Expensive Conferences

Quite a few conferences are becoming very expensive. In fact, some are now $1000 Australian for the registration fees. Even for PhD students they are over $600. Not many PhD students can afford that sort of money.

The reason many conferences have become expensive is that they are organised by companies rather than by academics. Many academics would say they no longer have the time to spend on organising conferences. This is a pity since they have become too expensive for many students. I organised a conference in 2007 and the conference fees were $370 Australian but I organised everything myself.

How to Complete a PhD

I have reduced the cost of my book "How to Complete a PhD" for those overseas. It is now Australian $40 + $6 for international buyers. The book has been selling well and has had a great deal of positive feedback. I really recommend it to anyone taking a PhD or thinking of taking one. It cover all the essential knowledge you need to know about taking a PhD and its contents will save you a lot of time and money.

If you are an academic and teaching a doctoral course then I can come to a special arrangement if you want to use it as a course text. It comes in hard copy and pdf formats. Also, please recommend it to your university bookshops.

The book can be found at:

http://www.justintimebooks.com

Research and Politics

It’s taken a while to get around to it but you can’t talk about research for long without getting on to the topic of politics. Yes, research, just like everything else is bogged down in politics both organizationally and at the national level.

Organizationally, your Faculty can either talk you up or talk you down, it’s as simple as that. Often when you are starting out and little or no threat to anyone then you may find you are talked up more often than talked down. As you find your feet in research, get promoted a couple of times, you will find you are talked down more and more. Your research is not high quality enough, you don’t work with enough with other staff, you don’t produce enough, you don’t obtain enough funding and the list goes on and on …..

The lack of resources for research is one of the main reasons for the politics. People will try to obtain an advantage by creating a perception about your work and so it is largely personally driven. It has been said that university politics is so heated because the stakes are just so low!

PhDs and Coursework

PhDs in Australia are usually threeyears of full-time research. Recently several universities have introduced coursework in the first year covering research methods and research philosophy.What are your views on these two kinds of PhDs? Do you think the coursework is valuable?


www.CompletePhD.com

What Motivates You To conduct Research?

I think I asked this before but what motivates you to do research? How much is it externally driven by your university? Do you think you are supported in your research? What are your plans for your research?


www.CompletePhD.com

Research Proposal Presentations

Students presenting their PhD proposals often end up developing a lot of slides for a 30 to 40 minute presentation. My suggestion is to cut it down to 9 or 10 maximum.

1 Title slide
2 Practice or theory problem being addressed and significance of this
3 Literature or key theories
4 Research model
5 Research questions
6 Research design
7 Research design (sometimes only one is needed)
8 Expected contribution
9 Timeline for project
10 Any questions slide?

This way the presenter doesn't have to rush through many slides and can spend time making eye contact with the audience.

The key point is that the student should answer the questions and not the supervisor. It is research training and after all the student's project and it is good to get used to answering questions and thinking on your feet.

I hope this helps? Has anyone any suggestions for students presenting proposals? I think they often get very nervous because it is the first time they have presented as a researcher. I was nervous the first time I stood up infront of an audience to talk about research. Even though I was a lecturer and had presented for years my knees were knocking together lol.

Conversations on Research

I have been reminded recently that a good conversation about research has many benefits. It is enjoyable for starters to be able to discuss things that are on one's mind. One enhances one's knowledge because of what is said but also because of the chance to articulate partially formed ideas. Without these chances to discuss research, ideas are often left partially formed. It takes a certain level of trust between participants to have a good research conversation.

I'd like to see more comments appearing on the blog but they remain sparse. The numbers visiting the blog average around 40 or so a week. This is pretty good as I don't promote it much. Any suggestions on how to get more traffic would be appreciated. The more people that visit hopefully the better the dialogue we can have.


www.CompletePhD.com