, who was a PhD candidate in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University, researching the multiple and sometimes conflicting ways we conceptualise and experience ‘Nature’, specifically in the realm of national parks and other protected areas. She has been known to nerd it up as an intern at ANU Research Training but now she works in the ANU school of Law. Since she wrote this post, Cathy has become a Dr. Congratulations Cathy!

PhD supervision is a really tricky thing to write about. There is so little research and training (as yet) about pedagogy in this area, and styles and approaches vary widely across disciplines, and across individuals. For instance, in some STEM subjects, specific research projects are often advertised for potential PhDers to apply to. Where these form part of a larger, funded research project, supervisors are more like Principal Investigators that PhD supervisors.

On the University of Exeter Researcher Development Programme for PGRs we run a session called ‘Making the Most of Your Relationship with your Supervisors’. It is so named because the rhetoric of ‘Managing Your Supervisor’ has no much negativity built in to it. It implies that supervisors are incompetent, difficult individuals that need to be ‘managed’, rather than experts in their field who have the knowledge and expertise to help you progress you research and your career – but perhaps don’t have the time (and in some cases, organisational skills) to take the lead. I have to ask – why should they? Part of a PGRs academic training and development is learning to work interpersonally with colleagues and superiors, and to take responsibility for their own work and learning.

Vitae have a really useful page on Supervision and Key Relationships. It includes the following suggestions of how to take control of the supervision process:

Discuss and agree key issues, e.g. authorship of papers, research ethics and intellectual property, at the start of the project

Be proactive and arrange formal supervisory meetings 

Prepare an agenda and send it to your supervisor in advance 

Prepare some work before each meeting to provide some focus to the meeting. Early on in your project you might just produce a list of what you have read or done, but as the project develops you are likely to be able to give data, analysis, papers, presentations and early drafts of chapters. 

Expect to receive feedback and criticism and use this to improve your work 

Deal with problems as they arise. Often these will be related to technical or resource issues but also be prepared to discuss issues around the style and frequency of supervision. Supervisors generally want to do a good job so if you make suggestions for improvements they will usually be willing to try them 

Summarise meetings and keep a copy for your own record and send one to your supervisor. This will help to ensure follow-up on any actions and will highlight any misunderstandings

Yesterday I was asked by a PGR for some guidance on how to talk to the media about your research, and I have to say I was stumped. It’s definitely not my area, and I wasn’t really sure where to direct them for advice.

So, naturally, I took to Google.

In doing so I found this really great publication from the Wellcome Trust – a Guide to Working with the Media. Although aimed at scientific researchers, the advice is solid across HASS and STEMM subjects areas. It goes through advice for different media communications – press releases, radio, TV and print interviews – as well as how to deal with controversial topics. Here’s an example of the advice they give on Preparing for Your Interview:

‘Write down three key points that you wish to get across.

Think about what questions you might get asked and how you would respond.

What is the one question you wouldn’t want to be asked?

Imagine how you would explain this research to a friend in the pub.

Try to use analogies to illustrate complex points.

Be careful of using statistics: say ‘one in three’ or ‘half’ rather than ‘30 per cent’ or ‘50 per cent’.

Be particularly careful of statistics when you are discussing risk (see ‘Communicating Risk in a Soundbite’ at www.sciencemediacentre.org for tips).

Ask your press office to run through a ‘mock interview’ if you think it will be helpful.’

(Wellcome Trust, n.d.)

What I like about the Wellcome Trust guide is that the tips are really practical and useful for all kinds of public engagement – particularly the use of analogies, and the avoidance of detailed statistics. I know from experience I am more likely to remember ‘one in three’ than a specific percentage.

For further guidance on talking to the media about your research, I also found these great webpages from the University of Delaware and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Again, very practical advice and guidance, such as where to look when you are being interviewed for TV and the crucial [piece of advice articulated in all these sources:

‘Have one message that you state first and no more than three supporting points with which to convey it.’

In response to the Good Presentation/Bad Presentation task I use in my sessions, I thought I’d take the time to think about the bad presentations I have seen and start on my own ‘dos and don’ts’ list. So much of my teaching is based on my own experiences as a researcher and academic, it felt time to get some of it down on (virtual) paper as well as recording the knowledge generated collaboratively in my teaching sessions. Here are my top 5 of each – there are of course many, many more that will be added to the blog over time!

The Don’ts

DON’T read from a fully written paper. At my first international conference, a leading Professor in my field read their most recently published book chapter to us for 20 minutes. I hate to break it to you folks, but that is not a presentation.  That is reading aloud. It’s lazy, it’s boring to watch, and it ignores the opportunities offered by presenting to communicate your research in a different way and enter in to a dialogue with your audience.

DON’T spend 15 minutes outlining your research methodology and 5 minutes outlining your findings. Your methodology is important. No denying it. But in this environment, your audience want to hear about any interesting or novel findings you might have, rather than how you selected your sample or conducted your experiment. Save that for your thesis and/or publications. If an audience member has a question about how you did your research, they will ask.

DON’T put acres of text on your powerpoint slides (and, equally, don’t use your slides as a script). Powerpoint is supposed to support what you say, not complete for our attention. Your audience cannot listen to you AND read lots of text. David Philips’ talk Death by Powerpoint gives some great advice on using powerpoint as it was intended to be used – with one message per slide, using a short bit of text and an image.

DON’T include data in your presentation but give us no opportunity to read or digest it. I went to a conference recently and they had a slide including a very complex, and very interesting data set. They had the slide on screen for approximately 5 seconds, and the rest of the presentation was predicated on the fact that we had read and understood that data. Needless to say, we were totally lost. Either summarise the data for us, pick out the salient results or give us a few moments (in silence) to read the graph/table/figure on your slides.

DON’T overload your audience with jargon. Conferences have increasingly interdisciplinary audiences, and even subsections of individual disciplines have distinct terminology for ideas, procedures and processes. I’m not saying dumb your research down, but make it accessible to your audience. With the continuing agenda of public engagement, can afford NOT to make your research accessible? If you need more convincing, watch Melissa Marshall’s excellent TEDTalk Talk Nerdy to Me.

 The Do’s

DO think about the core message of your presentation before you write it. What is the one key idea/finding/theory/question you want your audience to take away from your talk? Know this, and you’ll have a story to tell which will help you select and structure what to include. So often presentations are prepared by people dumping all of their notes and ideas on to powerpoint slides. These tend to make unfocused presentations that include far more material than can realistically be presented in 20 minutes.

DO practice your presentation in advance, multiple times, and time it. I don’t know how many times I have seen people run over because they have no idea how long their presentation is. Over time you become better at judging how much material you have in terms of units of time - but never get complacent.

DO make eye contact with your audience. There is nothing worse than watching someone with their eyes on their notes rather than the audience. A presentation is about you and the audience. Eye contact is vitally important to keeping your audience engaged and interested in what you are saying.

DO remember that some audience questions are thinly veiled attempts to assert academic dominance, and others to further the agenda of their own research – that has nothing to do with yours. It is ok, and not in any way a reflection on the quality of your presentation or your research. By the time I presented at my fifth conference, I felt confident enough to respond to a particularly difficult audience member by saying ‘that’s really interesting, but it falls outside the scope of my research’. Own your work – including its boundaries.