Top Terrors for PhD supervisors–things that make us wake in fright

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Care in supervision, PhD supervisor roles, Supervisor fears

By Claire Aitchison

It’s scary being a PhD supervisor.

Whatever the reason, there would be few supervisors who have not experienced anxiety and self-doubt at some point.

This post is about some of the ‘night terrors’ that can afflict doctoral supervisors. What scares you the most? Please feel welcome to add to this list—and share remedies!

Am I asking too much of this student?

During doctoral candidature there are inevitable ups and downs. Emotional turbulence for both student and supervisor can have their origins in the challenges of the research itself; the stresses around writing and giving and receiving feedback; or perhaps have nothing to do with the research and instead arise from financial, family or work concerns. Life gets in the way, damn it! It isn’t easy to know when to ease off and make allowances, or when to maintain the right level of pressure so that the PhD stays on the boil. How does one balance the personal vulnerabilities and demands on individual students against the institution’s completion-focussed priorities? Furthermore, sometimes the needs of supervisors come into the equation — we too have lives, challenges, workloads and vulnerabilities!

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Using infographics to communicate your research

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infographics for researchers, Presenting your research visually

This week’s post comes from a graphic designer who works with academics.  Ben approached us when one of his colleagues suggested our readers may value tips on creating infographics to illustrate and promote their research. Ben Brockbank can be contacted on ben@academicinfographic.com.

As this post demonstrates, good infographics offer a fast, effective and eye-catching method of conveying complex information in a more accessible and engaging way.

In the context of research, ‘infographics’ can apply to any number of visual outputs, including presentations, visual reports, illustrations that accompany an article, or scientific diagrams. However, with academic and research infographics, probably the most widely used outputs are the research poster and visual abstract. I’m sure you’re familiar with research posters.

 

Less well-known, are visual abstracts which condense the information from an abstract into a more engaging visual display. Visual abstracts still provide key information but are more flexible and varied in terms of size and content than research posters or traditional written abstracts.

Example of a Visual Abstract

my supervisor says I need help with my writing

Great way to be proactive about writing help

Think Ahead Blog

Dear Thesis Writer,

Thanks for contacting me and for being proactive about developing your writing!

My first question is to ask you whether you have got specific and detailed feedback from your supervisor(s) about what they think and how you can improve? Have you talked to them about the feedback they have given you, so you can understand how to move forward? This is the most personalised and relevant way to improve writing, as it is within the context of your discipline area, and specific to your learning needs. It’s well worth a chat if you haven’t already, as it means you aren’t operating on assumptions about what they think.

If you have had this discussion about your feedback, and agreed with your supervisors(s)that you need further opportunities to develop — below are some ideas you can try out:

Are you taking into account that writing at this level needs…

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Publishing about publishing: a review of ‘Global Academic Publishing’ (eds Curry & Lillis)

By Cally Guerin

Mary Jane Curry & Theresa Lillis (eds), (2018). Global Academic Publishing: Policies, Perspectives and Pedagogies. Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation: 1. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

In response to increasing pressure from institutions and funding bodies for academics to make their research public, there is a great deal of advice—and anxiety—for those seeking to publish their research. Doctoral writers, too, are often caught up in this ‘push to publish’ and, as emerging scholars, they are likely to be even less well informed about the challenges and nuances of navigating the system than seasoned researchers. When I saw that Mary Jane Curry and Theresa Lillis had published a collection of essays about publishing, I was keen to get some fresh insights into the current state of play in this vexed area—and I have learnt a great deal from their new book.

How many hours writing for the doctorate?

By Ian Brailsford, Postgraduate learning adviser, Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland.

The rose-tinted view of the leisurely doctorate taking as long as it needed to complete (if it ever really existed) has been consigned to history with global drivers for ‘timely completions’. But it’s fair to say that doctoral candidates have more flexibility in determining their work schedules than most other ‘knowledge workers’. So, in determining this schedule, how much time should doctoral candidates devote to the business of writing a thesis?

The Perfect Coat: Form and Function in Thesis Writing

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Wring style, writing structure

By Dr Anaise Irvine (Auckland University of Technology) and Dr Ian Brailsford (University of Auckland)

Anaise works as a researcher development coordinator at Auckland University of Technology, ensuring that the university offers opportunities for researchers to develop their skills. She has been providing writing tips via AUT’s Thesislink blog for a few years, and gives writing feedback to all students who submit abstracts for AUT’s Postgraduate Symposium. Ian works as a postgraduate learning adviser at the University of Auckland, supporting postgraduate student learning. He has had a long career working with postgrad students in mostly workshop and orientation sessions.

In her new book Developing Research Writing: A Handbook for Supervisors and Advisors (co-edited with Susan Carter), Deborah Laurs points out that learning advisors like ourselves “see many more instances of postgraduate writing than any one supervisor” (p.43). While supervisors become well-versed in the writing standards of their discipline, we witness the writing struggles that occur across disciplines. This equips us to engage in ‘big picture’ thinking about principles of good academic writing that transcend disciplinary norms.

We find it useful to translate these big picture ideas into metaphors and heuristic techniques that enable students to process the discipline-specific advice they are already (hopefully) receiving from their supervisor/s. If supervisors are giving detailed feedback on thesis drafts, then these heuristic techniques can help students to make sense of details by understanding the general writing principles underpinning the feedback they receive.

Through recent collegial coffee conservations, we’ve devised a metaphor to help students grasp the fundamental notions of thesis form and thesis function. We offer it here, in the hope that it can be useful in our colleagues’ conversations with students.