Slides from the workshop for PhD students 'Progress in the PhD', held at Tallinn University of Valladolid (Estonia) on 02.12.2019

1. Progress in the Ph.D.
Participatory workshop for PhD students
Luis P. Prieto, Paula Odriozola-González, Yannis Dimitriadis,
Tobias Ley, María Jesús Rodríguez-Triana
Tallinn, 02.12.2019
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.

2. Motivation
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.

3. Goals of the workshop
For you:
● To better understand the role of progress in your
engagement with the PhD process
● To exchange useful practices about keeping yourselves
engaged through tracking progress
For us:
● To better understand the issue of (perceiving) meaningful
progress in a PhD, and what it means in different
disciplines

4. Methodology and rationale
● Bring research-backed insights (not only experience)
○ See the references throughout the slides
● This is a participatory workshop, not a masterclass!
○ We can provide some insights from existing research on the topic, but
what this means in your particular context, will be determined by you
● Focus on voicing particular problems and offer solutions
(by us or your peers here)
○ … but avoid “complainy” vibe!

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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)

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

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

10. The Progress Principle
Diary study of N=238 employees of 7 companies (about 12,000 journal entries,
quantitative and qualitative)
Good days vs. bad days:
● Good days: progress observed more often, setbacks 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
● Bad days: more inhibitors (actions that hinder or fail to support the project) &
toxins (interpersonal episodes that attack the person)
○ Caution! Bad events “weigh more” (negativity bias)
Progress in meaningful work. What matters to us?
● 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)
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.

11. Progress as a differential marker in the Ph.D.
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)
● Peer support also appears… but does not seem to make a difference either
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. Main takeaway:
Feeling that you make progress (even if
small) in meaningful work is more
important than we think!

13. How’s our progress?
Have you considered dropping out of
your doctoral studies?
Overall, I’m satisfied with my progress
towards the PhD
Burnout vs. Progress

14. What is meaningful progress?
(across disciplines)

15. What are good indicators of progress in your
discipline? (5 min)
1. Brainstorm ideas for indicators of progress in your 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 your PhD (e.g., daily, once a month, once a year, etc.)

16. 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

17. Share your maps with the rest (10 min)
Are there commonalities? Or important differences?

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

19. Make (and celebrate) minor milestones
● Chunk your to-do list in smaller
pieces (within reason)
○ “Write the paper” is too big
○ “Write a sentence” is too small
○ Probably you want to tick off things several
times a day
● Remember to take a small break,
give yourself a treat, revel in the
accomplishment
Amabile, T. M., & Kramer, S. J. (2011). The power of small wins. Harvard Business Review,
89(5), 70–80.

20. Journal (every day)
● Participants in the diary study
thanked the researchers!
○ They said it had helped them understand
their own work patterns, what works or not
● Journaling has many therapeutic
benefits
○ Greater understanding came from the fact of
reviewing the entries (e.g., once a
week/month)
● Tip: Keep it concrete and simple
○ E.g., describe one salient work event today
Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy,
engagement, and creativity at work. Harvard Business Press.

21. Use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
● Method to set ambitious but
measurable goals and track your
progress
○ Famously used by companies (Google),
non-profits (Bono, Gates)... also individuals
● Basic idea:
○ Objective: stretch goal for this quarter/year
○ Key Results: 1-3 concrete, measurable
indicators of how you are going to achieve
the goal
○ Periodically check your progression towards
it, re-evaluate strategy, learn from mistakes
Doerr, J. (2018). Measure what matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation rock the
world with OKRs. Penguin. Available online here

22. Self-track your progress indicators
● Self-monitoring is a common
practice in other areas (exercise,
weight, savings, …)
○ Hypothesis: why not the PhD?
● We have already discussed example
indicators of progress in the PhD
● Select your own set of indicators,
and track them daily (or weekly, etc.)
● Technology or paper… the important
thing is to remember to do it
● NB: We’re starting a study soon
about supporting PhDs self-tracking

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

24. 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 888505
1. Input in the second questionnaire on lapills:
● How likely are the practices above to work in your particular situation?
Why/Why not?
● What other practices for perceiving progress can you think of, that would
work for you?

25. Advice exercise (Intervision)
“Help, I’m stuck”

26. Intervision exercise (30 min)
1. Some people voiced lack of progress in the initial
questionnaires - please volunteer if you want to discuss
options for getting “unstuck”
2. Make groups of 4-5 people, from different disciplines (at
least one of each A-B-C-D groups)
3. Structured advice-giving:
a. Student describes situation, context, how they are 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 - student
receives feedback (not arguing or discussing) (5 min)
e. Student gives feedback on what advice was most interesting/surprising,
and what actions they will take to make/see progress again (5 min)

27. Wrap-up and next steps

28. Wrapping up
● Tour de table: Main takeaways?
● All these ideas, this information is useless... unless it
prompts action

29. 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 888505
1. Answer the third questionnaire there
2. Tour de table: Say one thing you found useful, one thing
you would improve in the workshop

30. What next?
● What’s your immediate action? Write it down in a post it
● Possibility of participating in pilot study on technologies
and practices to track progress in your PhD
○ (write your email in the sheet we’re passing around)
● See you in other workshops!?
● You are always welcome at https://ahappyphd.org

31. 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.