Workshops Inspire Thesis Completion

Dr Krystyna Haq

Postgraduate research students and supervisors at UWA had the opportunity to learn at, and be stimulated by, a number of workshops sponsored by the Graduate Research School. Run in September and October 2008, the workshops were presented by guests with expertise in different aspects of facilitating progress in a research degree. The first of these presenters was Dr Cecily Scutt – a creative writer and expert in ‘right-brain writing’ who ran a four-week series of ‘Moving Forward’ seminars. These seminars provided students with a framework and some creative strategies to use in generating new written material, combined with a supportive group environment in which to write. Each seminar began with a short presentation on the theme of the week and was followed by two half-hour periods of sustained writing, with morning tea provided in the break between writing periods.

The themes addressed in the seminars were: ‘The Thesis Introduction’, ‘Situating your Work Within the Scholarly Literature’, ‘Tackling Writing Blocks’ and ‘Writing Towards your Thesis Conclusion’. As well as receiving useful information relevant to the theme of the session, the twenty participants were introduced to drafting techniques – including free-writing, free-falling, brainstorming, mindmapping and changing genres – and were encouraged to try them out in the writing periods. Each session concluded with a reporting of what had been achieved in the writing period and a setting of writing goals for the following week. At the conclusion of the series, participants were encouraged to continue writing in company on a regular basis. Email addresses were exchanged and participants were encouraged to meet up weekly for about two hours to continue supporting each other in writing.

The other two guest presenters were Dr Maria Gardiner and Hugh Kearns from Flinders University. Maria and Hugh work in the field of ‘wellness psychology’: their focus is on helping high-achieving people in demanding environments to function more effectively within those environments. Maria and Hugh presented three programs for students and staff at UWA, and a further program that was opened to students from all universities in Western Australia and was supported by the Council of Postgraduate Students Associations (CAPA) and UWA’s Graduate Research School.

Maria and Hugh’s first seminar, ‘Turbocharge your Writing’, was attended by over 150 students and staff. This seminar took us on a humorous journey through ‘the secret life of the PhD student’ with all its opportunities for procrastination; explored the common diseases of the thesis – ‘readitis’ and ‘experimentitis’; presented humorous scenarios depicting miscommunication between well-intentioned people with completely different learning styles; and gave a number of strategies for ‘turbocharging’ the process of writing a thesis. The second seminar, specifically designed for supervisors, dealt with fostering ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective PhD Students’. The seven habits are:

• taking care of the supervisor
• writing as you go and obtaining feedback
• treating the PhD as a job – there’s time dedicated to work but there’s also time off
• being realistic about what needs to be done to complete the degree and differentiating this from what may turn out to be a life’s work in research
• believing that you can do it and understanding the importance of persistence
• saying no to distractions and getting help when it is needed.

The third seminar was a ‘Completion Masterclass’ held over two half-days. At this masterclass, the thirty-two participants were each asked to share details of their experiences of progress with their research degree. Issues that emerged as interfering with effective progress were dealt with sensitively and with humour. At the end of the first day, participants were set a task to undertake before the next session. Their discussion of progress with this task formed the basis of the second session. The strategy that consistently emerged as being the most useful to many people, was to do two hours of work (usually writing) on your PhD first thing in the morning, before attending to emails or using the internet. Another recurring theme was the need to discuss work with supervisors to obtain guidance on what was the next most important thing that needed to be done, in order to progress towards completion of the degree. All participants have since received weekly follow-up emails from Maria and Hugh, and have been invited to keep in email contact to report on progress or to seek more personalised advice from them.

More information about these workshops is available from the Graduate Education Officers, Dr Michael Azariaidis and Dr Krystyna Haq, Graduate Research School. The Graduate Education Officers are responsible for designing a program that offers research students training in the development of a range of generic skills.