Using 'SMS' in PhD Supervision

For the social media crazed PhD students out there (including myself), I have personally found so far that supervisory support via SMS/text messaging is greatly beneficial. It is quick, easily accessible and any excuse to use the Samsung Galaxy Note to its maximum capacity is fine by me (beautiful gadget). Some people may read this and think “why not just use email?” and I would argue that there is nothing more frustrating than having no Wi-Fi or internet access when you’re out and about and the need to reply to a super busy supervisor cannot be achieved *pulls hair out*. With the use of SMS you can normally guarantee some form of network signal and the communication between supervisor and supervisee can therefore be timely and harmonious.

I agree that technology in PhD study cannot replace ‘Face to Face’ contact with the supervisory team but I feel it is about what is appropriate for the area that needs to be discussed. Let’s face it, when somebody rings us, more than likely we rush to the phone (like the intro to Baywatch) and miss the call resulting in a voicemail that says “call me back”. When you call them back it then goes to voicemail *blood pressure rising*.  I have found small issues can easily be dealt with via SMS. The bigger issues can be discussed through pre-planned meetings.

I imagine that it would be useful if someone could invent an ‘out of office’ tool for the use of SMS as currently I believe we have one of two things in the world; no reply = I am busy or don’t want to talk to you; or the little box you can tick in your settings that lets you know when the message has been successfully received by the recipient and you sit waiting for a response with baited breathe!

Someone said to me recently that the use of SMS has resulted in a loss of spoken human communication and the rapport with the supervisory team can become fragmented; but in my experience so far this is not the case. I think what is most important is discussing at the beginning of your studies how the ‘supervisee’ wants supervision to occur and in what form. Some prefer the use of social media and some do not but if we add the use of SMS to our communication toolkit, it will only have a positive impact on the doctoral research.

One needs to be cautious though that they check their contractual message allowance as no PhD student wants the horror of paying out a humongous bill at the end of the month especially with the small amount of pennies in the bank account. I would also stress that users be aware of the character allowance in their SMS as I have noticed that if you type too much in one SMS it will convert to MMS resulting in an unexpected charge! However this can be resolved through splitting messages into two and it doesn’t take an academic to work that one out!

Reap the benefits of all forms of communication is my opinion and SMS is only one of them. Please be sure though to rest your fingers and eyes as much as possible, text induced finger ‘ache’ and headache is a killer!

Keep it short!

 People seem to struggle with developing a research question and this struggle seems to get harder rather than easier the more advanced the degree. So, whilst undergraduates may think for a week or two about what they want to investigate, doctoral students tend to take months (or in some cases, years - yes Dr Fiona Duncan I'm looking at you!) before a simple, understandable research question is arrived at. This could be because many academics and students work on the theory that the cleverer something is the more complex and incomprehensible it has to be. I disagree - after all the most crucial questions in life are often the shortest - 'will you go out with me?',  'how can I help?' 'Is everything OK?' ''Do you want fries with that?' Even the BIG topics start with small questions 'Is there a God?' 'When will we understand the universe?' 'Why are doughnuts so yummy?' It seems as if the more important the question the more likely it  is that it can be communicated as a twitter message in 140 characters or less.
Big answers don't necessarily require big questions - just thoughtful ones

It's easy criticise....and fun too (apparently)

This time of year many students and university lecturers spend their time preparing and submitting papers for publication. I have recently been doing just that. Now let me me say from the outset, when one puts one's work out into the public domain for review it is not unsurprising to receive comment and feedback. What I do find surprising is the nastiness that some reviewers feel the need to insert into their reviews. I don't mind being asked to make changes in any paper I submit, I don't even mind being asked to include specific references (although I am always suspicious as to the motivation of such requests - it's a great way for a reviewer to up their citation rates) but I do object to reviews that are, at best smug and patronising and at worst down right nasty.

As a reviewer I always try to make sure that any review I send out is constructive and helpful, I do not use phrases such as " This author is clearly a novice" (That's one I got) or "Clearly English is not this authors first language" (That's one that a native English speaking friend of mine received). Such comments do not serve any useful purpose. If the author is a novice, they certainly don't need to have it pointed out to them by a reviewer, and if they are not a novice, assuming they are will be seriously annoy them. Furthermore such patronising and smug statements serve to dishearten authors and under line perceptions that  the academia and publishing worlds are snobbish, exclusive and unkind. There is also a danger that any useful information that would strengthen the submitted paper is lost in the vitriol that upsets the author.

Some reviewers seem unable to differentiate between reviewing activity and marking. A journal asks its reviewers to ensure that the content, focus, subject and level of writing are appropriate for the journal - not to criticise the direction that an individuals study has taken them or to mock their approaches to investigation. It is also not the place of the reviewer to insert serious amounts of content into the paper that has been submitted, and by serious amounts I mean proposed content that increases the word count of the submitted paper from the required 5000 words, to well over 8500 as recently happened to me!

I must admit to being at something of a loss to account for why some reviewers (and it's not all of them by any means) would chose to behave like this. Most reviewers are authors as well  one would hope that they would treat prospective authors as they themselves would wish to be treated, and there are, indeed some extremely helpful and supportive reviewers who make the publishing process a pleasure and a learning experience. I suspect that the double blind system that most nursing journals operate in which the author and the reviewers are blinded to each other means that there is little or no obligation for the reviewers to take responsibility for the comments they make.

I would argue that journals should consider training their reviewers to an industry agreed standard or, failing that, invite author feedback on the helpfulness and usefulness of the review. I would also tell prospective authors not to be destroyed by an mean or nasty reviewers that they come across, it will only be a matter of time before the reviewer will have a paper of theirs reviewed by someone as deeply unpleasant as themselves.

Let's get together

I was speaking at a Nutrition Nurse's Conference this week about practitioner research and was struck by the things that,as a professional group, seems to be exercising nutrition nurses across the UK. Judging from the comments of other speakers and some delegate, what seems to be bothering them are things like, lack of basic assessment of nutritional status, lack of exploration of common sense approaches before calling the experts and poor documentation. If you take out the word 'nutrition' and replace it with the words 'pain management',what you have is a nice description of all of the clinical issues that are exercising the nations pain teams. All of which got me to thinking....when I talk to practitioners about research I always highlight that there are probably loads of already published studies in their speciality that they could learn from and suggest that, rather than re-inventing the wheel with their own small local study, they should be collaborating with other in the field to produce robust research that has decent sample sizes and therefore the chance of making a useful impact upon patient care. Maybe though, what I should be doing is encouraging them to contact other  services within and external to their own speciality to start looking at areas of commonality. Nutrition nurses and acute pain practitioners could liaise to explore why suitable assessments are not carried out and to workshop educational techniques that would benefit bother disciplines. This would have the advantage that both sets of practitioners would develop tool and techniques that would benefit their specific patients but they would also get a working insight into another speciality and both would benefit from having their service subject to scrutiny by a knowledgeable outsider.

May be it is time for unversity research courses to promote cross-speciality research with the same enthusaism it espouses cross-disciplianry research. In terms of making an impact on aptient care it could well be the way to go.

Academics: Should we be more image conscious?

At this time, I am preparing for my first attempts at conference presentations for my PhD research: one oral presentation and one poster presentation. I’m committing myself to doing the best possible job of communicating my research to my audience. I work hard at my PhD and want people to feel some degree of enthusiasm and interest in it. I strongly believe in the use of images and pictures to help illustrate my messages. Quality pictures can say a lot more than words do and are more engaging than bullet-pointed lists and paragraphs of text (he says, writing a blog post!).

The use of images is important to me because I believe researchers should aim to do more than impart information cold. As an audience member, I want to feel something about what the researcher is doing. I want them to succeed in delivering an engaging presentation. I want to be moved a little, not just intellectually, but on an emotional level, too. In fact, I’m desperate to have this experience when I go to a conference. I don’t want a mechanical presenter. I want to feel something of what inspired that individual to do their research in the first place – it will hook my attention. And as a newbie to presenting, I would like to nurture this style too. Though this is in large part down to the personality, confidence, and experience of the individual presenter, I believe that the carefully considered use of images, and design of posters, can assist with this as well.

But image hunting isn’t easy. Sometimes, I have problems finding and using the ones I want. I can’t just use any that I like the look of – there are copyright laws and to take these without consent would be illegal. There are some excellent images that can be used but these may have to be paid for. They can be expensive but, unfortunately, I don’t have access to the funds that would enable me to buy these. For example, today I was quoted £50 to use an image that would have looked great on my slides (that includes a student discount too!). Of course, this left me feeling disappointed but I feel unable to hold the cogs of capitalism responsible for this one: these prices seem to be the standard and I can’t blame other people and organisations for wanting to earn a living from their work.

But my point is this: I don’t think, yet, that we value highly enough the need to communicate our work to others. Is there anybody that makes allowances in their research bids to buy high quality images? We do think about dissemination in general but I can’t say I’ve sat with researchers and tried to answer questions such as: what is the best way to communicate our research to others? What resources do we need to do this? Are we prepared to pay to access professional resources to help us? I think that we need to address this. I don’t like being denied the use of resources I need to do the best job I can. It’s embarrassing. I just want to present my work to the highest possible standard.

Anybody have thoughts, opinions, or experiences they would like to share? Am I asking for too much? Or maybe too little?


And, just in case you’re interested…

I’ll be delivering my first PhD oral presentation at Salford on June 9th – do come along and listen if you can. I will be speaking about the great civilization of Stoke-on-Trent and why we can’t rely on traditional scientific methods to inform us of the rich experience of our love for such places. See SPARC.

My first poster presentation will also be at Salford on June 16th. I’m very excited about this one. It would make me immensely happy to see you there and we can discuss progressive ideas in poster presentations. More here. Can’t wait!

Re-thinking the viva

I've had a lot of conversions recently with numerous colleagues and students from various different universities who have had less than satisfactory experiences in the doctoral vivas which left me wondering....what the hell is happening to the viva? All of the books and website that students routinely read prior to their doctoral examination say useful and helpful comments along the lines of;

• "you know more about your work than anyone else on the room"
• "The examiners do not want you to fail"
• The viva should be a discussion amongst peers

However from the individuals I've spoken to lately there is a real sense that students felt that their work was more under attack than under review with examiners dismissing the approaches taken, the epistemological underpinnings of the work and the standard of writing, leaving them demoralised and disillusioned. 

This made me think that may be students and their supervisors are under estimating the importance of careful selection of examiners and independent chairs. Indeed I was surprised to find that some universities do not have an independent chair for vivas which makes the student even more vulnerable. Is it fair, or even appropriate that the work of, for some students , 5 years or more is approved or otherwise by two people on one day? It's time for a re-think. Maybe it is time for a feedback website so that students can highlight good examiners or even for an examiners registry so that potential examiners can upload their areas of expertise and methodological interests so that examiner selection can be focused and relevant rather than being based upon who a student's supervisor think will be OK as it is at present. Or should we go further and try to think of a new way in which PhDs can be assessed - maybe by open access peer review?

If PhDs could be loaded onto secure websites for, say, a month and could be thoroughly reviewed by a minimum number of global reviewers - how much more valid would that be?

The High Cost of Low Risk Research

I write this post immediately after attending a seminar on the ‘Psychology of Sustainability’ and feel inspired to write about my views on the trajectory of the sub-discipline. I also invite responses from readers who are far wiser than I about the whys and wherefores of academic research, generally.

I will begin by saying that I enjoyed this seminar. I have learned to expect variety in the intelligibility and quality of the conferences and seminars I attend but this one was particularly satisfying. For the majority of the day, apart from the odd daydream here and there, I held my attention and actually followed much of what the speakers were talking about – a not insignificant personal success.

But as the afternoon drew to a close and the speaker rushed through her presentation in an attempt to bring the timing of the day back into its rigidly pre-prepared schedule, my mind began to drift towards some ‘metathoughts’ about the state of the discipline as I have observed it by attending this seminar series (this was the third of three which have been held over the last six months or so). I don’t claim to have stumbled upon some original thoughts or insights on the matter and I apologise if I have ‘borrowed’ somebody else’s analysis -- probable and likely -- but am unable to reference or credit them for it.

What I want to talk about is the incremental, slow-build approach to developing knowledge in the environmental psychology discipline. Environmental psychology began to emerge in the latter half of the last century and has its theoretical roots in the more established social psychology domain: this is clearly evident in contemporary environmental psychology research, for example, in studies of social norms in pro-environmental behaviour. This is a sensible and worthwhile endeavour; however, research invariably concludes that the findings that were expected to be found were realised and that “more research in this area is needed to understand demographic differences/underlying psychological processes”, and so on. In other words, future research should concentrate on uncovering ever more elusive truths in ever more finely defined detail. Justifying this approach to research no doubt is a conviction that “this is how we build knowledge; this is how we sculpt the fine details of our theories”. This may be so but I would argue that there is an opportunity cost to this: while the best minds in the field are focused on sharpening what there already is, they are not imagining any great leap into the untried and unchartered territory that may deliver the knowledge that we need for the future. The everyday language of academia is hyperbolic and boasts of a commitment to innovation, but to what extent do we follow through on our talk? Are we willing to let our imaginations run riot with regards to research ideas? Are we willing to stake time, finance, and reputation on research just to see what happens? Alternatively, will we continue to design studies that only serve to confirm what we probably intuitively knew already? More broadly, this makes me want to ask: to what extent is prospecting for new research fields restrained by the commitment academics are expected to show towards intellectual rigour (its only rigorous because we already know it or can expect to know it) and narrow theoretical development? I am not suggesting that we abandon all sensibilities towards our research endeavours, but instead that we can begin to endorse an attitude towards research that is not so risk-averse. Truly, if the consequences of human behaviour for climate change are to be believed, and if environmental psychology intends to throw its weight behind the search for solutions, then is it not worth loosening the restrictions that may restrain the intellectual creativity that the discipline needs?