SocialLearn team

I'm working on a project called SocialLearn and am with a team of people again, not all alone, like the PhD researcher is. I had a few days off aftr my viva, and when I came back, I was sitting at my desk, watching people move around and thinking that perhaps they were all going to a meeting that I didn't know about when they all stopped round and gave me a card and a clap.

It's going to be a good team to work with. I'm looking forward to getting to know them well.

Minor results

My viva yesterday resulted in PhD with minor corrections.

I followed the Ten Tips for getting through your PhD Viva more or less.

• I had a good piece of work
  
• my supervisors choose examiners who liked my work
• I knew my arguments
  

One of the amendments is to put in the introduction some alternative ways I could have done the work - that's always awkward because there are a thousand different ways to discard and would make a thesis ten times longer, but I need write only a couple of sentences I understand.

An interesting question they asked was if I'd ever come across such a cyclic model of engagement from a consultancy, being as consultants are renowned for producing their own models, especially two by two matrices. But no, I haven't, and I doubt anyone else has because my model came from thinking about Nahapiet and Ghoshal's model of social capital, and was empirically developed from the case studies. I haven't fully explained it on this blog partly because I wanted to keep the details until I was ready to publish. Soon they will be published in

1. my thesis in the Open University library
2. the MCD conference paper.

After it all, we quietly celebrated in the office with fellow students, anyone passing by and a bit of bubbly.

Silver PGs

Vitae has PGs blogging here. A recent blog there on Silver researchers - do they offer a contribution to the postgraduate community? has elicited over a dozen comments from older post graduates. As an older post-grad myself, I appreciate the blog and the discussion since I'd not thought of myself as too old to start the PhD when I applied because it was something I'd always wanted to do, wanting the process, the opportunity to research, and learn how to research better than I had done when I'd had other opportunities. I think I have contributed ot the post graduate community - in the OUBS, in the university and to the wider community through this blog.

However, it came as a surprise to me to receive career development training because I'd never had that before - perhaps why my 'career' has not ever taken off. My school didn't do career training. Girls were going to marry and be mothers, so they could go to university perhaps, or teaching, or if not bright enough for that, then nursing or clerks in the civil service. That was my 'career training'.

It'll be nice if I get a research job after this - I've enjoyed the PhD and would love to do further research. A career position would be a bonus.

Colleague submits

My Chinese chum has submitted. This is special because she has had a baby on the way through her PhD journey, had to move back to China, wait for her baby to be big enough to leave with her relatives and then come back to England to complete her degree. She's rightly proud of her achievement.

Following hard on her heels is my Canadian colleague, who was much delayed in collecting his data, but is now analysing and writing up at speed. He'll be working right up to the last minute of the four year student registration. Go him!

Viva preparation.

Preparing for a viva is a different task from preparing for an exam because you, rather than the examiners have set the syllabus, so you have to anticipate the questions, but it's the examiners who create the questions, and you have to anticipate what questions the examiners will create having read what you wrote. Is that complicated?

Amongst things I've done to prepare are:

• found generic questions,
• collected specific questions from my mock viva,
• imagined the questions,
• written answers to generic and specific viva questions
• discussed with my supervisors,
• reread my thesis,
• stuck post-it notes in it
• found and read papers written by the examiners
• had a mock viva with some horrid questions about how I could possibly have used that theory without citing GuruWhatsisName, and how do I reconcile a philosophical perspective with how I've done the research.
• identified the weak points in my thesis (I think, I hope)
• learned answers by heart
• listed corrections (I heard my examiner say at a speech to PhD students that he expected them to have a list of corrections so I'll have a short list of the typos if he asks )
• presented to my fellow students
• prepared a conference paper with my supervisors - a new experience from which I learned much

Help is available on the web at various sites:

• Times Higher Educational Supplement
• David Twigg on preparing for the viva
• Tips for getting through your PhD Viva from jobs.ac.uk
• The Final Hurdle - a blog that includes some links to other sites on vivas
• Survive your viva - a Guardian article from 2003 with advice from Rowena Murray
• vitae - one of the best for researchers
  

As the viva draws closer, I want to revise more, but also I'm fascinated by my new part-time temporary job researching the use of a new web site for social learning, and that work draws me in more each day as I get to know the job and meet people.

Revising and writing papers

Phew! I just uploaded a conference paper "Cycles of Engagement", due in today!

Revising my work for the viva started with

1. reviewing generic viva questions,
   
2. then the more specific ones that came up in the mock viva.
   
3. A third approach is to write a paper for a conference, and that's been the focus of my work over the last couple of weeks.
   

Of course, this conference paper for the Management Consulting Division biennial conference has got my supervisors' names on it, and deservedly so. After speaking with someone from the MCD at the Academy of Management conference last August, I was encouraged to present at the PhD consortium, but once I approached the MCD they suggested I presented a paper at the full conference. I wrote a proposal, and they accepted it, to my surprise and delight. But I shouldn't be so surprised, because now at the end of my PhD, I know what I have to say, so perhaps I wrote a sensible and interesting proposal.

After the mock viva, my supervisors offered to help me to write this paper, and I'm glad they did, because, in the last few weeks, I've learned a lot from the way they write. One supervisor addressed the challenge of how to put all the richness and detail that makes a PhD study what it is - into just 8000 words, restructuring the original paper I wrote; the other has greatly improved the flow of the argument. Whenever am I going to learn to write like this!

Why write a paper before your viva? Because it:

• helps you to identify the key points of your thesis,
  
• makes you reread parts of your thesis,
  
• helps you spot typos and mistakes before the examiner points them out to you

If the conference were before my viva, I'd also have practised speaking the points I'm learning by heart for the viva. But the viva is in May (probably) and the conference is in June. Look here for the paper if you want to read it because it's a good summary of my work.

I'll welcome constructive feedback, so do contact me through this web form.

Advanced academic media training workshop

As a practice for my viva, and future activities, I registered on the OU's advanced academic media training workshop, having taken the initial workshop over a year ago here. I'd realised at the Bottom Line studio that a one-minute piece to camera with all the lights focussed on you is almost parallalisingly scary so I needed to improve. If you're logged on to the OU system, you can read about the training here.

In the morning we covered a two-minute interview with questions we'd anticipated and given the interviewer beforehand. Then we spoke "down the line". This means that you have a tiny earpiece, face the camera and respond to the questions you hear in your earpiece in an otherwise empty studio. The advantage of this set up is that if a news channel wants an Open University expert quickly, the OU expert can immediately work in this studio to answer questions from someone in another part of the UK, or Europe or anywhere in the world, without having to be in their studio.

Then we went out in the fresh spring air to produce our pieces to camera en situ. Mine was in a car park, and why a car park? Because I was talking about engagement, and some of the best engagement happens in unexpected places like car parks. It was only a one minute piece, and I'm prepared it, and learned it by heart, so took only three takes.

1. The first got chucked because I said 'good morning' and shouldn't, but it gave me time to learn to take a couple of steps before talking
2. The second got chucked because the last line was lame
3. When I get the link for the best take, I'll post it on this blog.

We also took the opportunity to put together a piece for an OU mathematics openings course where one of us explained what maths could do for understanding patterns in the world, like those in fern leaves, and the fun of learning together (I became a film extra).

After lunch, we practised auto cues, discovering its disadvantages and the consequence need to 'perform' , act up a bit and to read quickly. Then we planned a story board for a piece of media with a running order and shooting script. This was discussion and a bit theoretical but gave me ideas for something to do in my new research job, (the one I started part-time, temporary last week,) and the advice from our excellent trainer, Janet Summer, improved and extended our conception of how to tackle such a media piece. Also look out for:

• Starting with maths from Katie Chicot
• Easy Net Present Value from Jane Freckleton-Hughes