UNSW Canberra Three Minute Thesis

Greetings from the Canberra round of the UNSW Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. I was one of the judges. As always this is difficult. It is a little like assessing student presentations, but needing a bit more entertainment value. 

Supervisors Can Better Support the Well-being of Higher Degree Students

Ryan, Baik and Larcombe (2021) surveyed 595 Australian master's and doctoral research students, about how their high rates of psychological distress could be addressed. The authors concluded students would be "likely to benefit from a whole-of-university approach to supporting their wellbeing, and from an academic research culture that values the wellbeing of all its members". However, I suggest what would be more useful are actions which individual supervisors can do. Recommending actions which they can;'t do may just have the effect of increasing the distress of supervisors and students.

Actions which supervisors can carry out on their own, without authorization or funding from their institution can help the students and the superior. Supervisors can encourage their students to obtain qualification which will fit them for a job outside academia and research. They can train students in staff supervision skills and apply them themselves, to avoid overwork.

In some cases potential supervisors should recommend to a student they not undertake a research degree, or at least not yet. Instead a combination of graduate coursework and vocational education would be a better career path.

Reference

Tracii Ryan, Chi Baik & Wendy Larcombe (2021) How can universities better support the mental wellbeing of higher degree research students? A study of students’ suggestions, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2021.1874886

Increasing Engagement and Impact of Research

Greetings from the Canberra Innovation Network, where the Australasian Research Management Society (ARMS) is holding an Engagement and Impact Assessment Panel Discussion. The panel is asked to reflect on how a recent Impact and Engagement assessment of research went and what could be done better. The panel was also asked making the public aware of, and engaged in, "the value of the tertiary sector and research in general".

The question I put to the panel was:

'Would engagement and impact be improved by increasing the number of "professional" doctorates? As the AQF points out, these involve research, but emphasize practical outcomes.'

Background, in my Higher Education Whisperer blog: https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/search/label/Doctoral%20Education"

The panelists generally seemed to think this was a good idea. However, one of the audience asked what a professional doctorate was, the concept not being as well known in Australia, as the USA. As the University of South Australia puts it:

"A professional doctorate is a rigorous program of advanced study and research, designed to meet the needs of industry and professional groups. ... Professional doctorates usually blend coursework and research ...".

In contrast research doctoral students undertake less coursework, and focus on research. However, as one of the panel pointed out, 80% or more of these research doctorates end up not working in academia on research. ANU has researched what industry jobs research graduates would be suitable for.

As the Australian Academy of Science pointed out (AAS, p. 152, 1974):

"The PhD degree was established in Australia in 1948 specifically to help staff Australian universities."

The number of PhD students has increased far faster than the demand for research staff at universities, government and industry. Even those working at university are spending only part of their time on research, with time spent on administration, teaching and staff supervision. PhD students receive no training in any of these fields as part of their degree program (unless this happens to be their research topic).

Some research doctorates do have a more practical orientation than others, for example it is easier to demonstrate engagement and impact of graduates in engineering. ANU's Dr Lachlan Blackhall, in an opinion piece in the media today, outlined what needs to be done to secure reliable, affordable, electricity supply for Australia. In addition to his energy research work, Dr Blackhall co-founded a company which has built a system to help make this future possible. By setting out clearly what the community needs to do, and building a company to help get there, Dr Blackhall has demonstrated more engagement and impact than by writing a thousand research papers.

Reference

Australian Academy of Science. Science, & Industry Forum. (1974). PhD education in Australia: the making of professional scientists. The Forum.

Youth As Researchers

Greetings from the University of Canberra, where

Dr Mark Brennan, UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership, and Youth Development, and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at Pennsylvania State University, isspeaking on "Opportunities for Research Innovation and Expansion through Youth-led Research". He started by pointing out that "More than one-half of the world’s population is under the age of 25 years, and over a third is under 15." He described "a youth-led research program, which engages youth in topics of concern to them and their communities.

The curriculum materials for the "Youth as Researchers" program are available free online from Pen State University (but no online course):

•  Youth As Researchers Training Manual
•  Youth as Researchers Workbook

However, the concentrations of young people are in poorer countries in South America, the Middle East and Asia, while the curriculum materials have been developed and tested in the USA and Ireland. This appears to be as much an exercise in promoting the value of Social Science in western universities as in helping young people in developing countries.

Youth-led Research

Dr Mark Brennan, UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership, and Youth Development, and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at Pennsylvania State University, will be speaking on "Opportunities for Research Innovation and Expansion through Youth-led Research" at the University of Canberra, 12:30 pm 14 May 2018.

"More than one-half of the world’s population is under the age of 25 years, and over a third is under 15. The need to actively engage and empower this population has been recognized by major international organizations, NGOs, and local agencies as critical to achieving social, economic, environmental, and political development. Nonetheless, a generalizable, adaptive, and sustainable framework for achieving this global youth citizenship remains elusive. In response to this need, we present a youth-led research program, which engages youth in topics of concern to them and their communities."

Researching Transdisciplinarity Research to Solve The World's Problems

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra where Elizabeth Clarke is talking about "The synergies of difference – moving beyond transdisciplinarity". She is discussing how those from multiple disciplines can tackle "Wicked problems". Elizabeth conducted three case studies (climate forecasting for food security in India and Sri Lanka; food security family poultry and crop integration in Tanzia and Zambia; climate adaption for farming in Cambodia, Lao, Bangladesh and India). Essentially she treated research itself as a topic for social science research.

Review of Australian Research Training System

The Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) is undertaking a review of Australia’s research training system for the Australian Government. There are a discussion paper and consultation questions available. Submissions close 31 August 2015.

In my view Higher Degree Research (HDR) graduates need to develop teamwork and communication skills for wider career pathways. These skills should be formally assessed. This can be done primarily using e-portfolios.

Graduates could be offered the opportunity to obtain other industry certifications alongside their research work, assessed via e-portfolio.

As many graduates entering academia will be teaching and those in industry will be conducting training, it would be useful if they were to obtain teaching skills. A suggested minimum level would be the equivalent of a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.

Graduates need an understanding of business, so that they can assist with their research being applied. These skills can be gained through initiatives such as ANU TechLauncher for IT professionals. A more generalized version of that program could be developed, incorporating Innovation ACT. I am currently preparing a series of e-learning modules intended to help with this.

Innovation at Australian Unviersites

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where I am attending a workshop for Early Career Academics (ECAs) on innovation. It was pointed out that as well as measures of academic output in terms of appears produced, the reputation of the university is also important as Australian universities earn a significant proportion of their funding from international full-fee paying students.

One problem for ECAs is that more and more PHDs are being produced and so there are proportionally fewer jobs in research, particularly in universities. Most new PHDs will not go on to research, but have to do teaching or work in industry, even if they come back to research later. What this suggests to me is that PHDs will need extra skills, in particular teaching skills and it would be better if they got those skills while doing their PHD, rather than later.

The workshop was told that there was little scope for growth in international student numbers. It was suggested that the area for growth was industry involvement. However, I suggest another area is retraining of the current workforce for new jobs.This is in addition to redesigning university degrees so they provide job-ready skills.

The workshop was told about the difference between creativity and innovation: creativity being about novelty and usefulness and innovation and implementation, which goes a step beyond.

The workshop heard from the ANU Research Services, Academy of Sciences Early Career Research Forum and ANU Edge.

It was interesting to see how innovation being done at ANU compared to other universities and countries, in particular Cambridge University and the UK. I see something I wrote on this in 1997, got a mention in a Cambridge University study: "A pilot study on the emergence of university-level innovation policy in the UK".

ps: A surprise last speaker at the innovation workshop was Pia Waugh,  on data.gov.au and GovHack. She mentioned that next years GovHack may be a "follow the sun" event, held at sites around the world in different time zones.

Providing Culturally Sensitive Feedback to Higher Degree Students

Yesterday I attended one of a series of workshops being given by Dr Sylvia Alston and Dr Elke Stracke, as part of the Office of Learning and Teaching  (OLT) funded project "Giving and receiving written feedback in HDR supervision: enhancing supervisors' and candidates' skills in a cross-cultural context".

The attendees were divided into groups of about five, who undertook a series of activities. These generally involved first filling in a one page paper activity sheet and then discussing the results. First there were two questionnaires, one for supervisors of Higher Degree Research (HDR) and one for students. The workshop activities were then on topics such as the effect the medium used for student-supervisor communication has (such as oral face to face versus email) and the possible tone of supervisor feedback. One topic which came up in discussion was dealing with students (and supervisors) who have English as a second language.

What struck me was that while this discussion was interesting, none of it was new. This was covered in the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education I undertook last year. Some of this was covered in the course I took on supervision (requiring preparation of a "Statement of Supervisory Expectations"), but also the skills on teaching generally are applicable. It is not clear what it is intended to accomplish with these workshops, beyond what is already provided in coursework.

Also the workshop was presented as a curiously old fashioned way, with no on-line resources and paper handouts. At the end we were handed a sheet of references, which might be very useful, but why do I have to type in the URLs from a sheet of paper? The workshop would be improved by applying 20th century techniques, having on-line resources before, during and after the workshop.

Workshop facilitated by Elke Stracke, Sylvia Alston and Joelle Vandermensbrugghe ...

Description: This interactive workshop examines traps to avoid and offers tips to ensure successful feedback practice in HDR supervision across cultures.

Feedback lies at the heart of any learning experience, and giving and receiving feedback is an important and integral part of postgraduate supervision practice. However, its complexity is not always recognized and the practice not discussed by candidates and supervisors. Students tend to be concerned by a lack of clear directions, while supervisors tend to complain about the lack of take-up of feedback. Often, cross-cultural differences between supervisors and candidates can add to such mismatches.

Find out more about feedback in this interactive workshop that draws on recent research in the field. In this 2-hour workshop you will
- explore how to give and receive oral and written feedback;
- examine supervisors' written language use and candidates'reactions;
- develop critical awareness of potential conflict due to language use and cross-cultural differences;
- increase your skills (as supervisor or candidate) in giving and receiving feedback in a cross-cultural context.

This workshop provides an opportunity to think about how you, as supervisor or HDR candidate, go about giving, receiving and responding to feedback, and to find out what works best for you. ...

This workshop is part of the OLT-funded project - Giving and Receiving Written Feedback in HDR Supervision: Enhancing Supervisors' and Candidates' Skills in a Cross-Cultural Context - led by Associate Professor Elke Stracke (UC, Faculty of Arts and Design) with Dr Theresa Winchester-Seeto (Macquarie University, Learning and Teaching Centre), Dr Joelle Vandermensbrugghe (UC, Graduate Research Office), and Dr Sylvia Alston (UC, Faculty of Arts and Design)