Open Research Online and new blog

To pluck the fruit from the next tree, I'm looking for new opportunities and blogging them at http://carpediempostdoc.wordpress.com/.

Before I go, remember that I've uploaded my PhD thesis to the Open University's Open Research Online (ORO) repository.

Then continue here.

Moving on

I'm starting a new and optimistic blog as a post-doc here. I don't know if I should be staying with Blogger or moving to Wordpress. It's easy to get content into Blogger but I've used Wordpress a little for my OUBS 'Winding Up' blog, liking some of its writing features, but more importantly, also liking reading other's Wordpress blogs - if it gets your more readers and hence more feedback, then it's worth the move.

I'll come back here to report progress of my colleagues here in the OUBS. For example, our EU colleague is back, up and running with his PhD. Hurrah!

Canadian colleague has to submit by the end of October or go part-time. Last year, someone else went part-time which cost around £1500 (per year), but for my Canadian colleague, as a non-EU student it costs even more - around £5000, so he is well-motivated to finish. Canadian colleague has been the enthusiast for others' success for several years now, arranging little parties and get-togethers over a celebratory glass of champagne. At last, his turn approaches and I look forward to celebrating with him and for him.

Blog finishing

This was a blog for my PhD. New posts won't be about that PhD process, so I'll blog somewhere else. Shortly I'll put up the link for that new blog, the experience of post-doctorate - with or without the experience.

Of the four post-grads in the Open University Business School that started the full-time PhD in October 2007, three of us are successful. Here's what's happened:

1. I'm through and finished
2. Colleague who did the MRes with me has successfully passed her viva with corrections, and that means she is successful. Congratulations to her, despite her wanting no fuss :)
   
3. Canadian colleague is valiantly writing up. He registered a month later so he doesn't have to submit yet. The rules are that you must submit your dissertation by midnight of the last day of the four years, or none of it counts. You'd have wasted the four years. However, if you go part-time, then you have some more years before you must submit. The problem is, going part-time requires an expensive registration fee, and it means there are visa issues for non-EU students and Canadian colleague doesn't want to do that if he can help it. So go you, Canadian colleague. Get it written.
   
4. EU colleague cleared his desk - we've been told to clear our desks for the second year PhD students to move into. I don't know what he's doing, just that he's had problems.
   

In total, it's a comparatively successful year group in that half of us have submitted and got through, with the promise that 3/4 of us will be successful in the forseeable future. Several earlier year groups had students that didn't make it within the four years, perhaps because they got married, had a baby, went back to another country, went part-time, or returned years later to complete. So our year group is doing well. Why? Perhaps because:

• we had good supervisors that directed our reading, gave rigorous and prompt feedback on our writing, encouraged our project management
• we came with the new OU MRes, or with substantial research experience
• the university supported us by providing relevant courses on research methods, academic reading and writing, presentation of work, networking.
  
• we were lucky with data access
• we worked 35 hours a week on our research
  

I know my colleagues will take issue with some of these suggestions. Over four years, you expect to have some bad luck and hurdles. In the year group that started the MRes with me, five years ago, some had to change supervisors, some had difficulty getting data access, some have been ill (I had cancer), one got married, another divorced, one had a baby, another's child was seriously ill. You can also have good luck, for example, like finding good access to data, choosing the right supervisor, living close enough to make the most of the experience, and enjoying academia. I had good luck.

New journey needed

Having attended the graduation ceremony at Versailles, celebrated the achievement with kir, now I need a new journey. I want a post-doc research position, but unlikely to get it without publications, so the next few months I shall spend harvesting papers from my PhD research and submitting them to journals on the public sector, consulting, IT and knowledge. Cross fingers.

Wound up and finished

With family, we went to Versailles for the degree ceremony. Why Versailles? Because the OU is so open that it has its students all over the UK, not on a campus, and it even has a fair number of students in Europe, particularly MBA students in Brussels. Therefore, its degree ceremonies can be in Portsmouth or Manchester, Dublin or Versailles. It took more effort to get to Versailles than to Milton Keynes, but it seemed like an opportunity for a real celebration - I'm not doing any more degrees - this was a special degree and a special place.

We stayed in a lovely hotel in the centre of Versailles, and ate a couple of memorable meals, with good wine. It was lovely to be there with husband, son and daughter and to be able to treat them a bit after their support for me the last few years.

I sent postcards to parents who've praised me for my late academic development and to my supervisors who encouraged me.

Lethargy sets in

The part time job I've had since April finishes next week. My post-grad registration finishes next month. I've nothing to do and nothing to say, and I'm nearing the end of a dismal day and there seems to be nothing beyond. I wish something would fall into the pond.

See http://www.poetry-online.org/noyes_daddy_fell_into_the_pond.htm

Clear your desk

New students are arriving in October.

I must find a new occupation, a new means of publishing, a new affiliation. I've been told to clear my desk so they can move the continuing post grads to it.

I must find a new desk.

Conferred

The degree was conferred in absentia at the meeting of Congregation on 9 August 2011. I have the certificate.

Winding up

There are several finishing points for a PhD:

• submission - the biggest and most exciting hurdle
• viva - the scariest hurdle
• sending your corrections to the examiner(s)
• receiving the examiner's feedback - have you met the academic requirements?
  
• taking the bound copies to the Research School
• having the degree conferred
• attending the degree ceremony - the nicest and most fun with champagne to drink with friends, relatives and supporters

Tomorrow I take the copies to the Research School, and I'll contact some of the gatekeepers to my case studies to offer them copies too. On Tuesday, I'm told that the university has congregation at which they agree the award of degrees, and thus the degree of PhD will be awarded to me in absentia. Then the Research School will invite me to attend one of the degree ceremonies, which being the OU could be in the UK (Portsmouth, Milton Keynes, London Barbican for example) or in Dublin or Versailles. How nice.

But the winding up is a long process. It's taken six months since submission, six months of juggling other things in my life, including new paths - winding up one and looking for a new path.

A new path might be a post in the OU - I'd like that - perhaps I'll find an opportunity to develop research from my PhD, something to do with government IT perhaps stemming from last week's Parliamentary committee report. Now that would be exciting - a new start after a long finish.

Bound copies

That's it then. I've just emailed my pdf format thesis to the printer for printing and binding so that I can deliver the copies to the Research School next Monday morning, just in time to meet the date for the next conferring of degrees next week. If all goes to plan, I get the title in just about a week's time.

End of an era. Bye bye to my thesis.

Met academic requirements

I have an official letter:

"I am pleased to inform you that the University's Research Degrees Committee has confirmed that your thesis meets the criteria for the award of a research degree. You have therefore met the academic requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Open University, with effect from 27 July 2011."

Yah! Go me! I have to get bound copies of the thesis to the Research School in just over a week if I want the degree awarded in August, otherwise I have to wait till the end of September.

Publications

Lecturer jobs require a publication record but I don't have a publication record, yet alone such a record in A* and B* rated journals. How do I get a publication record when I no longer am a research student and don't have a research job?

For the time being, I'm pootling around having fun as a user experience developer on a new OU network for learning, SocialLearn. Sadly, this is not a research associate position and doesn't officially provide the experience or skills that a lecturer needs.

I could:

1. make a participant study of relationships between users and contractors who are developing the web site. That builds on the business research I've done for my PhD
   
2. research the user experience - that builds on research studies in a different field

Corrections done

I've given in the corrections. I hope the examiner is happy but I believe I've unequivocally addressed all the corrections that the list required.

I worry about my writing being too cryptic and consequently perhaps being misconstrued, but it wasn't worth taking any longer because the extra time was unlikely to improve my writing and content.

Another viva done

Sophia is through her viva with minor corrections. Soon she can go home to her family in China where she has a little boy that she must miss so much.

The photo is of her with her internal examiner after the viva.

It has taken her many years of perseverance and effort to complete this PhD, including marrying, then going home when it was nearly written because of problems with the block of flats she lived in, having her baby, waiting some years and then coming back to England in November to finish the writing. She deserves the congratulations.

Cricket team

Critical realism and cricket are topics PhD students have debated over coffee, though I must admit that cricket is of more interest, causes less angst and fills many more coffee breaks than critical realism. Perhaps this is because several of the full-time PhD students enjoy sport, especially team sports, and we have students from ex-commonwealth countries like Pakistan, New Zealand and Canada. Such students have enthusiastically got together a cricket team from the OU Business School (now called the Faculty of Business and Law),

Every year in the early summer there is an inter-departmental 6-aside cricket tournament in the OU. The website is here:
http://www.open.ac.uk/personalpages/b.m.cook/cricket/index.htm

The OUBS has entered a team, “Ne Plus Ultras”, for the first time this year, which has progressed to the final that takes place tomorrow. If you're on campus, you're welcome to come down tomorrow if you’d like to support the team, watch some cricket or just have some lunch in the sun. The Sports Pavilion bar is also open for food and drinks. The cricket pitch is by the sports pavilion on the north east side of the main campus, a minute or two from the central walkway.

I promise not to discuss critical realism.

Another student submits

Another stalwart student of our year submitted today. See her relaxed and sunny beam.

Academic media video

At last I've been given the link to the video I did about my research. Here it is.

Its subtitle isn't quite correct because:

• First, I’m not a doctor yet, although I will be in a couple of months as I’m through my viva.
• Secondly, the words refer to the OUBSS, not the OUBS – too many esses!

But it's heaps better than my attempts in 2010, and it does allow me to summarise my research. And I'm an extra in a maths video here.

Doing corrections

Are these corrections to my thesis or amendments? I've corrected all the little bits, the details of references and cross-references, a typo here, or a missing couple of words from a quote. I've addressed the the bullet points in the examiners' report, and drafted a response to their list of corrections explaining what I've done,how I've amended the writing and the logic of it.

The process is that you send your thesis to the internal examiner with a table indicating what you've changed and where, so that it's easy for them to refer to. Then if they don't like anything they are able to tell you easily and you can have another go. I'm so nervous about my changes that despite already having had a go at them, I've not yet sent them off, but am rewriting my response.

Apparently, the examiners can ask you to do only what was in their report, so once I've persuaded them I've done, I'm through.

No award

It transpires that I'm not eligible for the award after all. Like chocolate competitions say you mustn't be employed or a family of an employee of the company to enter, for this award I must not work for the Open University. Yet I work as an Associate Lecturer (AL) for the OU, and since I submitted my thesis, I've had a contract to work on the SocialLearn project in the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi).

When I think of all the times I've heard Open University post grads complain that they don't automatically get the chance be ALs so they don't get the teaching experience that the Joint Skills Statement requires of them, they'd not be impressed. (I blogged on their skills here. ) I don't think any other ALs would be impressed either. I've won the skills, but lost the nomination.

It's particularly silly because the HEFCE Joint Skills Statement of skills training requirements, now replaced by the researcher development framework, says that a post-graduate student should obtain teaching experience, which is just what I did through my AL work.

Director of research studies isn't best pleased because, she says, research students are encouraged from the start to follow the HEFCE Joint Skills statement which outlines skills expected of PhD students, including teaching. Opportunities for research students to gain the vital teaching experience needed if they are to get an academic job are very rare at the Open University. Other universities look for teaching experience in PhD qualified recruits. As such the OU encourages students to seek AL roles in order to augment their experience, and so they are employees of the Open University for their time as ALs. This is needed, is something required of them and yet AOUG apparently penalises them for taking this action. Furthermore, although I am currently working, I have gained that short term employment in KMi because of the strength of my completed PhD research.

As the award is for performance as a research student, current employment status is irrelevant and it's not like a chocolate competition.

Student award

To my pride, pleasure and surprise the director of research studies has recommended me for an award from the AOUG, an award that goes to a final year student. She says it's due to my

• recent recognition via conference papers,
• constant engagement with social media and communication tools to speak to wider communities about your research,
• service as an AL "alongside your studies and your active role in the programme".

I don't know what the award involves but I'm flattered to be nominated, especially given the struggle I had in the MRes year to write essays, and the difficulty I had to persuade the PhD interview board that I was a worthy candidate.