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What are some of the most common tech tools PhD students can use to support their research process ? There aren ’ t many , but what are the ones they are taking advantage of ? The main technology implements made available to students from university are bibliographic tools . [ These help you ] search for research papers , journal articles and the like , and can also store data about pieces of research that you find .
One of the biggest problems for PhD students is conducting that paper literature search . [ They ’ re ] looking for the latest information on their particular field of inquiry and then reading it , making notes and working to understand what ’ s going on . In other words , they ’ re becoming an expert in a particular field .
So the main tools [ in use ] are bibliographic , and some of these are called discussing research . Products like Mendeley or ResearchGate or Academia . edu , which allow researchers to communicate with one another . They ’ re LinkedIn-type tools for researchers and they are popular .
Could you outline some of the key challenges or hurdles PhD students face that could be addressed by incorporating different types of technologies into the process ? Managing all the information is one of the biggest challenges . Being able to collect that range of information and organise it , read it , mark it up and [ take notes on it ]. Also , being able to reference that information when we do write . One of the major measures of performance for a PhD is publication . We need to be able to reference all that material accurately .
Because most tools are so old , they ’ re of different chapters of their thesis . That becomes cumbersome and difficult . You can lose things , you get corrupted files , and you ’ ve got editing time – the challenges are quite enormous .
All the tools we ’ re using for this are fragmented . You have to decide what is going to work for you or not . In a lot of ways , we then [ end up falling back ] on our easiest option , which is to do things manually .
It causes productivity problems . If you ’ re not being productive , if you ’ re not feeling like you are getting somewhere , then you start losing interest , you start losing motivation , and all of these things contribute to our dropout rate . It ’ s most unfortunate . A single integrated platform that provides all the necessary tools for research students would make life a whole lot easier .
We run little workshops for PhD students and training sessions and things like that , but we ’ re not sophisticated with our support infrastructure .
EndNote or Zotero . However , [ these ] have been around for [ about 20 ] years . And they ’ re technical products designed for information gathering 22 years ago as opposed to today .
Universities tend to buy [ bibliographic tools , as they are at the heart of academic work ]. But , they ’ re old fashioned . They don ’ t capture an understanding of the information that ’ s out there today . For example , they call a journal article that you might find online an electronic article or an electronic book . Well , you can find almost anything online these days , and you don ’ t necessarily call it electronic .
So as we ’ re trying to become experts in our field , there is a problem . [ We need to ] gather all this information , we have to store it , we may have to manage it , we have to read it , we have to make notes about it . But we don ’ t have the tools that support that very well .
The primary tool of choice for writing is Microsoft Word . There again , it ’ s 22 years old . It ’ s not integrated with the bibliographic products ; you have to plug things together .
Then there are other analytic tools . We ’ ve got a few more modern [ instruments ] that have come along recently around not able to do accurate referencing . That means they end up becoming a basic storage bin and most of the referencing ends up being done manually . Each discipline has different standards for referencing requirements , so this becomes a major , major challenge .
Another challenge for PhD students is designing their research program in the first place – understanding the whole concept of a thesis and a research question , which is essential .
Project and time management and writing , drafting and re-drafting all their work [ are all critical skills ] because [ the thesis they hand in ] reflects their journey to becoming an expert in their field . It presents their understanding of that field and what is known about it , along with their ideas .
Communication in written form is the primary output . We have to review the student ’ s work and students look forward to receiving evaluation from their mentors . You ’ ve got that whole mentoring process .
In this process , at the moment , I send a file to my supervisor or a student will send one to me . I read it , mark it up and send it back . The student then ends up with version after version after version
How can universities help facilitate an enhanced use of technology within the PhD process ? The main thing is about integrating – becoming more student centred . What is it that students are doing and how are they doing it ? What is the process from beginning to end ?
At the moment , a lot of the universities are just running small workshops here and there – it ’ s very fragmented . All our technology is fragmented .
[ It would help if you could ] pull the whole process together from end to end – from the beginning of the research to the drafting , the polishing , the feedback , the collaborating , the writing and the publishing . [ Making ] the student feel like their workflow is managed in a single environment would be the most beneficial thing universities could do to enhance the process for PhD students , and enhance their success .
[ Doing so would ] provide key support . And with 25 per cent of students ending up dropping out , it ’ s a costly exercise for everybody [ as it is now ].
More and more , what the government wants is for us to increase our [ number of ] research students , bring more research into the business world and feed our PhD students into industry , because they ’ ve got advanced skills that industry needs . They are innovative . They have the ability to be creative , the ability to solve problems . These are all things PhD students learn on their journey – critical advanced skills we need in today ’ s high-tech industries . n
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