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

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• [How do I find] unpublished and ongoing work?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

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

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
• 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!)
• 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