The first PowerPoint slide Professor Chris Park shows his second year PhD students at Lancaster University asks: "How do I know my work is of PhD quality?" The bald answer on the next one says: "You won't - until your work is examined."
What do we expect from a PhD in Human Computer Interaction? This brief paper summarises a range of possible responses to this question. The final section goes on to argue that alternative means of assessment must be considered if we are to apply the multi-disciplinary criteria that many people use to define a PhD in HCI.
"Ten years ago, the sociologist Peter Burnham wrote that the PhD viva is "one of the best-kept secrets in British higher education". A decade later, many academics and research students feel that the situation has not changed. When transparency is a buzzword in higher education, why is the PhD viva seen to be "shrouded in mystery"? Is mystery a problem? Are and should things be changing? "
Post PhD - What Next? A follow-up study of PhD postgraduates of the School of Biological Sciences Chris MacDonald & David Barker/The Enterprise Centre University of Manchester, 2000.
Students used to get as long as they needed to complete their PhDs. But now universities are imposing submission targets. Is this the end for the next generation of original thinkers?
Whist this website is aimed at PhD students in modern languages it contains some great tutorials that are relevant to any PhD student. Well worth spending some time working through.
It came as a bit of a shock to Lisa Willats when, two weeks after she started her PhD, the men who pioneered her area of research, magnetic-resonance imaging, were awarded a Nobel prize. "It put a spring in people's step," she says.
Russian Alisa Chukanova has just arrived at Southampton University to start her PhD and is feeling hopeful about a future in UK academia: "I just came yesterday. My first impression is very good. If I like it, I would like to stay."
"The PhD thesis was so awful that there seemed no alternative but to fail it. Susan Bassnett, professor of translation and comparative cultural studies at the University of Warwick, who was acting as an external examiner, rang up her contact at the university from which it came and shared her conclusions. "
"Laurie Taylor's description of the "full PhD experience" in his University of Poppleton column of October 7, is a pretty accurate descrip-tion of the progress of my daughter's own doctoral research."
"A number of old universities could see big reductions in their research student numbers as a result of a new funding methodology for PhD students, a conference on graduate education heard this week. "
We want now to examine some very well established ways of not getting a PhD. While most examples in this chapter are drawn from business studies, in our experience, these tried and tested ways of failing apply to all fields and have to be pondered continually by research students. You have to be clear what your position is on each of the seven ways of failing that we shall discuss if you are not to fall foul of the traps they offer. And as we shall see, just to have them pointed out to you is not enough to avoid them. Most offer real blandishments that have to be determinedly resisted.