Boundaries in doctoral education: South Africa and beyond

Tags

conference on supervision, doctoral education, pushing boundaries, South African universities

by Cally Guerin

I’ve just spent a wonderful week in the South African town of Stellenbosch surrounded by internationally recognised key thinkers in doctoral education. These scholars were gathered together to attend the Postgraduate Supervision Conference, a biennial event hosted by Stellenbosch University. One of the things that is particularly noticeable in this environment is the wonderfully inclusive nature of this conference community. Sit down next to anyone and you are immediately engaged in a fascinating conversation (of a mostly intellectual nature, but there’s also plenty of laughter and storytelling too!). This is precisely the kind of academic community that I’ve always hoped to find – in which people are excited about the possibilities of their work and are keen to share ideas and learn from each other. All aspects of PhD studies were explored, and some interesting trends are emerging.

The broad theme of the conference was ‘Candidates, supervisors and institutions: pushing postgraduate boundaries’. Three keynotes pushed us into thinking carefully about what this might mean. Sue Clegg opened by challenging us to reconsider the boundaries around the ‘original and substantial contribution to knowledge’ required in doctoral studies and to think about what this means in our current political contexts. Terry Evans explored the metaphor of ‘the boundary’ in all its nuances for students, their supervisors, and also their institutions, including a consideration of supervisors as ‘boundary riders’ monitoring the edges of their students’ creativity. While supervisors should be encouraging students to push the boundaries in their field, there are also risks associated with pushing those boundaries to breaking point. And Chaya Herman updated us on what’s happening in the South African context at present, where there are enormous demands put on universities to rapidly increase the number of PhDs being produced, but to do so with very limited resources in terms of suitably qualified supervisors to see these projects through to completion.

For me one of the most interesting themes to emerge from the papers and conversations was the increasing focus on group or cohort supervision, which sits nicely alongside other attitudes and concerns with building communities of practice for scholars at all stages of their careers. In most places we are seeing a shift away from the strict boundaries around an individual supervisor working with an individual student on an individual project. It would seem that research writing is increasingly being seen as a skill that can begin to be developed in group situations, such as in Honours group projects or in the context of group supervision. It doesn’t finish there, of course, and other papers reminded us that writing development continues to be important at the very end of the doctorate in the feedback (or even feedforward) that examiners can provide alongside the actual assessment of the thesis.

Perhaps the most challenging material came up in relation to writing unconventional theses, such as those engaged in knowledge construction practices from different cultural contexts. These discussions explored the risks — and pleasures — associated with pushing the boundaries of a ‘doctoral thesis’ to its limits. Discussions about the emotional aspects of writing came up more than once, from linguists as well as sociologists, psychologists and cultural studies theorists. Some illuminating research is appearing that uses the writing of narratives by supervisors as a way to engage their emotional selves in the process of supervision.

It was also great to hear the voices of people who are currently writing their PhDs — of course, these voices are central to any endeavour to understand doctoral education and doctoral writing. Voice came up in other contexts, too, linked to the concept of risk in doctoral projects, and also in relation to the challenges of learning how to integrate multiple voices into a literature review. This is an ongoing interest of mine, and one that is not always well understood (more to come on that one…).

I’ve come away refreshed and stimulated, with lots of new ideas about where I’d like to head next both in my teaching and research. We hope that some of the presenters at the conference will be able to write guest blogs on this site in coming months — stay tuned!

But, of course, everyone has a different experience of any conference, depending on which papers they attended out of the parallel streams. If you were at this conference, what else would you like to add? What did I miss that you found particularly useful or illuminating? And if you weren’t there this time, what topics would you like to see included at this or a similar event?

Insecure in a good way: thesis structure changes over time

Tags

Staying realistic with writing, thesis structure

By Susan Carter
Sometimes feeling insecure about thesis writing is a simply an uncomfortable symptom of increasing understanding of the topic. The example I am giving is the experience of designing thesis structure, but I’m pretty sure that there may be other times when insecurity, despair even, has to be read as a sign that you are right on track. You are just getting wiser.

It’s disconcertingly counterintuitive.

The example: Surprising numbers of doctoral students are troubled by thesis structuring design. Now, at my institution and I suspect many others, there is an assumption that by the end of the first year, structure is more or less nailed in place. However, with colleagues Frances Kelly and Marion Blumenstein, I researched doctoral students (n92) to learn more about this area of insecurity. We gathered lively metaphors used to describe thesis structure and found that there were discipline tendencies for tragedy or romance narrative types (find the article on this here).

But what unexpected was, when we correlated time-through-the-doctorate and Likkert-scale levels of uncertainty about structure, we found that the further through the doctorate individuals were, the less sure they felt about their thesis structure.

Many students know from the outset that they will have an introduction, literature review, methods, findings, discussion and conclusion. I’ve found from hundreds of student consultations, though, that in almost every discipline, some doctoral students find the rigidity of that structure does not serve the complexity of their topic well. And this realisation, which may come a year to two in, is bothersome.

They begin looking for alternative options, scouring a wider range of existing theses, and being torn by anxiety that if they are too creative, examiners may not recognise their work as a legitimate thesis, and yet feeling increasingly unwilling to stay on the well-trod path.

I’ve developed a two hour workshop on structuring a thesis that has been fairly well attended by doctoral students. It set off from the generic thesis model–if that will work, it is something of a never fail recipe and should be taken up gratefully and followed. I recommend to students who want to finish as quickly as possible that this one is a recognisable short safe route. But many know that it isn’t their solution.

The model is a check-list for non-standard thesis writers, who will still need to do the work of these sections somewhere and somehow within their theses. And make sure the expected generic moves are visible. From there we worked through a raft of possible ways to think about structure using ideas from thesis guide books (although literature on this was surprising lean) and ones we generated ourselves, but with discussion around the room to relate possible structural ideas to the individual challenges that each student was having.

It took me till the final stages of co-authoring a short book on structuring a research thesis to really understand that structure and style choices induce misery for those who know that they are writing themselves into existence in their thesis—into the academic existence that they could be inhabiting for a while. This aspect of writing was much closer to the bone–more intense–than meeting discipline expectations or showing critical analysis.

Seems the more you realise how complex your topic is, how strongly loyal you want to be to your data, how much the whole thing matters to you, the more troubling it is stepping into examiner scrutiny.

Our data suggests that initial plans aren’t final, nor should they be; they are contingent, and enable movement forward. As students gradually come to understand their topic, they may need to reorganise their plan—and they may have to live with the reality that doctoral writing is always a compromised negotiation. At the time, this feels like a disillusionment, but it is also the learning of research skills. (And possibly of wisdom that translates elsewhere.)

Carter, S., Kelly, F. and Brailsford, I. (2012). Structuring your research thesis. Houndsmills UK: Palgrave MacMillan.

Carter, S. & Blumenstein, M. (2011). Thesis structure: student experience and attempts towards solution. Higher Education Research Development, 34, 95-107.

Student/supervisor difference with writing choices courtesy of the generic ‘he’

Tags

negotiating word choice across difference, pronouns with theoretical baggage

By Susan Carter
Use of the generic ‘he’ is an example of a writing choice with the potential to irritate readers. A recent writing tips post asked whether it is erroneous to use ‘they’ in the singular—and surveyed what readers thought.

Now, a singular ‘they’ is how I choose to avoid the generic ‘he.’ I’m amongst those who see a generic ‘he’ as implicitly sexist. So I might write ‘A thesis writer who focusses only on content and not the thesis framework risks difficulty during examination. They may find that they have a hefty revision ahead.’ A majority of the posts’ respondents agreed with my choice about ‘they’ for gender bias avoidance, but not all.

I can tell you why I choose ‘they’ as the best avoidance option. ‘He or she’ or ‘s/he’ seem a tad clunky to me, and too evidently self-conscious. Sometimes I don’t want to pluralise the whole sentence as a way out (‘thesis writers…they’) because I want to conjure up that single figure at the computer.

If I have a quotation with a generic ‘he’, which I regard as sexist, I sometimes add ‘[sic]’ in the case of fairly recent writers (in which case I feel their choice is made knowingly—and it’s one I don’t agree with). I usually don’t if they wrote more than fifty years ago, happy to factor in relativism.

I’m also willing to restate all that in good formal academic prose if a gun was at my head–or if I was submitting a doctoral thesis to a critical reader, something similar.

All this raises the question of how students and academics handle writing’s negotiation around choice. There are two—or at least two—issues: theory and style.

Thesis writers sometimes need to have the theoretical baggage of specific words pointed out to them. And I do mean spelt right out, not just by suggesting a change without the reason. Often it is only when someone tells us that we realise we are in a mine-field. Theoretical-word understanding grows throughout the research learning process.

I have quirks of my own, more stylistic than theoretical. I can’t see why we are returning to ‘whilst’, with its musing poetic tone from the 18th century or earlier, in favour of ‘while,’ which is cleanly invisible. (Another writing tips author muses similarly on this one too.) I’ve seen ’whilst’ in hard science writing, and suspect that it’s seen to be more formal. I find ‘utilise’ similarly stuffy. The good little ‘use’ is more, well, useful, and in a fresh humble way.

How should supervisors and academic developers handle students who choose words differently from them?

Sometimes doctoral students choose to do stylistic things differently from their supervisors or advisors because they are different people with different values and tastes. I have seen students grappling with the fact that they know other academics work the way that they want to, but their supervisor leans in a different direction. Leans insistently.

I suggest if the choice has theoretical implications, the student might produce writing explaining their choice in good epistemological academic language. It can give them a firmer platform to diplomatically suggest that they have a different but also valid take on the point in question. Or finding it hard to write this might persuade them they are wrong.

Putting the explanations for choice in the introduction is an excellent practice: persuasion aimed at a supervisor usually holds good for an examiner. It’s a formal demonstration of disciplinary and interdisciplinary savvy. It pre-empts examiner irritation, since most academics have preferences.

In all instances, people who I respect for their other values make word choices I wouldn’t, and I go on respecting them. Even the crustiest of us maybe need to concede that academia has room for more than people who are exactly like us. When it is stylistic, then both sides, supervisors and students, need to pick their battles carefully, willing to concede if appropriate.

What do you think? Are there others who are interested in doctoral writing’s stylistic and theoretical preferences but feel differently and want to make a case? Other learning advisors with advice?

Writing the acknowledgments: the etiquette of thanking

Tags

Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter
Acknowledgements pages show the essence of the thesis author and their experience. If you look through a dozen or so at a time, you will hear the screams, the manic laughter, catching the sombre tragedy and the sense of awe and agony that underpins the doctoral life span.

Acknowledgements are non-consequential in that a student is not evaluated on them, unlike the rest of the prose they have laboured over. Some acknowledgement pages give away the secret of their authors’ difficulty with formal prose, and it doesn’t matter—by the time anyone reads them, the author has been found acceptable.

But acknowledgements do matter because in amongst the celebration the right people need to be thanked in the right sort of way.

The acknowledgement pages I have looked at vary considerably. Most thank funders, supervisors, close colleagues and family. Possibly supportive friends. This means it is effectively a snub if someone important is not thanked.

Typically the structure moves from thanking the most formal support to the least formal thanks as detailed above–funders, supervisors, other academics, colleagues, and finally family. This makes sense according to the logic of incremental progression because the informal thanks to family are often the most heartfelt. Close family members are often the people who gave the most (although some supervisors are likely to feel this is not true).

It is important that a student acknowledges the formal carefully, though: any person or institution that has contributed funding to the project, other researchers who have been involved in the research, institutions that have aided the research in some way. They should also acknowledge proofreaders and editors—that is a requirement at the University of Auckland where I work, and a good one in terms of honesty in authorship. Such formal thanks are usually in the first paragraph or two.

Interestingly, our Guide to Theses and Dissertations states that you should “Only acknowledge people or institutions that have contributed to the content of your thesis” (14).

Yet no one follows this advice. I have seen people thank their dog for sitting at their feet for hundreds of hours, the cat for its companionable choice of the thesis draft as a place to settle down for a nap, and God for creating a magnificent universe available to be studied.

It is possible to thank people for more specific regional rather than global help throughout the thesis too. I like doing this, because it cheers me up to remember the kind, wise colleagues who have helped me along with my thinking. If footnotes are used, the work can be done there, for example, with footnotes that state “I am indebted to xxx for several discussions that helped me to focus this section”. Without footnotes, more formal provision of a ‘personal conversation’ reference will do the same work.

Students may choose to namedrop in these internal thanks too: if a big name in the field gave feedback after a conference paper or in conversation, acknowledgements strengthen the student’s academic authority and insider status.

Acknowledgements vary in length, and the effect of a very long acknowledgement—I have seen a nine-pager—is to dilute the thanks. I have also seen one that simply lists five names, which was blunt, but powerful.

So it is good to start a draft within six months of submission, and revise it for the full satisfaction of a job well done on graduation, with all dues paid. The usual structuring principles apply: those who gave most should be given the most thanks. Supervisors will know the sad truth if the cat gets more lines than they do.

Thanks are best when concrete. I really like thanks to supervisors that carry a sense of who they were in the drama, like “My supervisor, who kept a sense of humour when I had lost mine”; “my supervisor, whose maddening attention to detail drove me to finally learn to punctuate prose”; or “my supervisor, whose selfless time and care were sometimes all that kept me going.” A precisely-worded acknowledgement like a perfectly chosen gift. It fits. It matches.

Some supervisors tend not to give advice on acknowledgments, because they expecting to be thanked, so it feels preemptive. Do others feel, though, that the end result is happier all round if supervisors offer to critically read the acknowledgements too? Or would it be more appropriately a place where academic advisors could give objective advice?

Defending research choices in doctoral writing: getting the habit at the start of the research

Tags

thesis writing for examiner reader, written defence of academic choices

By Susan Carter
Thesis writing is aimed at a primary reader: the examiner, a creature from the back of the psychological cave. Examiners are much feared because they are by definition testy readers, menacing in their power. The research thesis is thus the most defensive academic writing we produce, more defensive than undergraduate work, more defensive than articles.

To remove all panicky thoughts of the monstrous, Sue Johnston (1997: 345) sensibly points out that “Examiners require all of the normal forms of assistance which should be provided to any reader.” Actually, though, in addition to wanting the usual, examiners are readers who work in the evenings and often in short bursts, and may need just a little more guidance, despite being experts by definition. As Pat Thomson recently noted, you need to keep them on track, steering them towards signing off your thesis as completed. Hence, thesis writing needs to defend research choices.

Research on examiners and what they commonly want is handy to look at before submission, even better if it’s quite early on in the doctorate. Useful questions to imagine examiners asking include:
• Why did you choose that particular problem? Why did you not study this other problem instead?
• What exactly were you trying to find out? I’m unclear about the meaning of your problem statement.
• You have reviewed the important literature, but I fail to see what use you make of your review. Can you clarify for me what you learned from the review of literature?
• When you reviewed the literature, why did you decide to review that particular area of study?
• Why did you choose that particular method? Why did you not instead use this other method?
• Can you clarify for me how the particular method you chose relates directly to the problem you have chosen to study?
(Glatthorn 1998, 186-188)

Addressing these questions somewhere in the first year of the doctorate when decisions are being made boosts word count—good for confidence level and keeps supervisor happy—and establishes the mindset of defending the research in its writing. Being so defensively careful also shows that the writer knows about the thesis genre—it gives the look of someone who is already an insider.
While decisions are being made at the beginning, it’s also useful to remember that examiners will want to see that:
• the rationale for the study is clearly explicated;
• the appropriateness of the researcher conducting this study is made clear;
• clear and succinct hypotheses or questions are derived from/revealed by the literature review;
• the rationale of the general approach is closely argued, giving a reasoned case for rejecting other possible approaches;
• a justification of the research design is presented, taking account of potential advantages and limitations;
• the research techniques are argued as being theoretically and practically relevant to the research problem; reasons are given for rejection of possible alternatives, rationale provided for amendments to standard tests and procedures or for detailed design of innovative techniques.
(Tinkler & Jackson 2004, 114-116)

The reminder that a thesis need to link both literature and theory to what is actually being done is a good one—it usefully prompts the sort of writing that secures the thesis.

Another good source of examiner questions or focus is found in Trafford and Leshem (2002), who analyse what examiners want to tick off as satisfactory, and come up with ten ‘clusters’ of questions round different generic doctoral aspects: e.g., research design, conceptualization, methodology, methods,etc. Thesis writers may need to disengage from their attention to their research in the early stages to patiently give explanation and justification for decisions as they are making them, when the issues are fresh in their mind.

• Glatthorn, Allan A. (1998). Writing the Winning Dissertation: A Step-by-Step Guide Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Corwin, 1998.
• Johnston, Sue. (1997). “Examining the Examiners: an Analysis of Examiners’ Reports on Doctoral Theses,” Studies in Higher Education, Vol 22(3): 333-347.
• Tinkler, Penny and Carolyn Jackson. (2004). The Doctoral Examination Process: A Handbook for Students, Examiners and Supervisors. Berkshire: Open University Press.
• Trafford, Vernon and Shosh Leshem. (2002).“Starting at the End to Undertake Doctoral Research: Predictable Questions as Stepping Stones” in Higher Education Review, 34, 4, 2002, 43 – 61.

Real writing aversion: Can it be overcome?

Tags

overcoming writing aversion, self management

By Susan Carter
The focus here is on the psychology of writing aversion. I’m working again with one of my favourite ex-students, let’s call her Dr X.

Dr X. left school at 14 after some unfortunate experiences there. Her passion for her practical work in health drove her into study. Older and wiser, but still with an admirable degree of attitude, she has since graduated with her PhD due to her sheer grit in persisting through the writing of her thesis. She was one of those doctoral students who thrive on the doing of research yet is intensely averse to writing about it. Takeaway message: Any relationship with writing is likely to be influenced by past experiences. These could be negative and can’t be changed, but luckily the relationship with writing is also influenced by who you are—and that’s in your control and can be changed.

With the PhD conquered, Dr X. is determined to become more comfortable with writing. How does someone get over phobia towards writing?

She would like to feel the same pleasure producing articles that she has when giving her popular lectures. I’ve suggested stepping out of the rigid hard science objectivity that she has used to date and trying some of the same things that make her lectures work so well. For example, the equivalent of her opening a lecture with a short Youtube clip might be to begin her article with a juicy quotation from fiction followed by a short gutsy sentence aimed to attract attention.

Could a relationship with writing be improved by changing how it is talked about? Rita Brause (2000: 11-16) considers metaphors commonly used for thesis writing: ‘mountain climbing, running the rapids, running a marathon, coming of age, a train ride or journey, a war or battle, a hazing experience, a birthing experience, a dance’ and ‘a blind person: An individual stumbling in a room never visited before.’ She suggests that individuals should develop metaphors consciously that suit who they are, and says perhaps cynically: ‘If you flourish in circumstances where you feel victimized and totally dependent on others, then consciously choose to use the metaphors that reflect this kind of behaviour.’ I guess Brause’s point is that cultivating an identity based on your own sense of yourself as a victim of academia or one of its dependents might not help you to settle in to your own writing as something that feels right—comfortable, homely—to do, own, enjoy driving (which is Dr X’s goal right now).
Maybe if you default to saying that writing is a pain, you could try shutting that story up. Don’t use your routine lament for at least six months and then see if writing feels any better.

At the same time, I know how therapeutic a good whinge session with fellow sufferers can be—that trusty Thesis Whisperer has written a great critical argument for its liberating work (Mewburn, 2011)—and you may find that this is really helpful too. But if you suspect that your own troubling experiences actually are way more catastrophic than the healthy social exchanges that energise doc student talk, and are really keen to change your own attitude….

Would it be possible to project from the gruesome writing stage to the elation at completion, when often new doctors recognise personal development and satisfaction: it isn’t just the degree they walk away with, but a better sureness of their ability to manage themselves. For example, one study began skeptical “about the Romantic project of self-discovery through education” (139) and found almost to their embarrassment that their new PhD graduate participants fairly often described the ‘joy’ of the doctoral process amongst somewhat ecstatic descriptions of how much they grew as people (Leonard, Becker & Coate, 2005). Maybe another self-help trick is to accept writing as an essential part of the struggle towards discovery. I like the practical advice from Murray (2012)—it’s so helpful—but I also really like O’Connor and Petch’s (2012) assertion that ‘the mechanistic model diminishes the experience of writing…. Writing must …be thought of as a form of truth emerging from self-development’ (82-83). I’ve got to say that is how it works for me.

You can, of course, choose to stage-manage your writing environment as a pleasure zone. O’Connor and Petch (2012) declare “we must take this active and dynamic sense of the body into account when constructing embodied writing environments. We must realise that the body in itself has its own traditions and history in as much as it is open to new possibilities. The body that writes is situated at the intersection of both practice and possibility” (O’Connor & Petch, 2012: 79). Not a bad legend for a writing averse jock.

Right now it is Friday at 4.36 pm and my body is stiff from sitting with books and a screen for company pondering about how to help the remarkable Dr X. Any tips that might help Dr X overcome a longstanding history of abuse from the writing process?

Brause, R. (2000). Writing your doctoral dissertation: Invisible rules for success. London: Falmer.

Leonard, D., Becker, R., & Coate, K. (2005). To prove myself at the highest level: The benefits of doctoral study. Higher Education Research and Development, 24(2), 135-149.

Mewburn, I. (2011). Troubling talk: Assembling the PhD candidate. Studies in Continueing Education, 33(3). You can see it here http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0158037X.2011.585151

Murray, R. (2012). How to write a thesis. 3rd Ed. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

O’Connor, P., & Petch, M. (2012). Merleau-Ponty, writing groups and the possibility of space. In L. Clughen & C. Hardy (Eds.), Writing in the Disciplines: Building Supportive Cultures for Student Writing in UK Higher Education (pp. 75-97). Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Leave it in or delete it? Dilemmas in writing the research story

Tags

delete from thesis, research story, thesis by publication

by Cally Guerin

Increasingly I find myself reminding students that a thesis doesn’t have to report on every single thought the researcher has had for the past 3 or 4 (or more) years of candidature. Sure, it is very valuable to include descriptions of null responses or negative results from experiments – this is certainly interesting to those working in that particular field and provides helpful information for other researchers in the area, sometimes closing off possible paths that are now known to be unfruitful. It can also be very useful to report on problems that arose during the project which changed the direction of the research. Such insights can demonstrate critical thinking on the part of the candidate who not only encountered problems along the way, but who also found innovative solutions.

What gets left out is sometimes as important as what is left in the thesis, however. Not everything that has been read needs to be included in the literature review; indeed, critical thinking is demonstrated in part by being discerning, by choosing what is relevant and important to the discussion, rather than offering up a grab-bag of all that vaguely touches on an area. Staying focused on one central line of argument, maintaining a strong sense of direction and not going off onto irrelevant tangents, makes for good research writing, as does the capacity to delete sentences that, however beautifully written, move off in a different direction. Likewise, a scholar must choose what is usefully included in the final telling of the story of the thesis.

I use the word ‘story’ deliberately to imply that this is one version of events that has been carefully constructed and crafted to present a coherent account of the research process. I like Rudestam and Newton’s (2001) description of a well-written thesis containing many of the elements of detective fiction: a mystery in terms of a research question that requires answering; clues that take the form of data collection; the elimination of incorrect answers or red herrings encountered along the way. The thesis doesn’t necessarily have to follow the chronology of events as experienced by the researcher – just because delays were experienced in starting one part of the project doesn’t mean that the story must follow precisely the same sequence of events. Readers need a coherent story about those events that adheres to its own internal logic in order to understand the value and integrity of the research itself.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to make a plug for the thesis by publication. This form is often rather leaner than traditional format theses (though not necessarily meaner!). I think that thesis by publication offers one way to help students stay focused on what is interesting and useful to the reader. Writing with the audience of journal reviewers in mind can be a valuable aid towards being a little more objective about one’s own writing; having a strict word or page limit can also focus the mind on what really needs to be included. Using the format of a journal article encourages researchers to hone in on what’s new and important, and to recognise what is assumed knowledge at this level.

Does this resonate with your own experience? As examiners, what do you want to see left out of theses? As supervisors and writing teachers, what do you find yourselves saying to students on this topic? And as PhD candidates, where do the struggles occur over what to leave out?

Rudestam, K.E. and Newton, R.R. (2001) Surviving your dissertation: A comprehensive guide to content and process. 2nd Edn. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

When is a thesis up to standard?

Tags

assessing theses, doctoral examination, marking rubrics

Welcome to our first guest post by Dr Michelle Picard. Michelle is Director of Researcher Education & Development in the School of Education at Adelaide University. Amongst other things, she convenes the Integrated Bridging Program-Research for international doctoral students.

by Michelle Picard
School of Education, University of Adelaide

I started thinking about using some kind of marking grid for assessing doctoral theses when it became clear to me that students (and sometimes their supervisors) are often not really sure whether their theses are ready to be submitted for examination. Even having read completed theses by others that have been accepted for the award of PhD, it can be very difficult to measure one’s own writing in relation to such documents. Has the work reached an appropriate standard and is it now ready for submission? And even then, it’s perfectly possible to receive conflicting reports from examiners who have very different ideas of what makes the grade for a PhD.

This is an issue for us all, but the complications are perhaps highlighted in contexts where developing nations are attempting to increase research capacity and thus suddenly engaging with the international research community in much greater numbers than previously. With limited numbers of experienced supervisors, students and supervisors are sometimes relying on a certain amount of guesswork about what examiners are looking for. Consequently, assumptions can go either way – sometimes substandard theses are regarded as suitable for submission, and other times unrealistically high standards are imposed on students.

I have been working with my colleague Lalitha Velautham on developing marking rubrics and assessment matrices to see if we can establish some clearer and more uniform method for helping students and their supervisors make decisions about when a thesis is ready for submission. As academic language and learning academics we were looking for a way to interact effectively with our disciplinary colleagues and began by developing a research proposal assessment matrix. We took as our starting point the Researcher Skills Development Framework developed at Adelaide University, since this document articulates the various skills and actions required to demonstrate autonomy in research, and also referred to the literature review assessment presented by Boote & Beile (2005).

Rubrics for assessment are organised under the following categories, and articulate the extent to which the document provides evidence that the student understands how to:

1. Embark on an enquiry and determine a need for knowledge;
2. Find/generate needed information using an appropriate theoretical framework and/or methodology;
3. Evaluate information/data and the process to find/generate this data;
4. Organise information and develop ideas;
5. Synthesise and apply new knowledge; and
6. Communicate knowledge effectively and ethically, using an appropriate format.

There are some substantial challenges in attempting to create a thesis assessment matrix, not least of which is the accommodation of disciplinary differences, particularly in relation to emerging forms of practice-based and professional doctorates. Also, the notion of academic independence remains a central pillar of much university work, and a document such as we are proposing is likely to bump up against resistance to anything that is perceived as ‘managerialism’ or attempts to instruct academics in how to do their job. As demonstrated by Kiley and Mullins (2002; 2004), experienced examiners often prefer to rely on a holistic approach to assessing a thesis. However, we hope to make the matrix available merely as a supplementary tool to help decisions about when a thesis is ready for submission to examiners, rather than a prescriptive marking criteria or an attempt to pre-empt examiners’ decisions.

Perhaps there will always be an element of subjectivity and ‘art’ in the assessment of doctoral theses. In a spirit of transparency and inclusiveness, however, the hope is that by articulating at least some of the ways in which one might assess a thesis we can minimise some of the unevenness of the system.

MOOCs and doctoral education

Tags

doctoral education, MOOCs, online learning, remote doctoral students

by Cally Guerin

Like most of you, I’ve been following the debates about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) with interest. The World Universities Forum website has had some useful updates on what’s happening where, and this article
by Martin Davies provides a good history of the evolution of MOOCs. In what I’ve read, most of the focus has been on undergraduate courses; only one I’ve seen so far considered what MOOCs might mean for those of us working in the research end of universities. Joshua Kim argues that MOOCs will require lots of good researchers creating new knowledge in disciplines to feed the demand for these courses, which will have interesting implications for doctoral study and the writing of theses.

I find myself yet again considering my own role as an academic developer working with doctoral students and their supervisors. Why do I believe there is added value in having live bodies in the room together?

Obviously, there are some wonderful materials available online with well-produced content and excellent pedagogical approaches; others are perhaps ‘still under development’ (to be generous!), or not really appropriate for particular local contexts. There is certainly a great deal to be gained by pooling resources, freeing ourselves from reinventing the wheel, and creating much greater flexibility in the timing of accessing materials. Certainly, when I’m preparing workshops, I often look to all sorts of writing websites to get some inspiration and make sure I’m keeping up with current thinking (Purdue’s Online Writing Lab, for example, has sometimes saved me from some sticky situations, and Daily Writing Tips has some wonderful advice).

Some of this ties into my concerns about how we provide rich doctoral experiences for remote students. I know candidates have different motivations for embarking on a PhD in the first place, and am not suggesting everyone needs to get the same things out of the experience. For all students, however, a great deal of informal learning can take place through chance meetings and brief conversations with one’s peers passing on information about all sorts of topics relating to research and beyond. For those who are not present in person, it’s important that we provide other means of access to such conversations. Sure, there are plenty of blogs out there, but local, situated information can be equally valuable and offers a different kind of support.

This idea that one-size-fits-all is one of the areas of concern when it comes to doctoral students and MOOCs. It isn’t easy for a fixed, online lecture series, like we see in the MOOC environment, to provide this kind of localised information. It also doesn’t seem to be the place where doctoral students can engage with each other very effectively, despite attempts to create smaller discussion groups and work groups.

We do need to be conscious of what we as academic developers, academic literacy teachers and writing teachers value-add in this environment – what is the point of getting students or staff together in the same room? For me part of the answer is in the real-time group discussions where people are bouncing ideas off each other, engaging in the to and fro of half-formed thoughts, taking up some ideas and allowing others to drop when they don’t take off. I haven’t yet seen this done as effectively in online environments, but others may have found ways to facilitate this. I also want to be able to provide spaces in which students can talk freely about their writing, take risks and experiment with ideas without worrying who might be listening. But perhaps I’m simply too attached to the notion that we are embodied beings?

I’m sure lots of you have plenty of ideas about how MOOCs might impact on doctoral writing and doctoral education more generally, from all sorts of perspectives. It would be great if you would be willing to share those ideas with the rest of our readers by sending us your comments.

Formatting and the Final Stages of the PhD

Tags

completion of doctorate, final stages of PhD, Formatting theses, using Word styles

By Cally Guerin

As I’m gearing up to take on the new semester and meet the new cohort of students, there are two PhD students in my corridor preparing to submit their theses in the next few weeks. It’s a stressful time after working on these projects for three or four years – so much of one’s identity is caught up in the thesis itself. And, to be perfectly honest, I think you need to go a little bit mad before reaching the point where you can let go of a doctoral thesis! But what can be done to make this final stretch a little more manageable?

One source of anguished howls echoing down the corridor arises from formatting crises. I asked our wonderful IT person, Helen Foster, about her recommendations. She has the following advice for people using Word documents:

1. Start with a template (if your university doesn’t have a recommended template already, it’s worth getting something put in place, at least in each Faculty or School). For students it’s much easier to modify an existing template than create a new one.
2. To ensure that changes to styles are applied to all future documents generated from the template, go to ‘Styles’ and then select ‘New documents based on this template’.
3. Almost every change to the look of the text should be done via styles, not by formatting text. Exceptions are the title page wording and the words “Table of Contents” that appear before the automatically generated table of contents.
4. Use Body Text style rather than Normal style for the bulk of text so that any modifications are confined to the ordinary paragraph style. Changes to Normal style will have a ripple effect through other styles.
5. Insert a section break any time you want to change the content of headers and footers, including the style of page numbering. Again, this confines the change to that specific part of the document.

Helen does say that it isn’t always necessary to use a separate template. An alternative approach is just create a word document for the first chapter and do a File > Save As to create additional documents for subsequent chapters, deleting the text but maintaining all styles, footers etc.

Using a template that already has the right page size and margins in place from the beginning will make it easier to manage tables and graphics in the final version of the thesis. One of the loudest howls of anguish came from a student whose beautifully designed, complex tables suddenly didn’t fit her page when she realised she had to leave room for binding.

Many PhD students are used to working with the basics of word processing programs, and don’t realise how much more there is to know. ‘Outline’ is another really useful function to view the headings and shape of a chapter to see the structure of the argument as it unfolds. It can also provide an easier method for moving text around the document. While all this formatting of doctoral writing seems unbearably mundane in the beginning stages when creativity is in full flight, it can save weeks of heartache in the final stages.

And yes, examiners do care about typos and other little errors, as we know from research undertaken by Mullins & Kiley (2002) and Carter (2008), amongst others. Proofreading is slow, painstaking work and not easy to do effectively on one’s own writing – it’s too easy to see what you are expecting to see, rather than what is really there. Supervisors can be very helpful, of course, but it can be reassuring to get friends and/or fellow students to read sections, not to mention professional editors (see my previous blog on that topic). Ensuring consistency of spelling, of titles and numbering of pages, tables, figures and diagrams across chapters is a separate task in proofreading – again, the use of templates right from the beginning can help here. While occasional errors are not the end of the world (I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve opened up a thesis at random in writing group discussions, only to spot a misspelling or wrongly numbered table at the first glance), too many of these mistakes can be extremely irritating to examiners.

Do you have some further advice on how to avoid formatting problems at the last minute? Or stories to share that might be instructive to those involved in preparing theses for examination?