Slides from the workshop for PhD supervisors on the role of progress in the doctoral studies, held at Tallinn University (Estonia) on 05.12.2019

1. Progress in the Ph.D.
Participatory workshop for PhD supervisors
Luis P. Prieto, Paula Odriozola-González, Yannis Dimitriadis,
Tobias Ley, María Jesús Rodríguez-Triana
Tallinn, 05.12.2019
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.

2. How this workshop came to be
● Previous “professionalization of PhD supervision”
workshop (Helmut Brentel)
● Idea: establish supervisor community at TLU, shorter
events about more narrowly-focused topics on supervision
● This may be the first of many, any of us can organize it, if
we find an interesting topic

3. Motivation for this workshop
Think about a school in which:
● About half of the students never finish
● About half of the students experience
moderate-to-major symptoms of anxiety and
depression
… would you take your children to this school?
Yet, this is the situation in most doctoral schools
worldwide
A sense of progress (vs. feeling “stuck”) as a differential
marker of PhD students that complete the PhD
Wollast, R., Boudrenghien, G., Van der Linden, N., Galand, B., Roland, N., … Frenay, M. (2018). Who Are the Doctoral Students Who Drop Out?
Factors Associated with the Rate of Doctoral Degree Completion in Universities. International Journal of Higher Education, 7(4), 143–156.
Levecque, K., Anseel, F., Beuckelaer, A. D., Heyden, J. V. der, & Gisle, L. (2017). Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students.
Research Policy, 46(4), 868–879.
Devos, C., Boudrenghien, G., Van der Linden, N., Azzi, A., Frenay, M., Galand, B., & Klein, O. (2017). Doctoral students’ experiences leading to
completion or attrition: A matter of sense, progress and distress. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 32(1), 61–77.

4. Goals of the workshop
For you:
● To better understand the role of progress in PhD students’
engagement with the PhD process
● To exchange useful practices about supporting PhD
students in developing a sense of progress in their work
For us:
● To better understand the issue of (perceiving) meaningful
progress in a PhD, and what progress means in different
disciplines

5. Methodology of the workshop
● Bring research-backed insights (not only experience)
○ See the references throughout the slides
● This is a participatory workshop, not a masterclass!
○ We provide some insights from existing research on the topic, but what
this means in each student’s particular context, is on you (and them)
● Focus on voicing particular student (or supervision)
problems related to progress, and offer solutions (by us or
your peers here)
○ … but avoid “complainy” vibe!

6. Luis P. Prieto
Senior Researcher at TLU
Experience in Educational
Technology and Learning
Analytics
Interest in doctoral
productivity and wellbeing
(see www.ahappyphd.org)
The organizers
Paula
Odriozola-González
Assistant Professor at
University of Valladolid
(UVa), Spain
Experience in Clinical
Psychology and processes
involved in human behavior
Interested in academic
performance
Yannis Dimitriadis
Fu
Professor at University of
Valladolid (UVa), Spain
Experience in Educational
Technology, Doctoral Studies
Former director of UVa
Doctoral School

7. María Jesús
Rodríguez-Triana
Senior Researcher at TLU
Experience in Educational
Technology and Learning
Analytics
Interest in PhD supervision
and learning analytics
The organizers (II)
Tobias Ley
Professor at TLU
Experience in Psychology,
Educational Innovation,
Workplace Learning

8. Data for research and consent
We would like to use some of your contributions as data for our research
● Developing technologies and practices to help doctoral students track their
progress
● Joint project between UVa (Spain), TLU (Estonia)
What data?
● Opinions and ideas in the questionnaires (anonymous, with nickname)
● Photos of the session (including some of your group productions)
● Audio recordings of whole-class debates
None of the personal, identifiable data will be published unless it has been
aggregated or anonymized
You can withdraw your personal data (e.g., photos, audio) at any time
Do you give your consent to this data gathering? (please sign the forms)

9. Structure
1. Introduction: workshop goals and method (10 min)
2. Progress and its role in engagement and
persistence in the PhD (5 min)
3. What is meaningful progress towards the PhD,
across disciplines (35 min)
4. Practices for perceiving and supervising progress
(10 min)
5. Intervision/advice exercise: help, my student is
stuck! (30 min)
6. Wrap-up and next steps (15 min)

10. Progress and its role in engagement and
persistence in the PhD

11. Progress as a differential marker in Ph.D. completion
Qualitative interviews study with N=21 Belgian ex-PhDs (8 completed, 13 dropout)
● Draw graph of “doctoral journey” + describe what good/bad days looked like
Some findings
● Supervisor support appears a lot… but not differently (completed vs.
dropouts)
Main difference: “progressing serenely in a project that makes sense”
● The project makes sense to the PhD student
○ vs. having no project or going in a direction that does not make sense to them
● Making progress in the development of the thesis materials
○ vs. being “stuck”, “blocked”, “going in circles”
● Not too much emotional distress
○ vs. the thesis work as a burden
Devos, C., Boudrenghien, G., Van der Linden, N., Azzi, A., Frenay, M., Galand, B., & Klein, O. (2017). Doctoral students’ experiences leading to
completion or attrition: A matter of sense, progress and distress. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 32(1), 61–77.

12. The Progress Principle
Diary study of N=238 employees of 7 R&D-heavy companies (about 12,000
journal entries, quantitative and qualitative)
Good days vs. bad days: progress observed more often, setbacks (stagnation,
blocks) observed much less
○ Even if progress events are relatively small and unimportant
○ Progress loop: positive emotions/perceptions → more creativity/productivity → more
progress → more positive emotions/perceptions
Progress in meaningful work. What matters to workers in R&D?
○ Work is creative, challenging
○ We feel it is our project (ownership)
○ We feel it is consequential, i.e., it benefits us or others (e.g., we learn skills through it, others
will use its outputs)
The main role of management: to remove blocks (ensure progress happens)
○ … and avoid making the work meaningless or unimportant or pointless (more on that later)
Amabile, T. M., Barsade, S. G., Mueller, J. S., & Staw, B. M. (2005). Affect and creativity at work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50(3), 367–403.
Amabile, T. M., & Kramer, S. J. (2011). The power of small wins. Harvard Business Review, 89(5), 70–80.
Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Harvard Business Press.

13. How’s our students’ progress?
Data from similar workshop for PhD students here (N=14)
Have you considered dropping out of
your doctoral studies?
Overall, I’m satisfied with my progress
towards the PhD
Burnout vs. Progress

14. Main takeaway:
Students feeling that they make
progress (even if small) in meaningful
work is more important than we think!

15. What is meaningful progress?
(across disciplines)

16. What are good indicators of progress in your
discipline? (3 min)
1. Brainstorm ideas for indicators of progress towards the
PhD (in post-its)
○ Please create at least four concrete indicators/post-its of progress of a
PhD
○ Please add in the post-it what is the frequency with which you expect to
see them in typical doctorate (e.g., daily, once a month, once a year, etc.)

17. Mapping indicators of progress (15 min)
1. Make groups, according to the letter you’ve been
assigned (A, B, C…)
2. Share the indicators in your post-its with the group,
brainstorm other indicator ideas
3. Take flipchart paper and place your indicators in an
importance/measurability plane or matrix:
concrete/easy to
measure
vague/difficult to
measure
Measurability
Importance
very important/crucialunimportant

18. Share your maps with the rest (8 min)
Are there commonalities or differences between disciplines?
Is there a dominant frequency? or are frequencies varied?

19. Practices for perceiving (and supervising
for) progress
(from the research above and other sources)

20. Some practices (for students) to perceive progress
more often
1. Make (and celebrate!) minor milestones
a. E.g., big tasks into smaller ones (e.g., section of a paper), tick them off!
2. Journal, every day
a. Helped the employees in the study to make sense, learn about their work
b. Keep it concrete, simple (e.g., describe one salient work event today)
c. Benefits appear when you review the entries (see patterns in your data)
3. Use objectives and key results (OKRs) to make your
milestones and progress more concrete
a. Objective (big priority, stretch goal for what to achieve)
b. Key results (measurable indicators of progress, of how to achieve it)
4. Self-track your progress indicators
a. On paper or with technology, does not matter
b. E.g., add easy/quantitative indicators to your journal (e.g., words written)
c. We’re starting a study soon about how to support this kind of practice
Amabile, T. M., & Kramer, S. J. (2011). The power of small wins. Harvard Business Review, 89(5), 70–80.
Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Harvard Business Press.
Doerr, J. (2018). Measure what matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation rock the world with OKRs. Penguin. Available online here

21. Managing Supervising for progress
● The main role of a manager: remove obstacles
○ E.g., Ask about obstacles/blocks in every meeting with PhD students
● Keep up to date with the students’ work
○ This is not the same as micro-managing!
○ Amabile has a detailed “daily progress checklist”
○ NB: this is from the industry context (i.e., managers often have daily
contact with employees). Modify frequency to suit your situation
● Emphasize the learning process, not the outcome (e.g.,
what lessons did we learn from a “failed study”)
● Don’t make (or signal) student work as meaningless
○ Fail to provide resources needed to succeed (including our own time)
○ Disrespecting or discouraging the student
○ Imposing our direction to the student’s project
Amabile, T. M., & Kramer, S. J. (2011). The power of small wins. Harvard Business Review, 89(5), 70–80.
Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Harvard Business Press.

22. Other practices for perceiving progress?
(5 min)
(If you are not already there) Please go to
https://web.htk.tlu.ee/lapills/ , click on “I’m a student” and
input code 794649
1. Input in the second questionnaire on lapills:
● How likely are the practices above to work in your students’ particular
situation? Why/Why not?
● What other practices for perceiving/supervising progress can you think of,
that would work for your particular students?

23. Main takeaway:
Find ways to help your students make
their progress visible

24. Advice exercise (Intervision)
“Help, my PhD student is stuck!”

25. Intervision exercise (30 min)
1. Some of you voiced problems with students that
experienced lack of progress - please volunteer if you
want to discuss options for getting them “unstuck”
2. Make groups of 4-5 people, from different disciplines (at
least one of each A-B-C-D groups), around problem-poser
3. Structured advice-giving:
a. Problem-poser describes situation, context, how the student is stuck -
advisors silently take notes (5 min)
b. Advisors ask clarificatory/probing questions (5 min)
c. Advisors reflect, and individually write down advice or suggestions in
post-its (5 min)
d. Advisors provide most relevant pieces of advice/suggestions -
problem-poser receives feedback (not arguing or discussing) (5 min)
e. Problem-poser gives feedback on what advice was most
interesting/surprising, and what actions they will take (5 min)

26. Wrap-up and next steps

27. Wrapping up
● Tour de table: Main takeaways from the workshop?
● All these ideas, this information is useless... unless it
prompts action
○ some by you, most by the students themselves

28. How was the workshop? Help us understand its
effectiveness
(If you are not already there) Please go to
https://web.htk.tlu.ee/lapills/ , click on “I’m a student” and
input code 794649
1. Answer the third questionnaire there
2. Tour de table: Say one thing you found useful, one thing
you would improve in the workshop

29. What next?
● What’s your immediate action? Write it down in a post it
● Pilot study on technologies and practices to track progress
in the PhD - would you recommend it to your students?
○ If so, please write your email in the sheet we’re passing around
● See you in other workshops!?
○ Who wants to organize the next one?
○ What’s the topic?
● You are always welcome at https://ahappyphd.org

30. Thank you! :)
For further information, you can contact me at lprisan@tlu.ee
For a narrative account of many of the concepts we touched in this workshop,
which you can share with others, see the next post at https://ahappyphd.org
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under grant agreement No. 669074.
TU TEE – TALLINN UNIVERSITY AS A PROMOTER
OF INTELLIGENT LIFESTYLE
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.