Quantcast
Channel: Paul Spencer – The Digital Doctorate
Viewing all 71 articles
Browse latest View live

Why? and the pyramid of purpose

0
0

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

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

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

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

pyramid of purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

More to work on in 2013!


Tagged: David Allen, pyramid of purpose, Simon Sinek, start with why, TED

The Effective Researcher – The middle years

0
0
The middle years of a PhD?

The middle years of a PhD?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Useful links

The UWE Graduate School website

Vitae (Researcher Development) website for postgraduate researchers

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

*if you want to sign up to this as a UWE researcher then get in touch  [contact-form]


The Effective Part Time Researcher – The ultimate balancing act?

0
0

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

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

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

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

So time and finances are the immediate hurdles.

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

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

  1. Perseverence
  2. Tenacity
  3. Cogency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Effective part time researcher Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking forward to it!


2012 in review

0
0

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 3 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.


The Socially Innovative Researcher

0
0

Social Innovation word cloudRecently I directed a course entitled “The Socially Innovative Researcher” in the Chancellors Conference Centre in Manchester. I was joined by a team of experienced colleagues from the University of Manchester (Dr Jim Boran, Dr Lynn Clark, Dr Emily McIntosh & Elizabeth Wilkinson) and the wider Vitae network (Dr Chris Russell, Dr Nathan Ryder & Janet Wilkinson) as well as some inspirational visiting speakers (thank you Andrew Thorp and Phil Tulba) to help me deliver aspects of the course and guide the participants through the programme.

This course was designed to help researchers understand more about social innovation and social entrepreneurship. These are relatively new terms to describe the discovery or generation of new ideas that work to solve social and/or environmental challenges. It is important to raise awareness of social innovation because I believe that social innovation is probably the most important factor in meeting the economic and social challenges of the future.

So why run a course about social innovation with academic researchers? I’ve got form in this area having co-produced development materials aimed at researchers on the topic of social enterprise, a short course designed to raise awareness of social enterprise, a different way of doing business. I know that some folks have heard of social enterprise but don’t really understand how it works, this article from the Guardian this week highlights the issue. In the UK and Europe, there are lots of organisations promoting social enterprise as an alternative way of creating sustainable ventures that deliver social change and there is a particular push for universities through schemes such as the social entrepreneurship awards offered by HEFCE and UnLtd.

However, for this particular course I decided to broaden the theme to social innovation because I believe that research is a pivotal strand of social innovation – researchers are fantastic at generating new ideas to tackle problems that society faces and are generally motivated by a desire to make a difference in society.  I used the prezi below to set out my vision for the course.

One of the most inspiring people I have read about is Muhammad Yunus, a former academic who proposed and implemented a socially innovative solution to help poor women in Bangladesh start their own businesses. The following video takes up the story and gives an overview of social entrepreneurship…

The theme of the course is encapsulated by a quote from the playwright George Bernard Shaw

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

I like this, it resonates strongly with my experience within academia, most researchers are passionate about what they do- they want to see their ideas make an impact in the world.

I decided to divide the course into themes covering motivations and values on day 1, creative problem solving and social impact on day 2 with the final day being about putting ideas into action. Here’s the programme that covers all that!

Day 1 – Motivations & Values

The thinking behind this theme for the day was to test the assertion that researchers are not motivated by fame and fortune; that there is a more altruistic driver behind this career choice. The following quotes sum up the day.

“People don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.” – Simon Sinek

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people” – W B Yeats

The first session focussed on communicating research in an authentic way. I like to use a model proposed by Simon Sinek, Start with why, because I think it works really well for the academic environment. I’ve written a fuller explanation here. The slides used in this session are below:

The afternoon session designed to explore the motivations and values of researchers, to think about what drives us to do what we do. Dr Lynn Clark facilitated this fascinating session and introduced a model that helps to focus on the positives; appreciative enquiry. The theme that resonated for me was her assertion that “diversity managed well leads to innovation”; here are her slides.

The first guest speaker for the programme was Andrew Thorp from MoJoyourbusiness who talked about the power of using stories to convey authenticity and purpose. What I liked about Andrew’s presentation is that he recapped many of the concepts explored earlier in the day with a slightly different perspective. His presentation is below…

I did film Andrew’s presentation but managed to overwrite the file (I had a rare technological disaster!). However, here is Andrew talking about similar themes in another interview.

Day 2 – Creative problem solving

This theme was reflect the changing nature of research, more research is inter disciplinary, more of our grand challenges require different perspectives and points of view to generate the kinds of sustainable solutions that are required. It is sometimes difficult to see this wider picture when immersed in the gritty details of our research. The following quotes sum up the day…

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” – Albert Einstein

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” – Linus Pauling

Day 2 started with a recap of the course so far and I showed two videos to join days 1 & 2 together. The first is by Steven Addis and was selected because of the nature of the story behind the pictures – how powerful it was that these were not just moments in time but a record of changing perspectives.

The second short video used was by Derek Sivers, for me it represented how easy it is for us to take our own perspectives of things for granted as being the way things are.

The first session of the day was introduced by Dr Chris Russell, from ThinkInspireCreate, to take the participants through a model of the creative process purportedly used by Walt Disney – Dreamer, Realist, Critic using some of the current affairs on the news that day. This was a good warm up exercise for researchers, many of whom are much more comfortable taking the role of critically appraising others ideas, by using topics that were not necessarily anything to do with research.

This led to the main exercise of the morning, led by Dr Jim Boran, to generate some research proposals/questions around a grand challenge of an ageing population using a process called the Research Sandpit. This is an intensive process often used by the UK Research Councils to generate interdisciplinary research ideas that are funded in response to broad areas of interest.

Here’s a prezi that summarises the activity.

After lunch was to take the outputs generated from the morning activity to explore the potential impact and the resources needed to achieve that. This is absolutely vital in preparing research proposals for funders who will want applicants to map out The pathways to impact of the work that they hope to undertake, they will want you to demonstrate that you have accounted for the necessary resources to deliver on the project. The impact of potential solutions are also critical to social innovation, no good having an idea if it doesn’t achieve any kind of change. The session was facilitated by Janet Wilkinson from ThreeTimesThree using a a moveable mind mapping tool called Ketso (itself a socially innovative idea from academia) to help participants to interrogate their plans, to pose the right sorts of questions to identify areas for further scrutiny.

The second invited speaker was Phil Tulba, a social entrepreneur, to talk through a number of key concepts that are important in achieving social change using Adrenaline Alley as an example. The prezi that Phil used is below.

And here is the video of Phil explaining all…

Day 3 – Putting ideas into action

The idea behind day 3 was to draw all of the concepts explored thus far and bring them together in an activity that was designed to raise awareness of a different way of doing business, social enterprise. It is often said of researchers that they are not aware of how business operates and/or they lack the commercial awareness to see their ideas implemented in wider society. I think this is disingenuous, I believe that most researchers are all too aware of how business operates, they are just not inspired by it so pay it little attention. The purpose of this exercise was to show researchers that not all business is counter productive to good research. The following quotes inspired the approach for the day.

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

“The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do, but the absence of doing it.” – Peter Drucker

To recap and to point to the activities of the day I showed a short video about doing, “The Path of a Doer” from the Do Lectures.

The morning session was focussed on generating socially innovative ideas in different setting to that of research, to consider ideas that could feasibly be launched as sustainable ventures. The skills, competencies, attributes and behavious that we explored on the previous two days all come into play in this exercise by bringing like minded individuals together to develop an idea. It was facilitated by Dr Nathan Ryder, a freelance consultant in the field of researcher development.

As part of this exercise, a video was shown of some social entrepreneurs who explain more about social enterprise and how it can help to change things.

The slides for the presentation used in this session can be found below.

The last session of the day was designed to provide participants with an overview of the practical steps of taking an idea from a concept through to a full proposal, in other words how to make things happen. Dr Rick Watson from NovoModo and David Smith from InnovationWorks in partnership with the University of Manchester Innovation Group (UMI3) gave a quick tour of a toolkit they call the Social Enterprise Brief Case to assist academic researchers to take their ideas forward. Details of the scheme they are promoting were circulated via e-mail to the participants.

Further resources

A number of participants wanted some further links to the background information and books referred to that underpinned this course, here’s a list:-

One or two folks commented on the eclectic range of music that emanated from my laptop during the three days:- for those interested here’s an approximate playlist on spotify 


Tagged: communication of research, ideas, motivations, Simon Sinek, Social Enterprise, social impact, Social innovation, University of Manchester, values

UWE Graduate School – One year on

0
0
From: Neil Willey, Director of the UWE Graduate School

Party Cake

It’s just over a year ago now that UWE set up its university-wide Graduate School and then celebrated the launch, so I thought it might be a good time to reflect on how things are going. Personally, I think we’ve now got a pretty sturdy one year old and that we’ve already mostly done teething and walking! I’m pretty acutely aware, however, that walking is just the start and that, let alone running, we probably need to be triple jumping or something fairly soon. There are two things that particularly struck me during the year and which make me think triple jumping might be possible…….

The first is the great team of people that were assembled into the UWE Graduate School. I’ve realised how many people at UWE already appreciate this, and really do wish that all the research students and supervisors at UWE have the opportunity that I do to engage with Graduate School staff – because I think they would then realise the interest and expertise available to them. I believe that the Graduate School can be really helpful to PGR students and supervisors across the university but that we all have to, somehow, be in sufficient contact with each other for this to really happen. During the first year this was exemplified to me in skills development events for students and supervisors. The development events that I was part of seemed to be of great benefit to everyone, which is making me think a great deal about how we can extend the experience to more students and supervisors.

The second thing that spurred me on to believe that the Graduate School at UWE can really go places is the real importance of PGR, both generally and to UWE. Contact with lots of students and supervisors from across the university over the course of a year really emphasises what fantastic things PGR students and their supervisors do. I’ve learned about so many things from across all the Faculties that could really make a difference to the world. To me it seems crucial that UWE has signalled its intent to have a healthy PGR community, but I do wonder if we all realise how central it can be to all that UWE wishes to be.

So, after a year I’m confident that we’ve made a good start and that the UWE Graduate School can really be helpful to PGR students and supervisors. Contact across the Faculties has given me quite a clear picture of the UWE PGR community and how the Graduate School can help. It has, however, started me thinking that perhaps the more channels of communication are available, the more difficult it is to communicate.  It’s also been a reminder of the committee work necessary in a large institution! Overall, I’m happy that we’ve now got an overall focus for PGR at UWE that we can build on to respond to the needs of our research students and supervisors.

Neil


Tagged: anniversary, Graduate School, postgraduate researchers, skills development

Moving blogs – from posterous to wordpress.com

0
0

posterous-logoAbout two years ago I started my blogging journey, I wanted a way to reflect on the workshops I deliver to researchers – to jot down the context, share the resources used. I’m a reasonably confident and competent tech user but had no clue about blogging platforms. This is why I chose posterous.com as my starting place because it was pretty simple to use allowing me to focus on writing content rather than worrying about templates or html or css editors…

Then about a year ago, posterous announced that they had been acquired by twitter. It was at that point that I began to look around for alternatives because I had a sneaking suspicion that posterous would close down at some point…. and so it has now been announced that posterous will close at the end of April.

I have already made the jump from posterous to wordpress in August of last year – I know many folks will be thinking about doing the same so I thought I’d share my experience of doing so.

The first step is to export the content of your Posterous blog – you can do this right from your “manage spaces” panel in posterous by clicking on the “backup” button – see below

posterous backup

This could take a while but eventually you’ll get a zipped archive of your blog.

The next step is then to take it to another blogging platform, in this case I am talking about wordpress but before I carry on it’s important to stress the difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com. The former is an open source website architecture that relies on you having your own webspace and domain name whereas the latter is both a website template AND a hosting space combined. If, like me, you want to keep things as simple as it was with posterous then a wordpress.com blog is what you’ll probably prefer!

WordPress.com offer a free blogging solution – this allows you to store upto 3GB of data (text, images etc) and gives you freedom to call your blog anything you like with the suffix .wordpress.com. For most folks this will be adequate. You can customise the theme of your blog with a diverse range of templates etc.

I chose to pay a fee for my new blog – thedigitaldoctorate.com - it cost $99 per year. This gives me an extra 10GB storage, makes my blog advert free and allows a few extra bells and whistles (like having a .com url).

Once signed up then importing your archive from posterous is easy, you use a dedicated import tool right from the control panel (dashboard) of your new blog; it will transfer across all your text entries, comments and hyperlinks. The official advice on this is easy and straightforward to follow http://en.support.wordpress.com/import/import-from-posterous/

Things I’ve learned

1) The embedded documents that you had in posterous won’t have come across in the import – you may have a hyperlink to the document which takes you back to the posterous blog (which won’t be there in May…!). This creates a headache for folks like me who tend to embed powerpoints/word docs/pdfs into all my posts. There’s no easy way to say this but you have to find all the original files and do one of two things–

(i) Upload those files to a 3rd party document store e.g. scribd - you can upload many files at once using the desktop uploader (handy!). The advantage of using scribd (or similar) is that you can edit the attributes of the file in terms of what folks can do with it (e.g. disable download/printing). Having your documents here is also handy for connecting up to LinkedIn etc – promotes your professional stuff across a number of platforms. Scribd also have a wordpress.com specific embed shortcode which makes it easier to embed docs into your posts. The downside is that this is a two step process and a serious pain in the arse if you have a couple of hundred files to upload and then re-embed into individual posts.

(ii) You can upload the files directly into your wordpress “media library”, this is easy enough to do and here is the guidance on that http://en.support.wordpress.com/uploading-documents/. Only note of caution here is that this could eat into your data allowance if you have many large powerpoints/pdfs, especially if you have the free blog which is capped to 3GB.

2) It is a pain in the rear to embed prezis into a wordpress.com blog. This is something to do with not supporting iframes (don’t ask me – I’m clueless) and the workaround involves taking the embed code from your prezi and editing it to work with wordpress.com. I hated this. However a very helpful French techie person has volunteered a simple web app that can do that bit for you. So listen up! Bookmark this url

Prezi shortcode generator!

Simply copy the url of the prezi you want to embed, paste into the generator and click ‘shortcode?’ Then you copy the long string, paste into your blog – et voila problem solved.

3) Uploading photos into your media library is a cinch and it is easy to create a slick slideshow in your posts. Here’s the support page, it’s a piece of cake! http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/gallery/

4) Embedding youtube videos is also really easy – I find the easiest way is to simply grab the url of the video and click the add media (from url) button in the editing pane – paste in url and click insert into post. This works for most media types at the end of a url.

5) TED videos have a special wordpress embed shortcode – really easy!

There’s a few tips to be getting on with – if I think of anymore then I’ll update!


Tagged: Blog, posterous.com, wordpress.com

Welcome to EdD – part 2

0
0

The word welcome created from 3 dimensional letteringThis week UWE are running a short welcome session for doctoral candidates who are studying on one of the professional doctorate routes – the EdD. This programme has two major parts to it, the first being comprised of a structured taught element and the second is the supervised research phase. An overview of this professional doctorate can be found on the following UWE Course page.

We are also being quite innovative with this particular session because the presenters will be physically located at UWE, Bristol and the participants will be joining remotely using a video conferencing client called Visimeet.

The agenda for the day is contained in the presentation which I have embedded below.

The following links may also be helpful to the participants for reference:

The UWE Graduate School Webpage

The contact details for the Graduate School Officers & Administrators

The Vitae Researcher Development website

Information about the Researcher Development Framework



Digital Researcher #druwe March 2013

0
0

Social media on electronic displayThis week I ran a workshop at UWE on the use of social media in the context of research. This follows on from a similar workshop that I ran in February 2012 for researchers and a workshop at the Vitae Conference in September 2012 for researcher skills developers from across the country.

The background to this is that researchers are changing the way they use digital tools in the context of their research. There is lots of work going on as part of the wider JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme including work being carried out by Vitae to better understand the development needs of researchers.

I’m interested in the digital literacy of folks like me for a couple of reasons:

1) It surely makes sense to better understand how researchers using digital tools in the context of research so that we are better able to support them

2) I believe that the very same digital tools can help staff supporting researchers to engage in their own professional development (something that we all want more of!)

The slides I used to support this workshop are below.

Prezi was used to make the presentation which you can edit remotely & collaboratively.

We started out the morning by highlighting some of the hopes & fears that researchers have about using social media tools… I predicted that the fears would fall into three broad categories:
  1. Information overload - the fear that engaging in social media would be too much information to keep track of
  2. Digital Identity - concern over what to share about oneself, privacy issues and the blurring of private versus professional
  3. Data/intellectual property concerns - what happens if I share something that someone else exploits/stealing of ideas
Hope_and_fears

Hopes

Basic overview of what is out there

Getting research out there

To become more aware of others with similar interest & activities to my own

Catch up with colleagues who use twitter/blogs naturally

Which button do I press?

How to quantify opinion (or research data) gathered via social media tools

Fears

Maintaining privacy

Managing a digital reputation

How do I edit the digital me?

Will this become another distraction?

Digital Identity

We spent some time discussing online identity, how to balance the “personal me” vs the “professional me”, how different tools lend themselves to different purposes and how actively managing information about yourself is a good thing to do.

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it”.Erik Qualman

Twitter

We asked the participants to use twitter to interact with their networks using the hashtag #druwe

Power of networks

We discussed a little bit of network theory, illustrated by this video for a TEDx talk by Zella King

Managing information overload

We had a look at portals and aggregators to help manage information streams.

Using social media tools in research

We discussed how research is social & iterative, the benefits of engaging with folks far and wide about your research outputs and how to use tools to make the finding out about knowledge a little easier. We had a play around with some social citation tools, e.g. CiteULike, Zotero & Mendeley

Blogs

We discussed why folks blog – a variety of reasons including:- organising thoughts, mind dump, getting feedback at an early stage etc.

This blog is a just one such example!

Netiquette

Summed up with “Common sense!”

Other sources of information

Here’s a list of things that I have come across recently on the topic of social media in research (clearly not exhaustive!):-

A blog about blogging in an academic research context from Imperial College - some really interesting advice and guidance here.

The Networked Researcher blog site which promotes the use of social media tools for researchers – “Digital Professionalism – what not to share”

The British Library – Help for Researchers – “Web 2.0 as a social science research tool”

The Guardian Higher Education site – discussing benefits of blogging as a researcher – “How blogging helped me find my research voice”

The Research Information Network site – “Social Media: A Guide for Researchers”

The Vitae/Open University “Social Media Handbook for researchers and supervisors”

Thanks to the researcher who attended both physically and virtually!


Tagged: #druwe, Digital Identity, Digital literacy, Prezi, social media

Business plans: 200 pages or the back of an envelope?

0
0
Business plan word cloud
The following is a guest post from Janet Wilkinson (Three Times Three) on the topic of putting together a business plan for the uninitiated.

Inevitably there is no single answer to the question ‘what do I need to include in my business plan and how long should it be?’ and a Google search on the two words business plan suggested that there are about 1,640,000,000 results. 

The key here is not the number it is the word ‘about.  A business plan is:

  • About the thing you are going to develop – your idea, your organisation, services you will provide, products you will make or sell and the names/brand you are going to give them.  The origin of the idea and ownership of any intellectual property to the idea or product need to be covered in the plan too.
  • About you and the other people who are going to work to be able to deliver the project, idea or enterprise.  This is crucial to demonstrate your experience, expertise and ability to engage others in the plan.
  • About the finances for the business: what money is required for the idea to be developed initially and where is it going to come from?  How will money flow into the organisation and when?  What will you have to spend money on and when will you have to spend it?  Is there a gap between the money flowing in and the money flowing out (and who will cover this)?  How much risk is there in developing the idea (now and in the future) and who is taking this risk?

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” said Alice

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where….” Said Alice

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go” said the Cat.

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Ultimately, business plans are about direction.  One of the main purposes of having one is to communicate your intentions to the outside world (where you need to include them).  They are for communication to anyone who is investing in the project or organisation, lending money to it, funding it or is responsible for delivering the goals or results for it.  Overall, though, I’ve always felt that it is the process of business planning that is the output rather than the document itself.  The time taken to plan what you are doing is invaluable and the decisions you make about your intentions and how the logistics, finances and people involved are going to make it happen are all part of the business planning process.

Similarly, understanding how the money is going to flow in and out of the organisation to make sure you have enough to do what you want to do in the coming years and sustain your idea development is a crucial part of the process.   When I came across the following quote a few years ago it helped to set my practical understanding and experience in some context.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

So, does it need to be 200 pages or will it work on the back of an envelope?  Inevitably the answer is somewhere in between and it depends upon the audience who will receive and read your plan.  Keep the content and size of your plans appropriate to the size of the organisation or idea, think about who is going to receive them and keep them realistic (particularly the numbers) with threads of ambition, drive and future focus throughout – thinking about how the idea and organisation will be sustained beyond the lifetime of the plan.

Also, think about how you are going to communicate the plan to others – will you be sending it to them to read or presenting it in person?  Regardless of the size of your idea it is useful to think about how you’d summarise it in 2-3 pages and/or 20 slides.  Putting this kind of framework on your business plan enables you to concisely to explain your plan, purpose, people, product and finances to others.

Typically you will want to cover:

  • The title or name of your idea
  • What your idea or organisation is about
  • The people who will be making it happen and their areas of expertise in relation to the idea and/or running the organisation
  • The people who will be users, consumers or customers of the idea (and how you are going to reach them)
  • What might exist already in the environment you plan to operate it (and whether these are competitors or potential collaborators)
  • What the longer term plans are for your idea or organisation
  • How much money do you need to get started (and where will it come from)
  • How will the money flow in and out of the organisation in the next 1, 3 or 5 years?
  • How much money you are likely to need in the future for expansion or development of your idea and where will it come from.

As with all writing and plans it is important to start somewhere.  Business plans can be put together initially from your areas of strength working towards the ‘unknowns’ where further research and information gathering can be done.   So, start on the back of an envelope even if it needs to be 200 pages in the end!


Tagged: Business plan, Idea

Preparing a pecha kucha

0
0
Analogue stopwatch

20 slides advancing every 20 seconds

I spend a lot of time delivering workshops to researchers on a diverse set of topics – most of the time I will be waxing lyrical about the need to communicate research well. By that I mean accessible. So inevitably I spend time trying to convince researchers of why they need to practice their presentation skills – to commit to taking risks in finding different ways to engage folks about the important work researchers do.

I’m obviously not the only one because there are others who want folks to challenge the conception that powerpoint presentations are inherently dull and boring affairs. Probably the best known example of this is a presentation format known as Pecha Kucha.

This is a fast paced format where the speaker is given 20 slides that automatically advance every 20 seconds that creates a maximum presentation length of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Originally devised by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham as a way of encouraging architects to stick to the point, it has become a global sensation. It has spawned a number of other similar formats, e.g. Ignite, all of which put a focus on telling an interesting story but just quickly.

I have never prepared and delivered a Pecha Kucha before so when asked recently to deliver one at the South West & Wales Vitae Good Practice Event, I thought I had better practice what I preached. I survived and wanted to share my experience of the challenges involved in preparing a pecha kucha.

Challenge #1. Pronunciation

One of the first things I learned is that I have been saying pecha kucha incorrectly! Looking at the spelling, my Western brain interprets the two words as having four syllables of equal length leading to one to pronounce it:

Peh – Cha; Koo- cha
 
However it is a Japanese term for “chit chat” and native speakers pronounce it rather differently; more like three syllables with an emphasis on the middle syllable.
 
Pe – Chak – cha 
 

Have a listen here to see what I mean.

Challenge #2. Storytelling

The best presentations are stories that get folks emotionally involved. This statement doesn’t often sit well with researchers with their caveats and verbose explanations of detailed investigation but really it is. I even spotted an article in a blog of the well respected academic journal Nature talking about this very point. So regardless of the topic, you have to think “what’s the story?” and regale it with some enthusiasm.

If we have a look at an example Ignite talk (20 slides advancing every 15 seconds!) by Scott Berkun, he says everything I want to about storytelling…

Challenge #3. Storyboarding

If you look at a few examples of pecha kucha, you’ll notice that the slides are mostly pictures. But before you go off hunting for gorgeous photos from around the internet…stop…and think. What are my key points I want to make? How am I going to turn that into a story?

Plan it out using a good ol’ pencil and paper – think about the ebb and flow of your story. Only then will you be in the right place to go looking for the pictures that act as an aid to your story. Remember, storytelling is everything.

Challenge #4. Timing

The slides automatically advance. This is scary because you feel a loss of control and that tends to make people speed up. So, remember you will probably lose your first and last slides to a variety of things – so condense down the message to its absolute key points. Why are you passionate, why should I care, how will this change things. There is also a temptation to keep looking at the slides to see when they change to the next one, often resulting in you pausing as it transitions. I think one should try to keep your story flowing and let the slides carry on – it’ll work out just fine!

Challenge #5. Imagery

It takes longer than you think to track down photo images that are the right fit. Things you need to consider are:-

  • don’t rip off someone else’s copyrighted material – sure go to Flickr and browse but use the advanced search to find images that allow for re-use (a creative commons licence)
  • You can buy royalty-free photos from a number of websites (e.g. iStockPhoto – this is where I buy many of mine from) – A little trick here is that these sites often offer a free photo of the week (worth knowing if you are building up a collection)
  • Use your own photos! Get out your camera and snap away – then there is no issue with copyright
  • Draw your own pictures either using software and importing it into your powerpoint or on paper then photographing as above. This can be a brilliant way of creating a story. See this example by Matt Harding (Where the Hell is Matt?)

Challenge #6. Rehearse. No really!

You do have to rehearse to check that you can tell your story in the time available – really you do!

So there are some hints and tips to be going on with. Have you had to give a pecha kucha? Can you share any tips?


Tagged: Pecha Kucha, Presentation

Seven Cracking Creativity Tips

0
0
LightbulbThis is a guest post by Dr. Nathan Ryder (@drryder), creator of the Viva Survivors website and author of the book Fail Your Viva – Twelve Steps To Failing Your PhD (And Fifty-Eight Tips For Passing). Here are his hints and tips for boosting your creativity.

 

If ideas seem hard to find or if inspiration is far away, here are seven tips to get your brain cells working again.

1. Have Lots Of Ideas. Instead of settling on the first idea that you think of, have lots of ideas. Don’t just take my word for it: Linus Pauling said that the secret to having good ideas was to have lots of them, and then pick the best ones. Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize twice, which puts him on my list of People To Be Listened To.

2. Don’t Judge Your Ideas Too Soon. When you have an idea, resist the urge to put it under the microscope immediately. Instead of thinking, “Hmm, would this work?” or “Ah, but this is flawed because…” just record it and move on to thinking about the next idea. Once you have a lot of ideas you will have things that you can compare, and that’s when you can start evaluating their suitability for the situation.

3. Write Your Ideas Down. Seriously. Whether you’re spending time to come up with ideas or just happen to think of something neat when you’re walking down the street, make a note of it. There are some good apps for this on smartphones (Google Keep is relatively new and I like it) but go old school. You know what doesn’t run out of battery? A small notebook and pen.

4. Practice Practice Practice. My maths teacher used to have “The mind is a muscle and must be exercised” written on his classroom wall. And he’s right. OK, maybe not in an anatomical sense, but metaphorically he’s right. If you don’t practice being creative, you lose your ability to see patterns and connections that lead to new ideas. Take time each week to do something creative – something which forces you to do new things.

5. Work Within Constraints. Forget the Blue Sky! If you open your mind totally then often there is way too much to take in, way too many options to draw from. Give yourself constraints. For example, “Ten minutes to come up with ideas” or “I’m going to fill this sheet with ideas.” If you are starting a business and want to think about how to make money or serve people, add a constraint to start your thinking. “I know I want to help everyone, but what if I was just helping ONE person. What would I do?” Take what you would do with that one person, and then expand, see where it takes you.

6. Be Curious. Magpies like shiny things. They can’t help it, they’re just attracted to them. One way to be creative is to take an interest in lots of things. Explore. Find out about stuff that interests you, and find out about stuff that seems weird and strange. This makes more and more potential in your brain, and when you come to tackle problems your mind has more possible connections for making new ideas. Be like a magpie.

7. When You’re Coming Up With Ideas, Ask Questions. What if this was big? What if it was small? What if money was no object? What if we needed to do this today? What could we do with no money? What already exists that would meet this need? What would someone else do? When you ask a question, your mind reaches for an answer. Answers are ideas. Ideas have movement value – maybe they’re not perfect, maybe they’re not right – but they move in a direction, they take you somewhere.

Don’t be afraid to let your ideas take you somewhere!


The progression exam

0
0
Under the spotlight

Under the spotlight

This week I am running a workshop on for some research students who are studying for a professional doctorate entitled “The Progression exam”. This is a formal milestone in the research degree journey that pretty much every doctoral candidate at any university will have to overcome. Some call it a “transfer” exam, others a “progression viva” but whatever the nomenclature they all have an aim similar to the following: -

a formal test of progress in the early stages to ensure a suitable basis for continuation on the programme has been established

I have run this workshop numerous times but this occasion is a little different; I will be in my office in Bristol and the doctoral candidates will be on the other side of the world in Hong Kong. We are using Microsoft Lync as the videoconferencing (VC) client in this instance so it will be interesting for me to compare this to using alternative VC clients such as Visimeet or Skype.

Whenever I run a workshop on this topic or the related “Writing up” or “The Final Viva” workshops I always try to do two things:-

1) Provide knowledge about the process

2) Reduce anxiety by reassuring doctoral candidates

Recently at UWE we established a Graduate School at UWE with a new (and hopefully improved) web presence that puts all the information about research degrees in one place. We have created sections that relate to the major milestones including the progression exam.

Disclaimer: One should read my post in conjunction with the latest rules governing PG Research study.

Those rules are set out in section K of the UWE Academic Regulations here.

The slides that I used in the workshop are below:

Recent changes

In summary there have been three key changes that were brought into force in September 2011

  1. When a progression report has been submitted, a viva will automatically follow
  2. There will now be two independent examiners for a progression exam
  3. The Research Degrees Award Board (RDAB) is the body to which appeals go relating to progression

Tagged: Academic regulations, Progression, Progression exam, Viva voce

Under lock & Key: Data management best practice

0
0
Under lock and key: keeping your data safe

Under lock and key: keeping your data safe

Last week UWE put on a workshop on the topic of data management, something that is becoming much more important in contemporary research environments. Indeed JISC have been funding a number of projects on producing best practice in this area.

I was lucky enough to be able to invite the UWE research and knowledge exchange librarians, Judith Stewart and Jenni Crossley to facilitate this session. They started out the session with a small quiz asking where the researchers were with their current practice of data management. The slides they used in the workshop are embedded below.

There was also a short humourous take on data management…

The remainder of the session was used to explore the excellent resources that the the Library services have

Further resources

Vitae web resources on data management


Tagged: Best practice, Data management, Data quality, Library, research

How to win funds & influence people

0
0
Winning funds & influencing people

Winning funds & influencing people

Today I delivered 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.

Here’s a really useful factsheet that explains how funding for research in the UK works, it’s well worth a read.

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

We 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 difference 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?


Tagged: collaboration, full economic costing, networking, Research funding, research professional

Perfect Posters! A guide for researchers

0
0
The perfect poster guaranteed!

The perfect poster guaranteed!

This week I ran a workshop at UWE on the topic of putting together posters for the purpose of presenting research at conferences. I deliberately called this “Perfect Posters” because I had a sneaking suspicion that it might draw folks in and it did! So I began by telling the researchers that there probably isn’t such a thing as a perfect poster, there is no ‘right way’ or ‘wrong way’, just a range of approaches that are more effective than others at communicating the intended message.

Researchers are often confused about what posters are for, so I spent some time discussing, debating and/or arguing about what they are & why conferences increasingly have them as part of a programme.

Posters are a way of presenting one or two central themes of your work using images and text with the objective of encouraging conference attendees to enter into a dialogue with you about your research. It is hard enough to achieve this in an ideal setting but the additional challenge for poster presentations are that they are often held in less than ideal conditions. It was also discussed at some length what they are not, they are not simply a reorganisation of a journal article onto one sheet of paper, they are not the same as an oral presentation. It requires a different way of thinking and, honestly, a lot of preparation time in order to put one together.

Here is an audiocast of the main themes contained in the prezi (which is embedded below). I hope you find it useful.

Here is the prezi I used, embedded below.

The rest of the session was covering hints and tips for putting together posters, here are those tips: -

1) Think about your purpose. What are you trying to achieve? Try to avoid presenting everything that you have done, think of a take home message and build from there.

2) Think about your audience. It is unlikely that your audience will be all in the exact same area of research as you, it more likely that some will be in broadly the same area, some will be in related areas and some will be non specialist. This means think about the language and/or jargon that you use or rather do NOT use. Use of plain language is not the same as dumbing down, if noone understands your research, how will it be useful??

3) Think about your space. Find out how big your display area will be before you start to put the poster together! An obvious tip perhaps but one often ignored.

4) Think about pictures. The saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words” so consider the use of images, diagrams, photographs that can give the reader information better than reading lines of text.

5) Think about text size. Bigger is better! A poster is not the same as reading from a page, it is read from a distance so text needs to be increased accordingly.

6) Think about using less verbiage. Think back to your central message, edit, edit, edit and then edit some more. If anything doesn’t back up the central message then dump it.

7) Think about colour. Some colour is good, it can help to orient the reader around your poster and make things stand out. BUT be careful, many posters can be hindered by garish colour schemes!

8) Think about where to place different sections in your poster. Use headings to help guide the reader. Popular convention appears to be to arrange images and words in the same format as a magazine article, broadly in columns. However there is no rule that states you have to follow this convention, organise your poster in a way that maximises impact but make sure that the reader is left in no doubt of where to look, you need to provide a visual grammar so to speak.

9) Think about titles. Academic convention seems to be that the longer a title is, the more impressive it is. In fact, many go as far as inserting a colon into the title so that it can be made even longer! Think about your purpose, you want to attract people to read your poster and talk to you, not run a mile from an incomprehensible title, so keep it short, intriguing and inviting.

10) Think about doing the small things. Can you take a handout of your poster and/or a relevant research article that explains something in more detail to give to interested people. It will free up your poster to focus on the main message without getting bogged down. Be enthusiastic about your research, no matter how many times you have to explain the same thing. It matters.

These are just a few tips to be going on with, I dipped into a few resources to help me with this:-

Creating effective poster presentations – George Hess, Kathryn Tosney & Leon Ligel

How do I create an effective scientific poster? – Bandwidth Online.org

Preparing Scientific Illustrations: A guide to better posters, presentations and publications – Mary Helen Briscoe

P.s. I also trawled Google Images for some examples of research posters which I now include below. I shall call this, “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly”. You can decide for yourself which ones are which, okay?


Tagged: Communication, Research posters

Social innovation and researchers at Southampton Solent #SSURE13

0
0
social innovation

Key words and phrase around social innovation

On Tuesday of this week I attended the Research and Enterprise Conference held at Southampton Solent University (#SSURE13). I had been invited to speak on social innovation, enterprise and researchers based on some of my previous work in this area. It was nice to be asked to contribute my thoughts on the topic, recognition I suppose for the enthusiasm I have for social innovation and how researchers can contribute to that agenda.

This was the programme for the day.

I had a mixed audience comprising of doctoral students, academics and professional support staff and so I tried to cover what I believe to be important to the success of researchers. The slides I used to support my talk are embedded below.

I started out by introducing a few of the phrases that I was going to cover – about half of the audience had heard of the term “social enterprise” and only a minority had an understanding of the term “social innovation“. I also talked a bit about what I think is important both personally (what I stand for) and professionally (who I am). I then highlighted the important outcome of a doctoral degree, that of a skilled researcher. I argued that most of the skills acquired by researchers occur as a natural consequence of working on a research project and that the role of skills developers like myself was to help researchers to understand what is happening to them, to encourage them to recognise the importance of this development and to find a vocabulary to communicate this to others. The Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF) is a useful tool to help researchers contextualise this development journey.

I then focussed on the development of enterprise skills with doctoral researchers – how the typical stereotype of a researcher is one of a lack of commercial awareness, a naivety with respect to how private sector organisations operate. I suggested that this is an unfair representation of the state of play, more that researchers do understand profit maximising business models but are just not inspired by that approach and are motivated by other factors.

I believe that most researchers are motivated by their research endeavours, to make a contribution to the body of knowledge, to generate new ideas that make some sort of difference to the world in which we live. Rarely are researchers motivated by being rich and famous! This led me to talk about why I believe that social enterprise is a pretty good vehicle to engage researchers with the idea that generation of profit is not necessarily a bad thing, that different models of business can generate social value and make that all important difference to society. I used this video, “Society Profits”, produced by Social Enterprise UK to illustrate my point.

I talked about a number of social enterprises, briefly explaining the business model behind each one: Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Restaurant, The Eden Project, Divine Chocolate, The Big Issue, Give Me Tap and a social enterprise in Southampton Who Made Your Pants.

It has been said that the key criteria for success in social enterprise are Resources, Expertise, Passion, and Contribution. My experience of talking to many social entrepreneurs is that the Passion and the motivation to make the Contribution are the key drivers to making the “social” bit of the social enterprise work and that the skills, expertise and general nous about how to run a business are things that can be learned if not already known. It is for this reason that I think researchers would be well placed to start a social enterprise should they choose to.

I then moved on to explain that social enterprise is just one way of tackling some of the social/environmental problems we face and that it is one strand of a much larger concept, social innovation. I started by talking about Professor Muhammad Yunus and the journey he started in the 1970s that began the microfinance movement. I used the following video to support that…

Social innovation isn’t new, it is a concept that has been around for quite some time although I believe that the term and the challenges we face as a society have brought about a renewed interest and explosion of activity. I used one (of many) definitions of social innovation to make a point about the place that researchers and universities have in this endeavour.

innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly developed and diffused through organisations whose primary purposes are social. [Social Innovation: What it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated]

Therefore, I posit that universities are indeed organisations whose primary purposes are social and that the research undertaken within is inherently motivated by the goal of meeting a social need. Research is a key strand of social innovation and, more importantly, researchers have a valuable set of skills, knowledge, attributes to bring to the table in collaboration with others in order to tackle the grand challenges.

I talked a little about how the common features of contemporary social innovation are important to understand:- (full source paper here)

  • Cross-sectoral
  • Open and collaborative
  • Grassroots and bottom-up
  • Pro-sumption and co-production
  • Mutualism
  • Creates new roles and relationships
  • Better use of assets and resources
  • Develops assets and capabilities

This ties in neatly with the approaches that universities and researchers need to adopt to tackle the grand challenges – I used the cross council priorities from the UK Research Councils to illustrate with a particular nod to the Lifelong health and wellbeing priority.

I ended my talk by referring back to the quote from Peter Drucker …

The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do, but the absence of doing it.

Researchers are often not short of great ideas, they are fantastic problem solvers. Though sometimes, just sometimes, we need to be reminded that we have to implement the ideas to make that difference in society.

Further links/resources

Vitae – National organisation supporting the skills development of researchers http://www.vitae.ac.uk/

Social Enterprise UK – National organisation promoting social enterprise http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/

Development resources for researchers on social enterprise UWE, Bristol/Vitae http://www.vitae.ac.uk/policy-practice/352301/Social-Enterprise.html

HEFCE/UNLTD Support for Social Enterprise Start up in Universities http://unltd.org.uk/hefce/

Guardian Social Enterprise Network http://socialenterprise.guardian.co.uk/

Pioneers Post - A web magazine for social innovation/enterprise http://www.pioneerspost.com/
Social Innovation Europe - Europe wide resource for social innovation https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/socialinnovationeurope/
Social Innovation Exchange - A global network for those interest in social innovation http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/

Tagged: Researcher development framework, Researcher skills, Social Enterprise, Social innovation, Southampton Solent University

Residential Gradschool at Buckland Hall 2013

0
0
Buckland Hall, July 2013

Buckland Hall, July 2013

At the beginning of July, Plymouth University in collaboration with UWE, Bristol put on a four day residential course for doctoral researchers at the fabulous Buckland Hall in the Brecon Beacons. This course is designed to give researchers the time and space to reflect on their development to date and to spend time in the company of other researchers thinking about where their research might take them. The overall theme of the course was “Building a reputation as a researcher”. Running through the programme were several topics that underpin this; communication of research, collaboration with others and understanding what drives you as a researcher.

Here is an outline programme that gives a flavour of what we were doing.

A big part of the success of this event is the venue itself, it really does make a difference to how the participants react. An interesting venue historically, Buckland Hall is now operated as a retreat/wedding venue. What’s great about it is that with groups the size that we have (36 researchers and a team of around 8 staff) you get exclusive use. The staff are brilliant achieving the seemingly impossible balance between being terribly efficient, catering for all your needs yet being almost out of sight the entire stay. As a course organiser I can’t tell you how valuable that is! The other feature of this venue is the ethos, the place runs on trust – trust bar, no room keys, treat the place as your own etc. and the organic vegetarian cuisine.

Click to view slideshow.

Having the right venue is one thing but you have to come up with a programme that is right for your participants. We’ve a lot of experience running these type of courses (since 2003 in fact) and many of them have been based on the renowned Vitae GRADSchool model.

Over the past few years we have been hacking the format in part because of the diverse nature of our participants who on average tend to be older, international and from a wide range of disciplines. A further success factor in a course like this is a good balance of facilitators who understand doctoral researchers and their research.

Facilitators

Course team L-R Julia Crocker, Chris Russell, Helen Frisby, Mandy Burns, Neil Willey and Sarah Kearns

Introduction

The majority of the participants on this course arrived on the coach that we laid on (from Plymouth via Bristol). No sooner than they had arrived then they were faced with me introducing them to the next four days. Here’s that slideshow.

Day 1. Getting to know you.

Like most courses you go on, the majority of your fellow participants are not known to you so inevitably there is a need to spend some time ingratiating yourself with others. We achieved this by doing three basic things; 1) running an icebreaker (building a giraffe), 2) establishing ‘home’ groups and 3) running an interview workshop.

Monday How to build a giraffe! Day 1 summary

The idea behind the interview workshop, given the demographic of the participants, was to run it as a familiarisation of each others research exercise rather than a full on “this is how you perform at interviews”. I think that this worked, some folks certainly appreciated the chance to practice talking about their research and others found it fascinating to observe others being interviewed.

Day 2. Connecting with others

There were three main things covered on the second day, some grounding principles in communicating research (start with why), establishing buddy pairs and the collaboration challenge.

Day 2 Day 2 summary

I started out the day by showing a short TED talk by Steven Addis. The take home message from this wasn’t about photography but rather to become aware of how our perspectives on things change over time and that we should be proactive in thinking about where it takes us.

I then spoke about communicating research and the need to be clear about the “why” of your research, that it is important to be able to make your work accessible and that the easiest way to do that was to use stories. Simon Sinek featured heavily in my presentation because I think his model of communication works just as well for academic researchers. Here’s the slides I used to support this session:

Along with focussing on the why I also made the assertion that “Storytelling is everything“. A video that helps convey that is by Scott Berkun who is talking about a fast paced presentation format called “Ignite” (a derivative of Pecha Kucha).

We followed this session by borrowing an idea from the Vitae Leadership in Action course, to use each other as sources of feedback in mentoring or “buddy” pairs. Chris Russell facilitated this session using, among other things, the GROW coaching model.

The afternoon session was facilitated by Neil Willey who is an experienced researcher who has and is working on a number of large collaborative research projects. Participants used the statements they generated in the morning to propose a research project involving multiple discplines.

Day 3. Motivations and communicating in an accessible way

There was a change of pace on the third day of the course to something more introspective. It was known that tackling the subject of motivations and values is risky which presents a difficulty in how to pitch it to a diverse audience. For me it was important to explore for the following reasons; reconnecting with your motivation to follow a research path is beneficial during a doctorate when things aren’t going so well, it is also good to understand “what feeds your soul” when thinking about future career choices. I also believe that it is good to recognise why you do what you do (helps the communication thing!).

Day 3 Day 3 Summary

I talked about a model from Stephen R. Covey’s book The seven habits of highly effective people which is taken from the first habit “be proactive”.

The model is illustrated was the Circle of Concern vs the Circle of Influence.

We spent some time introducing the concept of Social Enterprise to set up the session on the final day.  This dovetails neatly with the exploration of motivations and values and also opens up a horizon for researchers that they may not have considered before. Here’s a few resources that cover what I had to say.

Facts and figures about social enterprise in the UK

The concept of social entrepreneurship – tackling challenges across the globe

Why social enterprise makes sense.

The 2 minute thesis

In the afternoon we changed gear and Sarah Kearns handed the groups a video camera with only one instruction: Go away and draft, rehearse and record your thesis in a 2 minute presentation.

Ready for action? Ready to record? Camera, lights, action!

Day 4. Looking to the future

The final day was all about how you could use your skills developed as a researcher in the future maybe outside of academic research.

Day 4 Day 4 Summary

The day started with a little bit of motivation courtesy of the Do LecturesThe Path of a doer

The common good

This session is aimed at raising awareness of social enterprise, a different way of doing business, for researchers. It is a case study that I, with the help of two colleagues Paul Toombs and Janet Wilkinson, authored back in 2010 and made available nationally through Vitae. The thinking behind this is that there are many attributes shared by social entrepreneurs and researchers; both are passionate problem solvers, both are motivated by making a difference, both are extremely resilient to challenges and hurdles. I used the following slides to introduce the session.

Some hints and tips about running a social enterprise…

As ever, the participants on the course generated some fantastic ideas and developed them into some serious proposals.

Final thoughts and further resources

Books!

Books!

Simon Sinek – Start with why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action

Robert Ashton – How to be a social entrepreneur, make money and change the world

Robert Dunn & Chris Durkin - Social entrepreneurship: A skills approach

Muhammed Yunus – Creating a world without poverty: Social business and the future of capitalism

Jorgen Wolff – Creativity now: Get inspired, create ideas and make them happen!

John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan - The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World

Bobette Buster – Do Story: How to tell your story so the world listens

Robert Poynton – Do Improvise: Less push. More pause. Better results. A new approach to work (and life)

Mark Shayler – Do Disrupt: Change the status quo or become it


Tagged: Brecon Beacons, Buckland Hall, collaboration, Communication, doctoral students, Gradschool, Plymouth, Plymouth University, skills development, Social Enterprise

Research in Contemporary Context #vitae13

0
0
Research in definition

Research in definition

Using ‘Research-Based Learning’ to Enhance Doctoral Skills Development

At the recent Vitae Researcher Development International Conference myself and Neil Willey presented a workshop outlining our approach to a new module aimed at doctoral students. The Prezi we used can be found here:

Research in Contemporary Context module prezi.

In October 2012 in the Graduate School at UWE we started running a new module for doctoral students that we hoped might enhance their experience of personal and professional skills development. Perhaps a bit ambitiously, we hoped it might help solve a number of commonly perceived challenges including; the separation of research and skills development activity, the provision of credit for the full range of skills development activities and the delivery of skills development for students who spend most of their time away from the university. The module is called ‘Research in Contemporary Context (RCC)’ and we used ‘Work-Based Learning’ modules at UWE to inspire its design as a ‘Research-Based Learning’ module. The module booklet with details and an introductory ppt are embedded below – what follows are some thoughts of how we designed it and how we run it.

Work-based learning embeds learning in a workplace. It usually involves an interaction between work activity and university-based sessions that results in the development of professional competencies. It’s widely used to deliver professional practice qualifications. We reasoned that there was an analogy with doctoral students developing skills – their research was their work and skills development their university-based sessions, which should interact to develop professional competencies expected in researchers. A potential catch was that we needed a set of professional competencies to provide a framework – which we quickly realized could be Vitae’s Researcher Development Framework.

The Vitae Researcher Development Framework

The Vitae Researcher Development Framework

So, here’s what we do. We have six 3 hour Professional Practice workshops dedicated to RCC on topics we have chosen to match some of the descriptors on the RDF. We also ask that students identify 6 workshops from the UWE Skills Development series. The default module run for students on the module is 2 years and 10 months, i.e. from when they register they have this long to do all the workshops. This is so that students can do workshops when they coincide with relevant phases of their research. Before each Professional Practice workshop we use Blackboard to make material available to students. We then run the workshop with both actual and remote attendance, after which students return to their ‘workplace’, i.e. research. Before the end of their run, students must submit a Reflective Portfolio of evidence for each workshop topic in action in their research or research discipline, and an in depth case study of one of them. If these are satisfactory they are then awarded 30 M level professional practice credits. We chose a Reflective Portfolio because we felt that reflection would not only encourage topics to seem alive in student research but also because most of them were best engaged with by doing them or seeing them in action, reflecting on them, and doing again, i.e. they were based in practice. The advice we give is below.

How does this help with skills development? First, we hope that it embeds thinking about professional practice and skills development in student research, breaking down the feeling that students take time out to do these as separate activities. It also involves supervisors in skills development because students talk to them about it and they help with assessment at the end. Second, students get credits for activities that map directly onto the RDF. We think this not only helps with engagement but also provides a concrete, professional development outcome from the time spent. Third, by providing fully interactive remote access to workshops that support research-based learning, and having students submit their Portfolio electronically via Blackboard, a student can complete the module without having to travel to the university. At UWE more than 50% of our students are PT, and FT students are located on a number of campuses and frequently research off campus, so this has met a real need. In addition, we record workshops so that students can watch them at any time, reminding them of topics as they see them in action.

And finally, we have students from across all disciplines taking the module. This has made for very interesting discussions on many topics and enabled students to meet a wider variety of researchers than they do in, for example, their research group or centre. It’s still early days but we feel that our ‘Research In Contemporary Context’ module is an interesting attempt to overcome some of the challenges of delivering skills development to busy, and often disperse, doctoral students.


Tagged: Blackboard, Graduate School, remote access learning, research, Researcher development framework, skills development, Video conferencing, Visimeet

The Beginner’s Guide to the Doctorate

0
0
So this is the way forward!

So this is the way forward!

This week I ran a workshop for newly registered research degree students entitled “The Beginner’s Guide to the Doctorate”. What I set out to do was to lay bare the road ahead when it comes to a research degree, to get the participants to consider aspects of the journey that, perhaps, they had not yet thought about.

I always enjoy this kind of workshop because I am always enthralled by the enthusiasm and diversity of the new researchers who are embarking on their journey of discovery in research; the topics sound fascinating.

It was especially rewarding (and challenging in its own way) that we were joined by two research students remotely using Visimeet from far flung places.

I started by introducing the concept of the journey from a skills development point of view, although I offer many workshops to researchers, very few of them are about upskilling researchers, more about changing the perspective of the researchers themselves toward their own development. It’s about helping them to understand what they have as a consequence of following a research degree path.

It also gave me the chance to talk about the Researcher Development Framework (RDF) which is a relatively new way of being able to describe the incredibly rich skills set that researchers have (I have written a separate blog post about the RDF as there is a lot to talk about).

Vitae have recently released an online tool to help researchers navigate the RDF, to encourage them to plan their development. The full details about that tool can be found here: https://www.rdfplanner.net

I asked the participants to talk about motivations to undertake a PhD, I think it’s important to understand what drives you so that you can remind yourself when the road becomes a bit more difficult to negotiate – that’s the infuriating thing about a research degree, it rarely if ever goes smoothly. The words of Einstein ring true here, “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research”.

The day was loosely structured around the sharing of hints and tips for new researchers and I used the following powerpoint slides to give the day a format although we explored lots of different areas of the RDF.

I tried to cover a lot of ground over the course of the day but I hope that the new researchers had plenty of food for thought, along with a generous helping of hints/tips to see them off to a good start.

Here’s a few more resources that I think are useful:-

UWE Graduate School webpages – Everything you need to know about the support available to doctoral students from UWE.

The Thesis Whisperer blog - A fantastic resource for all doctoral students from Dr. Inger Mewburn (Director of research training, Australian National University). A comprehensive coverage topics relevant to doctoral students covered in this blog site.

Patter; Pat Thomson blog – A blog from Professor Pat Thomson, Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham, focussing mainly on the topic of academic writing. This blog is a goldmine for advice on finding your academic voice.

The Graduate School development events diary - The online events diary for all events relating to researchers – a chronological list of events with booking forms. Any of the events I talked about today, you’ll be able to find them here.

Vitae – The Researcher Development Organisation

www.vitae.ac.uk A first port of call for a wide range of useful materials relating to postgraduate research study especially on assessing how you are developing your skills throughout the process.

Researcher Development Framework The collation of the skills, knowledge, behaviours and attributes that make up a successful researcher.

The RDF Planner An online application to better enable researchers to self-audit their compentencies against the RDF and help direct them to resources for professional development. e-mail skillsdevelopment@uwe.ac.uk if you are interested in taking advantage of a trial subscription to this.

www.phdcomics.com Light relief following grad students through their journey in the form of a comic strip.

www.phinished.org – A discussion and support group for people who cannot seem to finish their dissertations or theses.



Tagged: beginner's guide, ethics, intellectual property, library skills, PhD movie, Research degree, Researcher development framework
Viewing all 71 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images