The document discusses acting on student feedback to improve PhD workshops on literature searching and management. Workshops were updated based on student concerns about distinguishing relevant literature, accessing papers, and reading strategies. New activities addressed critical analysis, the research landscape, bibliometrics, and note-taking. Students responded positively to learning about influence metrics, text mapping, and structured note-taking. Future plans include more emphasis on reading strategies and surveying long-term student impacts.

1. Acting on PhD student feedback
to create new learning resources
Angela Newton
Dan Pullinger

2. In today’s workshop
• First steps in PhD teaching • New 2011/12 PhD workshops
– Student feedback – What we created
• Over to you – Student feedback
– Group work – Future activities

3. 2005 - format for workshops
Finding information Managing information
for your PhD for your PhD
• Planning a literature search • Brain style quiz
• Mind-mapping • EndNote
• Keyword searching • Managing electronic
• Journal databases overview information
• Hands-on searching • Organising your workspace

4. What’s worrying you?
• Discussion activity in workshop 1
– Threw up more and more challenging questions
– Topics not covered in either workshop
• Conclusion?
– Change the workshops!*
*Teacher feedback on issues
raised by attendees was
also taken into account

5. Over to you
• How would you respond to these student ‘worries’?
• In your group, devise a learning activity that addresses the
problems
• Use the resources on your table to show & describe how it
would work
• You have 15 minutes!

6. Quotes 1
• Is this paper worthwhile/valid?
• How to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant
literature
• When papers say contradictory things, which do you
trust?
• How to filter “un-useful” information

7. Quotes 2
• How do I get full-text scientific papers online?
• I often worry there's crucial papers out there I don't
know are there...
• How do I know when to stop looking for information?
• Uni doesn’t have subscriptions to useful papers/journals
– I don’t want to pay too much
• [How do I find] unpublished and ongoing work?
• Some papers can’t be accessed online

8. Quotes 3
• How to make selections of what is important in a vast
number of research sources?
• Which of the articles is most important?
• How can I know this work is significant?
• How do you find/know papers that are the most
cited/respected, i.e. people who really know their stuff
• How to check the “top rating” research in certain areas?
• Credibility of authors?
• What order should I read the literature in?

9. Quotes 4
• How do I extract the important information [from a
paper]?
• Organised reading – by theme / topic?
• I get distracted & find “irrelevant information” interesting
too
• How to distinguish what is essential to read from what is
not
• Choosing the most relevant papers to read
• Reading methods – don’t want to read all papers from
beginning to end

10. 2011 - format for workshops
Working with literature:
Search & Save: Information
Impact, evaluation & reading
searching for PhD students
strategies
• Planning and controlling the • Which paper first? Measures
literature search of importance: Bibliometrics
• Search tools: Where to search • Which papers match my
for what research question?
• Search techniques • Reading & note-taking
• EndNote strategies
• Keeping up to date: Alerting
services

11. How we responded to the feedback
• New activities integrating academic skills
– Critical analysis
– Research information landscape
– Bibliometrics
– Reading and note-taking strategies

12. Critical analysis
Learning Development, University of Plymouth

14. What are bibliometrics?
• A variety of statistical measures used to quantify research
• Often make use of citation counts
• Relate to journals
• Relate to researchers
– individuals or groups

15. Which authors are the most important/influential?
• How it works: h-index, or Hirsch index
– A scholar with an index of h has published h papers, each of
which has been cited by others at least h times.
• You have a go:
– Search for the h-index for the lead authors of the articles you
have found
– What do you think is a ‘good’ h-index score?
– Will the h-index be a useful tool for your research?
– What are the pros and cons of the h-index?

16. 3 different ways to read
• Speed = Fast
• Searching quickly for facts and details, looking for the answers to
Scanning specific questions. Pick out keywords.
• Speed = Fast
• Getting the gist, picking up the main ideas, reading with a clear
Skimming purpose and objective in mind.
• Speed = Slow
Close
• Focused and concentrated reading, analysing, evaluating and
reading questioning the text.

17. Text mapping

18. 2011/12 students liked
• H-index, how to create groups in EndNote, critical analysis of
papers
• How to determine influence and impact of authors, journals
and articles
• Ideas about best ways to take notes
• Factors which determine the importance of a piece of work
C
• Idea of text-mapping - good way to think about and
internalise ideas

19. 2011/12 students disliked
• Reading - skim, scan, close - too basic
• Did not really see how bibliometrics help to prioritise
literature for my subject
• Not enough explanation of reading strategies
• It didn't give the magic answer to solve all my reading
problems! (high expectation maybe!)
D
• roll of paper scroll - impractical

20. What will you do next?
• Change the way I choose references. Use mind-
mapping
• Put some effort into learning EndNote. Text mapping
• Start using an explicit framework for my
notes, including a section on how this article
specifically can enhance my argument (to help draw
strands together).

21. What will you do next?
• Rearrange my work
• Be more structured about which articles I select, using
citation and impact factors
• Now understand I'm a more visual person & will use text
mapping
• Change my note-taking techniques
• Buy coloured pens, mindmap and use RSS feeds

22. Future plans
• Rebalance parts of each workshop:
– More reading & note-taking
– Change emphasis for bibliometrics
• Long-term student impact survey
• Animate the research information landscape slide
• Video input featuring academic staff
• EndNote vs. Mendeley
• Create a skills collection