HCT Postgraduate Workshop

Thursday 6th December was the Human-Centred Technology Postgraduate Workshop that we* organise at the University of Sussex.

This year things were done a bit differently.  Rather than traditional research paper presentations the day was re-focussed on research methods (by year) appropriate to everyone's level and interests.  The idea was to take full advantage of the functionality of the Sussex Creativity Zone (CETL) and provide the chance for all attendees to critically reflect on the research approaches they are taking.

Unexpectedly I found out the week before that I was to take part as well.  I am glad I did - even if my digital poster did suffer somewhat from being generated at the last moment - as it was enjoyable and useful.

So, on the day, I finished class early so that we could all get to the workshop.  We arrived during Ben's talk on 'Doing a PhD: Managing Your Supervisor', and I quickly had to jump up again to make refreshments for the first tea-break.  The day was then split into alternating sessions; digital poster presentations by year, and practical sessions targeted to level. 

In my case:

• Activity Session 1: Speed dating for the 3rd year doctoral students, elevator pitches for presenting your research.  In my case I repeated to each person I sat with: "I have no idea what I am doing!"  We then analysed the challenges and the shared positives. 
• Activity Session 2: Drawing pie-charts of our work life balance, looking at the work we completed in the previous week.  Mine was depressing, but I expected no less having started to deliberately reflect on this anyway.  (Nothing like having to teach time-management to make you notice just how badly you are doing.)  We then drew out the drivers and some general tips for the group. 
• Activity Session 3: Pairing up to sketch out our ideal thesis: type, contribution, thesis and structure.  I found this useful, even though it is a bit premature for me.  The shape could be anything at present.  Afterwards my supervisor happened by and commented that at least I knew I needed an abstract, introduction, literature review, discussion and conclusion!  Ho hum.

All in all a really useful day for me, and probably a good motivator for helping me to clarify just what I need to be doing at this stage in my game.

Challenges:

• Thinking time / tangible output
• Constraining the focus / area of study
• Maintaining a focus on the positive / not beating yourself up
• Barriers/difficulties (Technology, tools, pragmatics, financial)
• Pathological patterns - hard to break
• Theory
• OOPB / Too much to do
• Temporal and technical constraints
• Transition between disciplines to make contributions

Positives:

• Novelty
• Freedom to explore
• Found method to tell the story despite lack of clarity in literature
• Knowing where you are going and what you are doing
• Lots of potential

Drivers:

• Self-pressure / last minute
• Deadlines (internal/external)
• Anxiety
• Other people's agendas, requests and expectations
• Structure
• Priorities
• Problem/Barrier
• Boundaries
• Urgent vs. important

Tips:

• Explicit thinking time
• Explicit downtime
• Calming activities - i.e. list making
• Assure yourself that you can do it
• Talk about your problems
• Breaking up big tasks

My photos of the day are here.

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* Thankfully this year I was allowed to take a backseat organisational role and was only responsible for registrations, payments and receipts.