This week I ran a 3 hour workshop for researchers entitled "Project Management in a Nutshell". This is a variation of a workshop that I have delivered to a number of different audiences. The problem for me is that project management is littered with jargon that makes it seem very daunting to the uninitiated. Add to this you have very complicated-sounding schemes like PRINCE2 which just fuel the mystique!

The reality is that PRINCE2 is a methodology, a process-driven mechanism which does little to inform anyone of the basic principles of good project management, it's a bit like trying to follow a recipe from a gourmet chef without any basic cooking skills. So my focus for this workshop was to de-mystify some of the language and to concentrate on the important fundamental elements.

The slides I used are embedded below.

 Some basic hints and tips then:

1. Know who your stakeholders are, what they want and how to manage them. Unless you meet their needs and expectations, the project won't be successful.
2. Define the scope and get it agreed up front. This sets the boundaries of the project, what you will do and (more importantly) what you will NOT do. The most common reason for projects to be late, over budget or below par on quality is because someone changes the scope part way through.
3. Once you have a scope, you have to break down what needs to be done into small enough chunks so that it can be monitored - need to be thorough here, no room for being vague here
4. When all the tasks are worked out then it's time to take stock and ask the question, what could possibly go wrong? In other words conduct a risk assessment on your project, how likely is it to go wrong and what impact will it have. If both likely to go wrong and completely de-rail things, then it's time for a plan B!
5. Having said that, it's perfectly acceptable to entertain some risk in a project - without risk there is no innovation
6. A plan is a plan, it is not a fixed thing but it helps you to keep on top of where things are. Important as the project manager to have the oversight, don't let others change the plan without discussion.
7. Plans can and do change, it is almost a certainty in research that things will deviate from the original course in some way or other but this means you have to be alive to when things aren't going well at the earliest opportunity so you have the opportunity to do something about it before it gets too late or just darn stressful!
8. The type of planning/monitoring tool is not really important as long as you have a robust method, it's the principle that matters more.

So there's a few snippets to be going on with, what are your experiences of managing projects? Do they fit the above principles?

 

This is an interesting workshop that I ran at the beginning of the week; the title is more inclusive than its predecessor which would be something like "The Student-Supervisor Relationship". Ostensibly what I set out to do was to help researchers (both students and staff) understand a little more about their preferred ways of working and to talk through some strategies that I've used to balance my own relationships in my working life (although I'm pretty sure that some of the following insights help with other avenues of life as well).

Disclaimer time:- I'm principally talking about the Myers Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI) here and I'm not a certified expert. I'm not a fanatic of personality typing and generally I steer well clear of schemes that classify folks into 'types' or those that make value judgments about competence based on typing.

Having said that, my experience of MBTI in the context of working relationships (particularly that between a research student and their supervisor) is a useful tool to help understand that other folks have different preferences when approaching certain things which can be infuriating if your preference is not at all similar. Just by understanding that these approaches are driven by our preferences instantly reduces that feeling of frustration because it makes you realise that it isn't a conscious choice in the most part.

I used some slides to illustrate the dichotomies as described by MBTI, as opposed to administering the MBTI instrument, no pronouncements were made other than for me to reveal that I am an ISTP.

EDIT: If you want to find out more about your own preferences using this tool then the UWE Careers Service has a subscription to a type dynamics assessment . You will need to physically be on the UWE network to use it. If you are not from UWE, maybe your own Careers Service has a similar scheme? Why not ask and find out?

I think folks spend a lot of time thinking about the difference between an "Introvert" and an "Extravert" - there is an important difference in MBTI parlance from that of the everyday use of the terms. Put simply it is about where your focus is in terms of energy, I once heard it described as the difference between being battery-powered or solar-powered which I think is a neat way of putting it.

However it is described I can safely assert that I am very much an introvert. This is both wonderful and, at times, exhausting. I do have to spend lots of time interacting with people, standing up and talking, talking and more talking but I do love my reflection and recharging time.

I think Susan Cain sums it up well in her TED talk (Can you tell I like TED talks...!)

The other area in which I demonstrate a pretty strong preference is in the dichotomy termed "Judging" vs "Perceiving". I am strongly the latter. Some people earn the label "Mr Last Minute", well I am the Captain of all last minutes; in fact as a PhD student I wrote up the bulk of my thesis in a matter of weeks because there was an immovable deadline. But here's the rub, since I've become more aware of my preferences I now know that I can't behave like that all the time, there are many situations where I have to resist my urge to wait/to gather more information/holding off on committing/it's never too late to have another good idea- because I work with other people for whom that approach frightens and stresses them. I care about the state of health of my colleagues so inevitably I work at minimising the stress I cause others.

Another important element of working with others is the giving and receiving of feedback. In Academia, there is a notorious lack of sugar coating anything and quite often a lack of clarity about things to improve. So I spent time on how feedback should be done...

A couple of things to point out here. I used JoHari's Window only to illustrate the conundrum around feedback. I've seen this model misused so many times where folks have been left feeling dysfunctional because of the misunderstanding around the "Blind Spot". Basic concept here is to try and increase your public facade. This model demonstrates that in order to achieve that you have to do two things that make most people feel vulnerable:

1. Disclose more about yourself (decrease the amount that is private and hidden from others)
2. Seek feedback from others (decrease the amount that is unknown to you - blind to you)

Once this becomes clear, then JoHari's window isn't quite so scary and just becomes another of putting a vocabulary to ones own development.

But I think the best thing to take away from feedback is to realise the analogy of it being a a gift. Some gifts you receive from family are useful and some not so. You would always thank someone for giving you the gift even if you chose not to make use of that gift.

Last thing I touched on was about Eric Berne's concept of transactional analysis as a way of explaining how sometyimes it's easy to predict a reaction from others depending on how we approach it. If we communicate like a parent, this model suggests we should expect the receiver to react in the exact opposite state, i.e. to react like a child.

I can't say that I'm really into these models but they do provide a way of engaging in a discussion about how we work and collaborate with others which is, after all, what I was trying to do...

What do you think?

 

Yesterday I ran a session for researchers entitled "First Steps to Small Group Teaching". This is a workshop that hopes to serve as an introduction to the role of teaching assistant/demonstrator/seminar leader/stand-in lecturer. My first disclaimer is that I am not an expert in educational research and/or the politics of learning & teaching. What I do have though is 12 years experience of teaching in various guises, demonstrating, lecturing, training and facilitating - the latter have been my life for the last 8 years.

I set out to introduce some basic principles that I think are important to know. Mostly the participants in the session were either research students or early career research (only) staff who had some experience of teaching undergraduate and/or taught postgraduate students in one way or another. Some were keen to learn more about how to be a 'better' teacher with a view to securing an academic position.

I started out the session by gathering the experience of the folks attending and talking about the challenges that teaching presents. We also talked about what the opportunities might be from teaching, some clearly had an idea that it might be seen favourably if applying to be a member of academic staff with a mix of teaching and research - I did forewarn that the balance of teaching is heavy when more junior as more experienced academics seem to only want to offload their teaching to focus more on their research interests. 

As it happens there is a relevant live chat about this topic on the Guardian Higher website this week. I believe there is an inherent problem in universities - academics are not generally rewarded with promotion for their success or otherwise in teaching - it is their research outputs that determine many things:- the papers, the grants won, the research students supervised etc etc that really count. Yet, there are those who continually perpetuate the idea that the more research intensive an institution, the better the quality of the teaching... something doesn't quite add up there!

The main concern, I think, of many a researcher is how to teach without looking the fool.

Here are the main themes of the day in the slides I used:

I suppose the main points are these:

• We all prefer to learn in different ways
• There are lots of "theories" or models out there that try to describe that
• Most of them are paper thin in terms of evidence
• Students (especially undergraduates) tend to adopt strategies to learning
• These strategies tend to override preferred styles (driven by motivation)
• There is nothing inherently wrong with these strategies - perhaps we (as teachers) dislike "surface" learners the most though!

I'm a scientist by training so I don't recognise the phrase "theory" as applied to the scenarios above, I found this site that explains my reticence and challenges the assumptions made in these models.

Learning Styles Don't Matter

We talked a while about the use of visual aids, powerpoint as a tool that can be used and misused came up more than once and prompted me to show this video clip:

 

We also looked at a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, partly because of the perspectives he brings about education and partly it was a chance to see an engaging presentation style that uses humour, anecdote, poetry, insight yet no powerpoint....

His earlier TED talk from 2006 is just as engaging and personally relevant to me as a parent but as he says, aren't we all interested in education?

I then moved on to talk more about the difference between teaching and being a trainer, facilitator and coach. The main difference for me is the latter require less telling but more asking and listening to the group. We spent a lot of time talking about "crowd control", i.e. how do you manage a group of people in a learning environment. It brought back memories I had of the NUS run program "Training the Trainer" that was part of the National Student Learning Programme (NSLP) on which I both learned how to be a trainer and subsequently contributed to as a tutor. Within that program was a session entitled "Dealing with nightmare trainees" - somes tips to deal with disruptive/disengaged folks that we all come across from time to time.

We ended up by having just one more look at a TED talk, this time by Benjamin Zander. This is one of my favourite talks because it represents why enthusiasm and passion for what you do is so important to being able to enthrall others or to get them to think, do or feel something different as a result of your input as a teacher/trainer/facilitator. That, I think, is what we should be aiming for...

 

 

It seems an awfully long time ago now that I was a postgraduate research student at UWE, I began my PhD in the late Autumn of 1997 eventually finshing some 4 (and a bit) years later. Back then I felt enormously proud to be a "postgrad", being involved with assisting in laboratory sessions, running experiments, solving problems, supervising final year BSc research projects as well as working on my own research topic (oral malodour since you ask!). I was also acutely aware of some of the inequalities that many a research student faced in terms of feeling isolated, being somewhere between a valued member of staff and a student depending on the situation - generally a lack of distinct identity.

Which is probably why I ended up putting myself up for election as a 'part time elected officer' of the Students' Union to represent postgraduate students (a fully non-paid activity). It was around that time (1999-2000) that I first heard of proposals to establish a Graduate School at UWE to help improve the doctoral experience. I was excited, the profile of postgrad research students would be raised, our contribution to the academic outputs of the institution would be recognised, our ills would be eased! In the end though, the university decided against an institutional model to support research students and opted for individual faculties (all 9 of them) to decide whether to set up their own Graduate Schools catering for both postgraduate taught and postgraduate research students, an outcome which did little to resolve the situation faced by the research students. 

That was then, fast forward 10 years and several reorganisations of the university structures, we are now at 4 large faculties and a "One University Administration" (a process undertaken to disentangle the disparate administrative and professional support structures that have evolved over time like some sort of congealed spaghetti dish). The time was right to re-visit how we organised the support of postgraduate research studies at UWE, the proposals were set out, debated and decided upon and from January 2012 we now have a single Graduate School supporting postgraduate research students across the whole university.

I am excited again, having spent the last 8 years employed to support the skills development of research students, I know this move is a positive one; I also know that there is much left to do to make this model really work.

I'm not alone in showing enthusiasm for this, we have been lucky that we have retained a huge amount of experience in the Graduate School staff from the new Academic Director, Neil Willey to the adminstrators who have been supporting research students for years.

Here's a video explaining why we established a Graduate School...

Sorting out the staffing structure is just the start, we need to get to grips with the information needs of both research students and their supervisors to help with the navigation of the research degree programmes on offer. This required a big rethink of the UWE website. Quite happy to report that we now have some dedicated pages to all things Graduate School related and a short URL to ease the remembering of it...!

www.uwe.ac.uk/graduateschool

The UWE Graduate School have also set up an account on Twitter, why not follow us as we move forwards...

Follow @uwegradschool

The next task has been to raise awareness of the Graduate School so we decided upon a different sort of launch event, one that was more like a showcase of the different types of research that goes on here, one where discussions could be had over coffee and cake and one where you could put your feet up and take a load off.

A tall order but here's some photos....

We had displays of research projects from research students including a fascinating piece of archiving/research by Katie Davies into the repatriation ceremonies at Wootton Bassett in a film entitled "The Separation Line". 

 

Speaking of films, we also had two animated films produced for the event and website, "10 Reasons to do a doctorate" and "10 reasons to be a doctoral supervisor" both of which were animated by an alumni of the UWE MA in Animation, David Hutchinson. The films featured recorded voices of research students and supervisors from UWE talking about the best aspects of doctoral study.

 

 

The final part of the day was to screen the live action film from the Piled Higher and Deeper comic strip, an hour long film featuring research students and academics from CalTech. It was an amusing, ironic and perhaps touching look at some of the issues that many academics and research students face in academia. The trailer is here.

The full movie is now available to purchase from http://www.phdmovie.com/

Further work

This has been the start, much more work to do! Things that are bubbling away...

1. UWE are offering some funded scholarships at the moment (deadline for applications is 13 May)
2. We are currently working towards having a physical location for all of the Graduate School Staff
3. There is space planned for Graduate School activities in the new Academic Hub that will be built in the medium term that will have space for research students to work & socialise
4. Currently working on more events for research students & supervisors

We'd like your thoughts on the direction we are taking, let's make the Graduate School do what I'd hoped for back in 1999...

 

A few weeks back I ran a workshop at UWE entitled "How to win funds & influence people". This is an event aimed squarely at researchers who are wanting to know a bit more about the process of applying for research funding, an introduction if you like as opposed to a masterclass in bidding.

I started the day by asking the participants where they wanted to go with their career - something that one might think is obvious to most - but I've found that many researchers have no real understanding of their options and wish to remain in academic research as a default position. This was recently highlighted in a report from Vitae - "Straight Talking"

I pointed to the reality of being an employed researcher on a research-only contract by highlighting some of the criteria required in the role profiles illustrating the point that getting involved in writing bids for research funding at the earliest opportunity is advantageous if not expected. It also served the purpose of making research students aware of the difference between postgraduate research study (oh the halcyon days!) versus some of the harsher realities of working as a paid researcher.

I then summarised where money for research comes from, I've written about this more extensively here, to try and raise awareness of this. I remember not being remotely aware of the sources for funding as a postgraduate researcher but actually I believe it is more important than ever to get a handle on this. It's one thing to have an understanding about the funding bodies but it is quite another to really understand the politics involved as well.

Next up came an explanation of costing - now this isn't something I am a particular expert in - but I offered this fundamental truth to researchers:

There is a difference between how much a research project costs to do and how much the funder will pay (the price)

 I know many experienced academics who still don't understand this, it is fundamental to informing how you would put a bid together in terms of asking for resources. I'd encourage all researchers to start thinking about this and seek out the advice. The Research Whisperer blog is a great place to start.

Edit: I've recorded a short audiocast to summarise the first part of the session to complement the prezi presentation.

 

Here's the prezi that summarises all that:

The second fundamental truth about applying for research funding is around the 3 R's

Read the guidelines!

Read the guidelines!

Read the guidelines!

All flippancy aside, it's amazing how many folks ignore what the funders say they will resource in what area and when so ignore at your peril.

We had a little exercise to play around with this idea that a former colleague of mine Dr Sharron Pleydell-Pearce (nee Whitecross) dreamt up. She now works at Oxford University so must know a thing or two..!

Here's her slides-

 

Searching for the right funding opportunity

Another colleague of mine, Claire McLaren, then gave an overview of a database that UWE subscribes to, Research Professional. She gave a really useful set of hints & tips on how to get the best of the search function (start broad with topics then narrow in) and how to set up automated alerts to ease the burden.

Making Connections

A finished off the day by focussing on a further fundamental truth about research funding:-

Collaboration is where it's at

More and more research funding is being awarded to collaborative ventures. This means it is imperative that you build up a reputation as researcher to make it easier to find other researchers to work with.

This brought up the topic of networking. I decided to approach this from a slightly different perspective, rather than advising folks to get out there and press the flesh (which is the standard take on networking) I empathised with the notion of being a shy connector as set out by Sacha Chua.

Her presentation on networking as an introvert speaks volumes...

I also showed the TED talk by Susan Cain about how it's harder (takes more energy) for introverts to interact in a world geared up for extroverts... (more info on introverts/extroverts)

 

 

So there it is, an introduction to research funding in 8 points:-

1) Do you want to be an academic researcher?

2) If so, applying for funding is integral to the job/success

3) Understand the funding landscape

4) There is a different between how much research costs and how much will be paid for (price)

5) The funder determines the price

6) So remember the 3 Rs (Read the guidelines! x 3)

7) Get into the habit of horizon scanning for funding opportunities

8) You can't do this alone, collaboration is where it's at

Questions, thoughts are most welcome. Maybe you have some advice to share with aspiring researchers?

I suppose this blog entry really is a note addressed to self. It's been a while since you've written anything and this is not good. You must remind yourself to write about the following as soon as you can:

1. "How to win funds & influence people"  - a workshop that I ran a few weeks back (before Easter) that serves as an introduction to applying for research funding.
2. "Research in Context" [insert link here when you've done it] a pilot workshop developed by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE).
3. reSEARCH Careers [insert link here when you've done it] - a regional event organised by the SW& Wales hub of Vitae that brought employers and researchers together. 
4. The UWE Graduate School launch

It's this last one that has kept me extremely busy of late, organising, editing, recording, did I mention organising....

Anyway, here's some videos that show what I've been upto...

10 Reasons to do a doctorate

The animation was by an alumni of the UWE MA Animation course, David Hutchinson. I captured the views of the research students and did the audio editing/transcriptions.

We didn't want to leave out the supervisors in this so here's...

10 Reasons to be a doctoral supervisor

Again, animation by David Hutchinson and I chased down supervisors to capture their views. It was a bit of an ambush...!

and lastly, here's another bit of video - this time some good ol' fashioned straight talking about the new UWE Graduate School..

 

I'm still very busy because the launch event is on Tuesday and there is much left to do... but I promise (myself) that I will write the entries above.

The UWE Graduate School ran a course aimed at staff new to supervising postgraduate research students entitled "Supervising Doctoral Students: Pedagogy & Practice". The aim of this course is to encourage supervisors to think about a research degree in terms of a journey, to consider the support required by the doctoral student at various points along the way.

We set some pre-course reading for the participants to bring up the ideas around the different approaches there are to supervision; these were the references supplied:

• Lee, Anne (2008). How are doctoral students supervised? Concepts of doctoral research supervision,Studies in Higher Education (33(3) 267-281.
• Deuchar, Ross (2008) Facilitator, director or critical friend? Contradiction and congruence in doctoral supervision styles, Teaching in Higher Education 13(4): 489-500.
• Morrison-Saunders, A., Moore, S.A., Hughes, M. and Newsome, D. (2010) Coming to terms with research practice: riding the emotional rollercoaster of doctoral research studies, in M. Walker & P. Thomson (eds)The Routledge doctoral supervisor’s companion, London: Routledge.

The programme for the two day course is included here:

We started by talking about what our own doctoral journeys entailed, was it a good/bad/indifferent experience and what role did our supervisor(s) play in helping to navigate that journey. Perhaps predictably, there were some pretty diverse tales from all- but with the same sort of message resonating. Our own experiences of being supervised are formative in how we then supervise others.

There was an interesting discussion regarding the framework of supervision picked out from Dr Anne Lee's work on research supervision as being intriguing. A full explanation of it can be found here: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/484/1/fulltext.pdf

This led onto the discussions about how supervisors are chosen. Expertise & experience were two characteristics that leapt out but it was recognised that a great many other factors can and do influence the choice.

A discussion about the difference between the role of the Director of Study (DoS) and second/third/fourth supervisors was also had. These are quite clear in terms of the regulatory framework at UWE, here's an extract that explains the difference between the roles:

We also explored the context in which doctoral studies take place at UWE, what are the external/internal agendas and influences that shape what we do. The slides we used to illustrate the complexity of this are here:

We ended Day 1 with a look at the progression examination arrangements we have here at UWE. The slides I used to support this are the same ones I use to inform doctoral students and are reproduced here:

It was a discursive day and it was great to have two things from the supervisors there, 1) a genuine enthusiasm for supporting doctoral students and 2) a wealth of experience that they bring to the table.

The second instalment of this course focussed on supporting doctoral students through the "middle years" (how do you maintain motivation?) and supporting students toward the finish. We began by talking about "doctoral-ness", what is it, how do we define it and, probably more importantly, how do we encourage the development of it in others?

A good starting place was the Doctoral Descriptors, a set of criteria that research degrees are measured against by way of examination. The UWE descriptors are based on the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) publication "Doctoral Degree Characteristics" (Sept 2011). Most universities will have equivalent descriptors somewhere in their regulatory framework. The UWE Doctoral Descriptor and the separate MPhil descriptor are reproduced here:

I find it useful to compare the two together to help highlight the key characteristics that separate a PhD or Professional Doctorate or a DPhil from that of an MPhil.

It is important for supervisors to try to help their students understand what it is that they are aiming for, some say you should try and set out the stall from day 1. A light hearted but illustrative example from Matt Might (Assistant Professor from the University of Utah) about what a PhD is helps us to get out heads around the problem...

The Illustrated Guide to the PH.D.

The second element of "doctoral-ness" is to consider the philosophy element of the endeavour. Perhaps research students and their supervisors spend too much time on the written output, the doctoral thesis without necessarily considering the other and perhaps more original meaning of thesis - "a proposition stated or put forward, especially one to be discussed and proved or to be maintained against objections".

The topic of maintaining motivation was discussed. Inevitably the phenomenon known as the "Second Year Slump" (a general loss of motivation caused by a virtuous cycle of lack of progress/lack of belief in ability to make progress). Matt Might has some advice on this:

3 Qualities of Successful Ph.D Students

The group considered, discussed and debated what might constitute good hints and tips for helping research students to keep moving in the right direction. Here are those:

The last session of the day was around the final leg of the journey, how to help research students complete. Here's is the prezi I used to illustrate the logistics:

 

 

Finally, here is a collection of some relevant materials (clearly not exhaustive) on the topic of supervision.

Comments, questions and/or objections are welcome. 

 

 

 

 

This week UWE put on a workshop aimed at research students and staff on the topic of getting research published. I invited Dr John Albarran, an academic from UWE's Faculty of Health & Life Sciences with many years experience of publishing and an editor of a peer reviewed journal, Nursing in Critical Care to come and set out some easy steps that researchers could follow to increase their chances of success.

The slides that John used to support his input are reproduced here with permission.

We spent some time discussing how important it was to put the effort into the preparatory phase of writing, in other words to do your homework in terms of identifying which topic you will focus on and which journal you should choose.

Many researchers fall at the first hurdle when submitting a manuscript to a journal simply by not understanding the scope and format that the journal accepts - reading and understanding the journal's guidelines/instructions for authors is an essential step.

Then we got into the topic of thinking about planning & writing a paper. Strategies were discussed and barriers to writing illuminated. Also discussed were ideas around finding time and space to write. I was reminded of something that Dr Rowena Murray (University of Strathclyde) has said on this, it will never feel comfortable to start writing so make the time to write rather than waiting to find the time to do it.

There was discussion around authorship, who is an author and how should they be credited on the paper. John highlighted a couple of sources that offer guidance on this topic.

1) Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

2) International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

We spent sometime discussing the peer review process, dealing with feedback.

The rise of open access publishing as an avenue for research outputs, where authors pay the costs of publication up front so that the reader does not have to pay a subscription to access the content, was also raised as a talking point. This is a departure from the traditional publishing route where the costs of publication are met by fees paid through the subscriptions of libraries, members, professional societies etc.

Funding bodies are beginning to embrace open access as a way of increasing the reach or impact of the research and generally expect researchers to factor in this cost as part of a dissemination strategy. More info on funders guidelines on this can be found here.

We touched upon the difficulty of building a reputation as a researcher whilst starting out. It reminded me of the recent Researchers' Forum where this topic was discussed with a panel. Professor Katie Williams shared these tips on how to write for publication and seem appropriate to reproduce here:

 

 

Further resources and advice

1. Elsevier Publications training webcast on How to get published

2. Vitae Researcher Development Website on publishing your research

3. UWE Library researcher section on getting published

 

This week UWE put on a two-day intensive course for researchers on the topic of communication. The intention behind this was to go beyond a regular 'presentation skills' course, more to have a nose under the bonnet of communication to examine the fundamental principles that could be used to craft a range of effective messages suited to the purpose at hand. Researchers find it challenging to find ways of engaging others in the research they do for fear of losing its academic rigour.

I brought in Piero Vitelli from Island 41 to shape the course into something of real substance that would be of value to the participants. Piero used the analogy of the course being a bit like Sachertorte, an incredibly rich and calorie packed chocolate cake to describe the deliberate attempt to put a lot of content into the two days.

Speaking of packing content or data into a short space of time, here's a clip that should demonstrate that it doesn't matter how complicated your data is, it is important to make it accessible.

Over the two days we set out to try and understand the secret behind impactful, engaging communication of research.

The following notes summarising the course are reproduced here with permission from Piero.

The basic model of communication we put forward was as follows:

More often than not, when we set about preparing a piece of communication we pay too little attention to the upper half of the pyramid, we focus on the content; the "what" of our communication. 

We spent a lot of time looking at the "why" of our communication or in other words, what is behind our motivation to tell others about our research, what are our values, what do we stand for. I've written about this sort of thing before, it comes down to asking yourself "why". This then informs "how" we might go about delivering the content.

Much of the rest of the course was about looking at the techniques and/or qualities of effective communication-- getting into the mechanics of it all.

The other major talking point of the course was around the issue of confidence. Everyone talks about the need to feel more confident when giving presentations and most people assume that others have more confidence than they. It's a weird thing but a presenter's job is not to feel comfortable but to give every fibre of their being to the audience, to forget how uncomfortable it feels.

Only others can give confidence because it is, after all, about being "with trust" (latin:- Con fidere), so literally only others can have trust in you. You can see this demonstrated in this clip featuring Paul Simon playing a concert in Toronto when he invites a fan on stage (named Rayna) to play the song she requested ("Duncan") because it was the one she learned to play guitar on... watch how Paul Simon has trust in her and provides the encouragement.

 

How 'confidence' really works?

Some last thoughts, I really enjoyed the stories, the metaphors and the analogies used by various folks throughout the two days. I was amazed by the risks that the participants took in trying things out to explain, illuminate, highlight or inspire about research to bring things to life. Here's one picture that springs to mind: what you see (the number 6, the maths symbol sigma or the number 9) all depends on your perspective...

Further resources

The following publication is actually a piece of research about the art of presentations among public interest professionals. It is equally as relevant to academia and has some of the best advice contained within around "chunking", taking audiences on a journey from A->B, considerations about the use of visual aids etc. And it's free.

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes (free download)

A blog site about all things presentation related. It's a must read...

Presentation Zen

On Monday evening of this week, I put on an event for newly registered postgraduate research students at UWE, an event that had been postponed from October. It is something that we run every year to provide a space for new research students to get together from across the whole university. I think this is important because it introduces the idea that there are other researchers around who, whilst not being in the same discipline, are on a similar path.

We opened the event with an introduction from the Director of the UWE Graduate School, Neil Willey. His slides are here:-

Neil opened by highlighting one of the Doctoral Descriptors, the criteria for the award of a research degree, to explain that the goal, the end result is to come up with an original and significant contribution to knowledge. He pointed out that it was this that ultimately is the most satisfying, exciting, infuriating element of what most people refer to as a journey. He then went on to explain the place that the new UWE Graduate School will have in supporting postgraduate research students in that journey.

The main element of this gathering is that we invite current research students to pass on their thoughts about what it is like to be a research student to others. I only provided the title:- "What I know now, that I wish I'd known when I started" to the wonderful research students who volunteered to come and talk:- Anja Dalton, Billy Clayton, Amy Webber and Sarah Dean (take a bow folks!). The insights they gave astounded me because if I tried to write down all the hints & tips about being a research student that I could think of, I still wouldn't have been able to cover everything that they did!

Here's a flavour of the presentations with thanks to Billy, Amy & Anja who gave me permission to reproduce their work here:

I learned things from these presentations, the most common theme in describing a research degree is around a journey toward a summit and that there is a collective term for research students studying for a PhD; the PhDers!

Billy also raised awarenes of a crippling syndrome that pervades many in academia, the imposter syndrome. In fact, only this week Athene Donald wrote about this on her blog..

I then summarised the skills development programe I run at UWE for researchers within which I revealed some of the nuggets of wisdom gathered from years of being a researcher, brought to life through the medium of the Piled Higher & Deeper comic strips. Here's the overview of what I said:-

Finally I summarised the PhD using the fabulous Illustrated Guide to a PhD by Matt Might which helps us all keep the magic of what we do into some sort of perspective.