If you’re keen on learning about research tools and strategies AND get a bit of networking done, we have the ideal opportunity for you! 

La Trobe University is a program partner for the first time with 23 Things International. This unique global program is tailored for researchers interested in learning new tools to enhance their research, build and engage in research communities, and build their profile. It is open to doctoral and Masters by research students, their supervisors, and Early Career Researchers from all disciplines.

Registration is now open for 23 Things International 2024! 

WHAT IS IT?

23T is a self-directed online program. Each week we release two blogs – Things – covering a topic that can enhance how you work. It’s an easy way to find out the basics, with time to experiment a little and resources for taking things further when you want. With fresh content from field experts every year, we’re responsive to current needs, issues and debates, as well as the latest tools/technology. For example, this year will feature using AI in your research, project planning for grants, creative sharing of research, and research community building. 

A huge benefit is that when you join the program, we put you in a ‘Pod’ with other researchers from around the world; through our dedicated Discord server you can meet, share experiences and maybe plan for future collaborations. Essentially, we want to help you build up a mini-network that goes beyond the obvious links within your institution or field and connects you with people you might otherwise never meet. 

For 2024, we’re grouping people using the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals – now of central importance to many research programs and funders – so whatever your discipline or career stage, you’ll be meeting people with similar passions and priorities.

The Pod creates an instant network of researchers with overlapping research interests and leads to fantastic collaborations and friendships. Some of the Things include small group tasks, helping you to explore topics further together.

On top of all this, there is a Discord channel for discussion and networking, and we’re mixing in some live events, too – cross-time-zone coffee socials and a 48-hour writing retreat.

Our partners are leading universities and networks:

• The Africa Research Excellence Fund (UK & pan-Africa)
• Auckland University of Technology (NZ)
• University of Bath (UK)
• Cambridge University (UK)
• University College Dublin (IRL)
• James Cook University (AUS & SG)
• Kings College London (UK)
• La Trobe University (AUS)
• Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (IDN)
• Wollongong University (AUS)
• University of Otago (NZ)
• Royal Holloway University of London (UK)
• University of Surrey (UK)
• Sydney International School of Technology (AUS)
• Techne Doctoral Training Partnership (UK)
• The Whisper Collective (International)

We expect to have around 800 participants for 2024, from all areas of research.

SCHEDULE

The post Networking and boosting research skills in one: 23 Things International appeared first on Research Education and Development.

From L-R: Aylwen Cotter (President ABSS). Rachel Davis (Vice President ABSS), Kellie Maybery-Reupert (Secretary ABSS) and Laura Steel (Treasurer ABSS)

For many graduate researchers, doing a Masters or PhD is a rollercoaster ride of emotions, wins and losses, sleep deprivation and aiming to be fantastic at time management. However, under the confident surface of most faces is self-doubt, stress and the feeling of being an imposter.

The organising committee for the Agribio Student Society (ABSS) are all very familiar with this and started using their connection to each other as a method of sharing these experiences. I remember asking one of the other committee members ‘how do you know you are doing enough for your PhD?’. I was really stressed that I wasn’t where I should be, or doing all that I should be. She suggested creating a diary – not one to look at week to week as a guide of progress but to look back on over a month. I did this and the diary has helped me with so many other issues such as planning experiments, listing upcoming tasks to ensure I don’t forget them and also as tool to see just how far I have come.

Realising that our committee can’t be the only ones feeling like this, and with the funding support of the Intellectual Climate Fund (ICF), we convened a stress management workshop for our community of researchers.

The goals of the stress management workshop were to create awareness that mental health is very important and provide helpful self-care strategies. We also wanted to provide an opportunity to develop a supportive network of like-minded people who understood these issues, one that was open to anyone and everyone.

Being from an agricultural science background, the ABSS asked for the help of the Strategy Prevention and Education Team here at La Trobe for some guidance on the most relevant information for students for mental health and wellbeing. They provided us with two wonderful speakers, Kellie Muir and Rose Wimbush, whose breadth of knowledge guided us towards areas we could relate to. They were easy to approach for questions, too!

The event was divided into two sections. The first being the workshop and the second being a networking meet-and-greet. The second part was catered by Caffeine, a café in the Agora at La Trobe. The organising committee were blown away by the positive feedback from attendees as they circulated the room, introducing themselves and starting to create that supportive local network of fellow researchers. Many were comfortable talking about their experience, mental health and challenges they have faced. It was refreshing. The ABSS Treasurer, Laura Steel, gave a quick talk about her experiences during her PhD to conclude the event. Laura’s talk helped open up the discussion and made things more relatable to the participants, connecting with the topics discussed by the guest speakers.

Event participants left with a small token from the day in the form of a stress ball or bracelet. These served as reminders that, as researchers, we’re not alone. There is a community of like-minded people out there and we can reach out if we need it. Kellie and Rose sent us links about the support networks available to everyone here at La Trobe University, in case you’d like to know more.

As President of ABSS, it was great to be part of this project. It provided our graduate researchers with a learning and community-building opportunity. As someone who’s doing my PhD and as prone to stress as anyone else, this event really made me see that I need to tailor my PhD to my needs if I’m to get the most out of it. I don’t need to push through all the time. It’s good to take the time to evaluate and decide what will work best for me to get the job done – and that might not be a 9-5 work day!

La Trobe University links from the Stress Management Workshop:

• La Trobe Health, Wellbeing and Inclusion webpage that contains many other resources edu.au/wellbeing
• Direct booking link here Submit an Enquiry | La Trobe University – Symplicity Advocate

Links to a couple of techniques outlined by the speakers during the workshop:

• 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding technique
• Sky as your observing self metaphor

Understanding how feelings and emotions like anxiety can create more anxiety

• The struggle switch

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Aylwen (Wen) Cotter is a PhD candidate at La Trobe University in the Animal, Plants and Soil Sciences department. Her research focusses on early detection of fungal pathogens for agricultural crops.

She is currently the President of the Agribio Student Society (ABSS) and dog crazy. 

You can find Wen on LinkedIn here. 

The post Managing stress and creating community (Wen Cotter) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Graphic conversation | Marc Wathieu | https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcwathieu

Public involvement in research – from conception through translation – leads to research that is more relevant, rigorous, and impactful. 

Most major research funding bodies in Australia including the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), as well as health charities such as Cancer Council Australia, increasingly recognise the importance of public involvement in research, requiring researchers to evidence how  people and communities who could be involved in or impacted by the research have contributed meaningfully to the design of their research, as part of the grant application process.

The language that we use to talk about public involvement in research can be confusing; terms are used interchangeably: patient and public involvement, consumer and community engagement, stakeholder consultation. That said, at their core these terms refer to people with lived experience of care and treatment who can make a meaningful contribution to research efforts in a range of ways. Hence, and going forward as a university, we encourage colleagues to use the term public involvement.   

Many researchers acknowledge the importance of public involvement in science but struggle with how to do it in a meaningful and authentic way. As Theme Leads for the ‘Healthy People, Families and Communities’ and ‘Understanding and Preventing Disease’ themes, we recognise the importance of supporting La Trobe researchers to work with the public in developing their research ideas. 

In this post, we share an overview of La Trobe University initiatives which support best practice in public involvement in research to deliver maximum research impact.

La Trobe was created as a university focused on access and social justice, and its vision is driven by a need to make a difference to the communities we all serve. Public involvement is therefore core to La Trobe University’s ethos. 

How can we do this well?  

In July 2021, we convened a public involvement in research working group, chaired by us as Theme Leads, that comprised academics with an interest in public engagement in research, including those with lived personal experience. The task of this group was to inform a university public involvement plan, raise awareness, celebrate exemplar practice, and identify resources, tools, and systems to do this well. 

Ultimately, our aim is for La Trobe to be recognised as a leading university internationally for our public engagement in research. Our achievements to date include:

• Establishing a public involvement resources intranet site (that can be accessed here)
• Promoting the La Trobe university Consumer Engagement Toolkit (here)
• Facilitating an Understanding public involvement in research workshop (here)
• Running a Consumer and the community: fad or future? university event (here)
• Ensuring that public involvement is a core part of the research pipeline process
• Embedding public involvement in theme plans and school research strategies
• Incorporating public involvement as a core part of the university’s internal investment schemes

The process of researchers involving the public in research is one of continual reflection, learning and improvement. Members of the working group have shared their challenges of involving the public in their research. Looking back, they have reflected that their early efforts could be considered rather tokenistic; seeking affirmation that their ideas were good. They discussed how they developed the necessary skills (particularly interpersonal ones) for doing research “with” (rather than to) the public.

To continue building on these initial achievements with a view for sustainability, there is a need for a long-term vision and strategy for public involvement. To this end, the University has appointed a Public Involvement Strategic Lead, who starts work in September. They are charged with working with Schools and Research Centres to design a university “Public Involvement in Research” plan. A key component of this plan will be the involvement of members of diverse communities including Indigenous and regional populations. At a more practical level, the Strategic Lead will facilitate workshops on how to engage the public in research and demonstrate how this can best be evidenced in funding applications.

Through authentic public involvement we can ensure that our research is relevant, meaningful, and impactful for the communities we serve. 

We encourage all La Trobe researchers to access our resources and find out more about public involvement. Looking forward to working with the La Trobe community on this important initiative! 

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Richard became a professor in 2008 at the U of East Anglia and moved to Australia to join La Trobe U in 2017. He has held senior clinical and academic leadership positions in both health service and university sectors. The focus of Richard’s research is on developing and testing novel psychosocial interventions for people experiencing mental ill-health. He is on Twitter at @DrRichardGray.

Patrick is a recognized international leader in cancer research with PhD training in immunology at the WEHI, Melbourne, postdoctoral training in genetics and cancer research at the MIT, Boston, and led a lab for over 15 years at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, before becoming La Trobe U’s inaugural Professor of Cancer Biology in 2016. His current research is focussed on the evolutionary origins of cancer, re-establishing tissue organisation to prevent cancer, and how space and microgravity can impact on regeneration and cancer progression. Patrick is on Twitter at @pohumbert.

The post Enabling public involvement to boost research translation and impact appeared first on Research Education and Development.

In 2009, my first year of my health sciences undergraduate degree, I was diagnosed with diabetes.

Fast forward many years later, I found myself juggling multiple hats of a consumer as a person living with diabetes or diabetes advocate, a healthcare professional, and a researcher. Many assumed that I had a rock-solid idea of my career from the start given that all the pieces of the puzzle fit nicely when they see my academic journey on paper. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Soon after I was diagnosed with diabetes, I started writing a blog on the reflections of life as a young adult with diabetes. Little did I know that this would launch me into the diabetes advocacy spotlight.

Since starting to share my story, I have had people reach out thanking me for shining a light on things that have not been readily discussed or for providing a different perspective. Through the networks I developed, I found myself sharing my story in front of very important people – from diabetes community members, healthcare professionals, to politicians within Australia and internationally.

While it has been a privilege to be able to be a voice for the diabetes community, I felt like I was not being taken seriously and I wasn’t making a difference.

I thought that perhaps if I had more credentials, it would lend strength and authority to my advocacy voice and changemakers would start to take me seriously. After my undergraduate studies in health sciences and nutrition, I completed my Master in Dietetics to gain accreditation as a practising dietitian, which enabled me to work more closely with the diabetes community. During my studies, I realised that clinical work perhaps wasn’t for me. I found numerous barriers that patients and clinicians faced within the healthcare system the prevented the ability to provide high level personalised care in an efficient manner. Through my placements and personal experience, I saw really passionate individuals who were trying to change the systems around them burning out and sensed (and shared) the frustration they had.

Realising that, as a clinician, my ability to impact change would be limited, my mentor suggested that I turned a pet project I was working on into a PhD study. It was an option I’d never considered or thought might be an option for me.

What may have been an off-handed comment by my mentor opened a world of possibilities and opportunities for me. After several attempts, I was able to secure a PhD scholarship, which enabled me to focus on developing a mobile health resource for young adults with diabetes to help them navigate the healthcare system, unpack health-related jargon, access diabetes information, and seek support from peers. Interestingly, the further I progressed along my research and especially after earning my doctorate degree, I started to drift away from the diabetes community. Suddenly, I was seen by the diabetes community as one of those researchers sitting in their ivory tower (though, in reality, I was just trying to survive academia). Some said I wasn’t allowed to wear the consumer hat anymore because my perspective was “tainted”.

On one hand, I get it. My perspective is biased. As a person living with diabetes with levels of insider knowledge about the healthcare and research world, I have the confidence to voice my concerns and advocate for myself when navigating the healthcare system. Yet, as a healthcare professional and researcher, I never felt I fit in comfortably there either. Thankfully, along the way, I have met some wonderful researchers, clinicians, industry partners and diabetes advocates who are devoted to improving the healthcare system for those who are chronically ill. These people recognise the importance and expertise that each individual brings to the table, whether it research skills, lived or clinical experience, or industry networks.

Working with this wonderful community has made me value and embrace being a lived experience academic. I understand where my conflicts lie but, more importantly, I understand how to communicate with each audience.

As a lived experience academic, I see my role as being the person to bridge the gaps between consumers, healthcare professionals, researchers, and industry stakeholders. By facilitating such connections, we can truly start collaborating to make a difference.

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Dr Ashley Ng is a diabetes advocate, researcher, dietitian and senior lecturer at La Trobe University. Her research interests include embedding social media and peer support into mainstream healthcare for chronic condition management and consumer engagement and involvement in research. 

Ashley’s advocacy is internationally recognised through her past involvement with the International Diabetes Federation, and she currently sits on several diabetes related committees at national and state level as a lived experience academic.

Read Ashley’s blog Bittersweet Diagnosis or follow her on Twitter: @hangrypancreas.

The post Who Am I? Life as a Lived Experience Academic (Ashley Ng) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

In so many ways, many of us are hoping that 2020 exits with a calm predictability and no more dramas. In the best scenario, we manage to have as stress-free a break as possible before facing the new year!

Given the year we’ve all had, and knowing the ongoing effects of much of it, what are good things to do or think about right now? 

The RED team wanted to take this opportunity to share their thoughts around looking into 2021. Will it be a change from the constant pivoting and frantic changes that we had to make this year? 

Jeanette Fyffe:

At years’ end, we try to write a wrap-up of the year for our final blogpost…I am sitting here staring at the flashing cursor wondering what to say. How can I sum up a year that contained such peculiar and creeping lows and such wonderful and surprising highs? 

The challenges of this pandemic, like everything else, have been distributed unevenly across the world and various segments of society. I know in the scheme of things my own challenges have been fairly modest (though home-schooling was pretty interesting) but there have been lots of things to contend with. 

Making it through  has meant learning new skills. I now know too much about how 6-year-olds are taught narrative structure but probably just the right amount about puggles (baby echidnas!). The big lessons for me, though, have been the ones about being human. In universities, it sometimes seems like we are all about ideas and thinking but this year has had to be a year of being fully human and feelings are a part of that. My weekly SUAW emails across this year ended up turning into my own little pandemic diary; they trace my experiences like a metronome. I just read back over some of them and can see I felt A LOT of things, tick (up), tock (worry), tick (down), tock (elated), tick (tired), tock (sad)…

Despite the isolation, the power of Zoom has enabled us to connect in new ways. This has been a year of being human together, a time when people said to one another “How are you?” and listened gently to the real response they got, then shared in turn. So, while the year has been hard, I have never been prouder of my team, my colleagues and you – my La Trobe researcher community – for bringing compassion, kindness, and grace to the deep insights, clear thinking, and creative innovations that have marked this year. Thank you, and go gently.

Dan Bendrups:

This year has been challenging, but a silver lining for me has been discovering the unexpected intimacy of Zoom-based workshops with supervisors. 

In these workshops, it is always my aim to enable supervisors to feel comfortable to lay bare their supervision practice – to verbalise and accept past challenges in order to learn from them as a collective, building consensus about our practice and enhancing the graduate research experience for all. I have found Zoom to be quite conducive to this aim, in some ways more so than a physical seminar room. Participants join from the comfort of their own spaces, often with pets and other paraphernalia, in a private discussion between peers this helps people to let down some of their professional guard, allowing us all to work towards self-improvement. Zoom has allowed many of us to dispense with obstructive formalities, yet without becoming too familiar. 

It has also erased the distance between city-based, regional and more remote (international) supervisors, who were able to all see eye-to-eye, literally, across the shared screenscape. Getting the delivery just right has been challenge – I know the format doesn’t necessarily suit everyone –  but I think I’ve reached a point where I’m comfortable enough to make others comfortable, and this bodes well for 2021 when I’ll continue to use the online space for supervision development, truly reaching across the whole La Trobe supervisor community.

Jamie Burford: 

All throughout 2020 when someone has asked me how I’ve been feeling, one word has routinely tumbled out of my mouth: wobbly. 

I think for many of us this year has felt a bit like jelly. Many of the habits and institutions that we build our lives around have felt noticeably unsteady. My own body also wobbles in a few extra places thanks to all the #WFH sitting and the elaborate toasted sandwiches that I have crafted all through lockdown.  

Despite all of the wobbliness, I have many things to celebrate. My workshops this year have been full of colleagues who have zoomed in from around Australia and around the world. Our greetings to each other reflect this, as good morning is accompanied by good afternoon and good evening. 

In the online spaces where we have gathered I have seen friendships blossom and researchers find their feet. We have met each other’s pets, noticed each other’s favourite tea cups, and exchanged recipes for chocolate cakes you can make in a mug. I have watched researchers turn up for each other: to learn about research and to improvise what it means to become a researcher in a time like this. I have seen extreme generosity as colleagues have listened patiently, held space open for others, and asked questions that have unlocked new ways of thinking. 

As I head into campus today to collect my mail and a stack of books that I will try (and most likely fail) to read over summer, I just want to express my gratitude: thank you to everyone who has wobbled alongside me this year. I look forward to seeing you again in 2021.

Tseen Khoo:

This year has made me think a lot more about the things we can do rather than what we can’t. 

We’ve all been jostled in different ways by the restrictions, distancing, and shutdowns. Like Jamie, I have had wobbly times this year and continue to do so. My capacity to become teary at poignant advertisements is at an all-time high. 

In the midst of so many things out of our control, it was heartening to see so many thoughtful, generous projects take place (such as those convened by the awardees of the Intellectual Climate Fund and Research Culture Fund), and to have such empathetic engagement during our workshps and across various intensives where we spent concentrated time together (e.g. Careers, EMCR, Supervision, Communicating your research). It made me feel like our work made a difference to the researcher community and, in a year that is marked by bad and worse news, this was precious. 

Looking around more broadly, it has been a year where pulling together has renewed urgency and effect. Doing #Whisperfest with colleagues around the world brought home how much we have in common when it comes to striving for a humane, sustainable sector. We are indeed stronger together. 

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This is the final post on the RED Alert for the year. We’ll be taking a blog-break and return on Tuesday 2 Feb, 2021. 

Take care, folks! And we look forward to seeing you in the new year! 

The post Looking at 2021 (The RED team) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

 A few weeks ago I tweeted this tweet:

What’s the best reason why you’ve had a paper rejected?

I’ll go first:

‘There’s a split-infinitive on page 6. As the paper has been so poorly proofread it’s not worth my time reviewing’.

I tweeted this because I thought it was funny, but it seemed to strike a chord with the academics I follow on Twitter because soon enough my throwaway comment on the review I received on a paper had a hundred replies and 100,000 impressions.

My tweet was really about the absurdity of the peer-review process. I know the reviewer did not reject the paper because of a split-infinitive, they just didn’t like the paper and by page six were looking for a reason to reject it and a split-infinitive seemed as good a reason as any.

So that was their summary of my work, 20 words about a split-infinitive. I spent untold hours researching, and hours more writing and proofreading (not well enough apparently) the article draft. This also happened while I was precariously employed so those hours were not hours I got paid for, they were not part of any research allocation, this was research and writing done on my own time that happened at night and on the weekend while I was teaching sessionally. Yet for all of the effort, I got just 20 words back from this reviewer at a ‘gold-standard’ Q1-ranked journal.

The comments the tweet generated and DMs I received all told similar stories. It’s not about the rejection, it’s about the repercussions of the rejection and the process of producing high quality research that is a major factor of an academic’s career success.

The process of peer-review is quite simple, in theory. An anonymous reviewer with knowledge in the field assesses the work for soundness in research methodology and the work’s contribution to existing scholarship in the field. Based on that assessment, the reviewer can reject the paper for not meeting this criteria, can request revisions be made and often they will then include some recommendations to follow, or they accept the work for publication.

The majority of the time, this is how the system works. Whether a paper is rejected, revisions are requested, or it is accepted, the researcher gets helpful advice from someone else in the field to help improve the paper. At the end of the day, an article can be flatly rejected but this can still be done nicely and helpfully.

The problem is when things don’t go right, because poor reviews can be devastating for researchers as they can be unhelpful (as my tweet demonstrated) or even worse, they can be done cruelly or derogatorily – written by someone who knows they are safeguarded by anonymous review.

So what’s the takeaway from this experience and the many conversations that have happened since? 

To people getting reviews for the first time, everyone gets bad reviews, and sometimes they’re not just unhelpful, they’re also scathing and callous, and contain things most people would never say in person… some of the time because HR would become involved if they did.

To people doing reviews, please remember that even rejections can be written nicely and helpfully. 

We’re all pushed for time, we’re all doing reviews in what little spare time we have, but a bad review to an experienced and well-regarded professor may not matter so much. However, to a precariously employed academic who knows that every paper published puts them at least a little closer to more secure employment, a rejection is hard enough; but a review that is unhelpful in its content does not help them improve their work, and a review that is cruel can be heart-breaking.

At the end of the day we are an academy. Yes, the academy and the world are going through some tough times right now, but it doesn’t cost anything to be kind to each other, and offering a few words of encouragement when we’re doing article reviews can make a huge difference to the person on the other end.

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Troy Heffernan is Lecturer in Leadership at La Trobe University. His research is centred on higher education with a particular focus on policy, leadership, administration, management, and inequalities within the sector. He tweets as @troyheff. You can find his websites here and here, and a link to his publications on ResearchGate. 

The post The gift of peer review (Troy Heffernan) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Our crowdfunding campaign 


It has been a busy time for our research team during these last few weeks, as we launched our crowd funding campaign on Wednesday 20 May. The campaign aimed to raise $3,500 for a project in the Central Dry Zone (CDZ) of Myanmar, where we will try to improve degraded wasteland soils so that small-holder farmers can use them again for growing food crops.

The funds will purchase and modify a single-tine ripper in Geelong, then ship it up to Myanmar for use in the project.

Next year, when COVID-19 is hopefully behind us, a member of our team will travel to the CDZ and set up two small pilot trials to test best-bet interventions for improving these soils. They will most likely involve ripping the compacted soils and adding manure and fertiliser deep into the rip-lines, and then grow a crop of sorghum during the monsoon rainy season. This approach has worked for us here in Victoria, and we want to see if it will work for the CDZ farmers.

A wasteland soil in the Central Dry Zone in Myanmar | Photo courtesy of the author

So, why crowdfunding?

The reason we chose crowdfunding for this project is that it’s very difficult to acquire research funds for this type of project. Our government has been cutting back in providing funds for international agricultural development, and it is difficult to know which philanthropic organisation to approach. The total money required is relatively small, and the humanitarian nature of this project has appeal. We thought the project lent itself to crowdfunding – here’s the “Deep roots in Myanmar” campaign site at Pozible.

The campaign has been surprisingly successful in that the target was reached on Friday 22 May morning, just two days after the launch!

Robert Edis (RIGHT) talking with farmer in the CDZ | Photo courtesy of the author

What’s involved with crowdfunding?

Well, the issue for busy academics is that crowdfunding does take quite a lot of time and effort. A solo academic, inexperienced in crowdfunding, would find it very difficult to mount a major campaign. Fortunately, our team had four members working on the project, and strategic advice from Jonathan O’Donnell (who is doing his PhD on research crowdfunding).

Two essential tasks for our crowdfunding project were:

1. Building the website on the Pozible platform, and 
2. Spreading the word among potential supporters. I found this difficult and was taken to the edge of my comfort zone in asking potential supporters for a donation.

The project will be all set to go when the ripper arrives in Myanmar. The fieldwork will start in April-May 2021, pandemic permitting. We have a list of around thirty-five supporters, who donated to the campaign, and we will send emails to update them on progress.

We will need additional funds in 2021 and plan to run a larger campaign to fund the second site at Thangtha in the dry zone with a funding target of around $7,000.

Why do we do this type of research?

Most researchers would like their research to have a beneficial impact on people in need. This applies to this project and, in this respect, we identify with the words of La Trobe’s founding Vice-Chancellor, the late David Myers: “The true measure of a university’s greatness is the total effect it has on human welfare and progress”. 

Another source of motivation lies with the science. We want to see if these interventions improve crop productivity and sustainability on these wasteland soils; if it does, then why?

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Peter Sale (LEFT), who authored this post, is a staff member at La Trobe from 1988-2018. His research interests in his later years were in subsoil amelioration, and he made trips to Myanmar in 2015 and 2018 where he focussed on ways to improve wasteland soils in the dry zone. 

The project leader is Gary Clark from the Animal Plant and Soil Sciences Department in the School of Life Sciences. Gary lectures in soil science at La Trobe; he was awarded his PhD in subsoil amelioration in 2009. 

Robert Edis is a team member who recently retired from managing agricultural research programs in soils/agronomy with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

Thander Nyi is a team member and a Soil Scientist (and Chair the ASEAN Regional Soil and Nutrient Management Expert Group) – Land Use Division, Myanmar.

Project leader Gary Clark (LEFT) and team member Robert Edis | Photos courtesy of the author

Project team member Thander Nyi |  Photo courtesy of the author

We received a great deal of valuable advice from Jonathan O’Donnell, the final member of the team. Jonathan works at the University of Melbourne and is undertaking PhD studies (RMIT) on crowdfunding in Australian universities. 

The post Raising research funds with crowdfunding (Peter Sale) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

The RED team wrote a quick guide recently about using Zoom for our workshops and events.

I realised I had quite a few other things to say about how to be a good video conferencing citizen that didn’t quite fit on that 2-pager.

Now, for those of you who don’t know about the Zoom-pocalypse, a short bit of context: since the advent of the pandemic, and encouragement to work from home and exhortations to practice social distancing, many of us are working from home and away from each other. For events, then, this means we’re mostly dependent on Zoom, a video-conferencing platform to which La Trobe is subscribed.

Most of us are feeling over-Zoomed, and some of us have never loved the computer-mediated ‘connections’ that are now our only way to keep in contact with our colleagues and communities.

As this form of communicating and teaching has become the new normal, here are some strategies for being a good Zoom participant:

Number one tip for being a good participant – and to have the best development experience – is to TURN UP as much as possible!

I say this only slightly tongue-in-cheek. It can be easy to let sessions slide if other things are clamouring for attention, and we all know life happens (especially now), but committing to your own development and knowledge-building is important. Turning up is important for you, for your colleagues who are your peers, and for the hosts of the sessions. Having been a facilitator and events organiser for a long time, it is a frustrating thing to put in the thinking, work, and resources for an event and have serial no-shows (I’ve written about why I care about this).

Not everyone is at your level of tech expertise – be understanding and proactive. 

You may not even know what Zoom is right now, or you may be clocking up your 1000th hour on it and feel like a vid-conf ninja – either way, I can guarantee you that the group you’re with for any session will have big differences in how comfortable and skilled they are with the technology.

There will be times when the facilitator or host will have to do some quick teaching about functions, or set the guidelines for the workshop (e.g. all questions should be asked in the chat-box). If you already know the stuff, that’s great! If you don’t already know it, ask any questions you need to and get to know what you still need to brush up on (and follow up on that outside the session).


Participate to the best of your ability. 

We don’t expect everyone to be those mythical vid-conf ninjas. In fact, we often don’t feel like we’re completely on top of things in the Zoom world, especially with the multiple demands of any given session that aims for engagement (e.g. managing participants, break-out rooms, polls, reactions, sharing screens, chatboxing, etc).

Similarly, we know that everyone’s technology set-up and context is different. You may not have that quiet corner to work in, there may be kids and room-mates everywhere, your laptop camera may have given up, the mic might be awful to use…and more. Participating as much as you can, whatever the circumstance, is the key. We’ve had people who couldn’t use their camera or mic (shared space) but they were fantastic with the chat-box and asked lots of questions, conversed with their peers, reacted to what was being said or presented. We may not have been able to see them but we knew they were there and that they were interested.

We also understand that different people have different preferred ways to engage – not all of us are comfortable claiming speaking space in a group of 30 or more, particularly across a video platform. I am always a happy and (over)enthusiastic participant on chatbox conversations, for example and, when I’m not the facilitator, this is often where I ‘speak’ most to people rather than on the screen.

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So, those are my suggestions for being a good participant and gaining a valuable experience for yourself when you are part of an online workshop or discussion. If you have some of your own, feel free to share them in the comments!

Here are a few other articles to help you level up with your vid-conferencing game:

• How to make video-conferenced meetings less painful (ABC News) 
• How to look good on Zoom meetings (New York Post)

For general wellbeing when working from home:

• 5 ways to wellbeing when working from home (Wonk HE)
• Don’t forget the human side of working from home (JISC blog)

For those questions that you have about candidature, scholarship, and other support, the best place to go is the Graduate Research School COVID-19 FAQs.

The post Making the most of an online workshop (Tseen Khoo) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Photo by Mike Erskine | unsplash.com

During last year, I found myself drawn to attend several workshops run by La Trobe’s Research Education and Development (RED) team. They had topics such as blogging and developing a digital profile. My interests sprang from a desire to get my research and writing on girl internees in Changi during World War II – and my wider interests in the editing and publishing worlds – out into the wider world.

However, kept coming up against an existential blockage: what sort of ‘me’ did I want to be when I’m out there in the digital world? And who did I want to connect with? Who did I want to share my work, words and thoughts with?

Why is being a digital ‘me’ such a complex question?


Who ‘I’ am in the digital world had been a fraught question for me – because ‘I’ contain many selves. Apart from being a (part-time, mature-age) PhD researcher doing a non-traditional style of PhD, I’m also an editor running a freelance business, a published author (for both young people and adult readers) and a family member/friend/local community member.

For a long time, I tried to take the marketing approach of segmenting your audience. That is, I worked to develop a different ‘voice and channel’ tactic to reach out  to different groups of people and organisations. However, most of the time that just lead to a form of textual shutdown. Was I writing to reach out to clients? Or members of the academic world? Young people who might want to read my work? Adults who might want to publish it? This pre-considered thinking made it all too tough to write. I didn’t write or participate anywhere, because I spent so much time being caught in an analysis loop.

What worked for me is when I started to think less about who I wanted to reach, and more about what communities I was a member of and what I had to offer. In other words, I stopped thinking about what the digital world could bring to me, and more about what I could offer the communities that resided in those spaces.


Who do I want to connect with? Who do I want to share my work, words and thoughts with?


My digital communities swirl around each other. I gravitate towards discussions about doing a PhD, writing and publishing, children’s and young adult literature, and editing. Sometimes, these worlds overlap, especially the writing and PhD worlds. The discussions that take place in these spaces revolve around topics such as strategies on getting the work done, balancing research, paid work and family life, upcoming conferences and opportunities, and general support.

Who I am in these communities is an extension of the kind of academic/writer I want to be. This is a mixture of my personality, preferred mode of working and who I am inspired by. I aim to be warm, encouraging, generous with my knowledge and vulnerable. These working traits – while some of them simply are just an extension of who I am IRL – are ones that I’ve carried over from my extensive editing career. Editing and publishing are collaborative work spaces – nothing is produced without the input of an entire team that bring their unique skills to a project. Long-term success as an editor – and especially as a freelancer – is dependent on building good working relationships as well as doing high-quality works. So, it is within the digital academic communities I belong to: the focus is getting the work done and getting it out there while being supported and nurtured as you do it.

I’m a highly text-based person, so I look mostly to Twitter and Facebook for my communities. Other visual- and video-based social media spaces – like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok  – are also useful spaces to browse. Here are some hashtags,  Twitter handles and moderated groups that I’ve found welcoming and useful:

PhD support and conversations about how to get it done

#phdlife
#phdchat
@WriteThatPhD
@PhDForum
@ResearchWhisper
@ThesisWhisperer

Editing and publishing conversations

#amediting
#amwriting
@IPEditors
@EditorsCanada
@The_CIEP

Writing for young people (children’s + young adult literature)

#LoveOzYa
@Ozlaureate
@WritersVic

Academic research in children’s literature

@ACLAR_
@IJBib
@IRSCL_news


So: who am I in the digital space?


I’m a member of overlapping sets of academic and writing communities. I’m a (proto-)academic and writer operating in a thoughtful, yet imperfect, way that offers – and is offered – peer support. I share resources and discoveries, and I’m not afraid to ask my communities for help if I need something. I do this with mostly with text, in digital spaces where my people are gathering. Being ‘me’ online means being a member of communities that support, nurture and foster academic and creative thinking and writing.

In the digital world, I am my outward-facing, flawed, blossoming, writerly self.

Update:


I’m writing this section in early April 2020, where COVID-19 restrictions are coming in to play. In my home state of Victoria, Australia, we are in Stage 3 restrictions. This has important ramifications for everyone, but for PhD researchers, it means the university campus is closed, people are working and studying at home, and all teaching is being done online. Furthermore, other institutions (like archives, libraries, museums) are also physically closed (although many are opening up their digital offerings). It means that for many of us, our research and its methods are dealing with wild and fluctuating changes. What we signed up for may no longer reflect what we are actually able to do.

COVID-19 restrictions also mean that the conditions that we are working under are massively affected. Many people have lost their jobs – and while the government is announcing financial help, this still causes stress and financial pain. Being restricted (mostly) to our homes means our home world is also now our work world; we may be suddenly sharing limited spaces with other members of our households. The adults we live with may also be working from home; our children might not be returning to school for months (which may mean that supervising online learning is coming our way). We may leaning into roles as carers in a way that we are not used to – or be the ones needing care when services are being altered on a daily basis. And, sadly, many of us may face severe illness and heartbreaking situations as this virus takes hold.

All of this has had me thinking a lot about being a PhD researcher in a digital world. Because now – more than ever, even more than when I wrote the original version of this post – we are operating in online spaces. We have been forced, in many ways, to quickly adapt and adopt to working online. We Zoom our university courses, our meetings, our conversations and even our social lives. We use apps to form study groups, writing circles and critique groups. And, despite the individual difficulties, there is also widespread (and in some cases, institutional) acknowledgment that we are all finding it tough.

Personally, I’m finding two useful – maybe even positive – elements are developing out of these conditions. The first is the emotional support that is being poured into digital spaces. We may being physically distancing, but it feels that for many of us, we are socially re-connecting online. The second is the movement towards digitising events. For example, in-person attendance conferences – often held in places far away from my campus – are currently being replaced with online events; making it easier to meet, learn from and collaborate with researchers from a global academic community despite geographical distances.

None of us know how long these restrictions and the resulting challenges will last. While being a PhD researcher in a digital world is certainly challenging, it feels more important than ever that we seek to remain connected. The threads (or should that be ‘optic fibres’?) that connect us are operating in two directions. They give us access to our peers, supervisors and colleagues, providing us with avenues to seek out information and support. In turn, we get to broadcast our empathy to others, express our vulnerability and provide support to others, investigate different modes of working plus communicate the results of our research to the world.

In the middle of this pandemic crisis, there is much to be gained from being a PhD researcher in a digital world. To be honest, for me, the digital world has a lot to do with what is making this time bearable, let alone productive. Here’s hoping that the positive outcomes outweigh the more difficult ones in the times ahead.

The post Being a PhD researcher in a digital world (Carolyn Leslie) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

One thing that everyone can agree on is that this last week has brought about seismic changes for what our 2020 will look like.

We (the Research Education & Development team) are working hard alongside all our colleagues to ensure as clear and smooth a process as possible for moving things to online modes. We recognise the importance of keeping communications open, maintaining quality development opportunities, and supporting the researcher community as we’ve always done.

But we also know that it’s not ‘business as usual’ because that is impossible.

In the midst of these huge transitions for everyone at the university, the RED team wanted to share what these changes mean for our work, and how we’re travelling with the significant shifts to our teaching and everyday practices.

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Jeanette Fyffe 

If you have ever met me IRL (in real life) you would know that I am a classic ‘people person’.

So, this transition to working from home, with all of my interactions being mediated by technology, is more than a little discombobulating.

I have also found myself pondering how I will continue to generate those serendipitous meetings in the Agora and the five-minute catch ups between appointments in Writer’s Block that are so enriching for my work. Everything seems just a bit harder now, and lots of automatic ways of working are no longer relevant and require a new consciousness…which is kind of exhausting. I don’t mind admitting, dear reader, there have been tears!

But among the hard things have been some absolute delights:

• The very real joy of the #AusUniPetWars on Twitter at the moment
• The many ways researchers are finding to ‘turn up for each other’
• The caring, professional and innovative responses of my team

At RED, we have been making lots of changes with the way we work to support your researcher development needs as well as creating spaces and places for intellectual climate activities – our responses are being staged with immediate critical responses first, and longer-term planning now getting underway.

One of the first things we moved online was Shut Up and Write (SUAW). SUAW has been running continuously at La Trobe since 2013 and we’re not letting COVID-19 stop us from being collectively productive, supportive, and writerly as researchers!

The new schedule for our fully online ‘Shut up and write’ offerings means that there are lots of chances for you to keep writing and stay connected, and opportunities to meet new people. This chance to make some new connections could be a silver lining for us in these hurly-burly times!

Even while writing this post, a new SUAW opportunity has been set up! This one’s especially useful for folks who are looking after kids in the day because there’s now a chance to SUAW in the evenings. Huge shout out to Hannah Slootjes for setting this one up!

If you are creating other ways to stay connected and want to promote them, I’d love to hear from you.

Go gently, dear colleagues.

Dan Bendrups 

I’ve been reflecting on the needs of supervisors and their candidates through my own supervision circumstances as we head into a period of enhanced social distancing. One of my PhD candidates has had to postpone indefinitely what would have been a defining piece of overseas fieldwork. The good thing is that he’s able to pivot to other work while waiting to travel but, as a supervisor, I need to help produce some useful suggestions about what to do. At this point, I’m uncertain about the quality of advice I can give. To some extent, we are muddling through this next phase of work together.

This sensation of muddling through is something that I anticipate will also be familiar to others, and I’m sure we’ll all be facing increased levels of uncertainty in our work over the coming months. One way of processing this is to foster reflexivity, and the online Supervisor Development Program is there to help supervisors work through some of the finer details of their practice.

Additionally, we can all claw back some control in uncertain times by renewing our understanding of processes and expectations, and to this end, the full range of RED workshops for supervisors and candidates remains available in online mode. This includes critical topics such as Chairing Progress Committees, fostering Respectful Relationships, and Managing Expectations in Graduate Research Supervision. These workshops also provide a space for some of the peer-to-peer interaction that may be missing from our normal university lives in the coming months, and I look forward to working with people in this mediated space, so we can all muddle through together.

Jamie Burford  

I’ve spent a while sitting here trying to think of what to say. I have written and deleted a good number of sentences in the process: it’s hard to strike the right chord. Lots of the words that tumble out onto my monitor seem flat.

I check in with myself for a moment or two, stretch my neck, take a deep breath. 

Sometimes the right thing to say is I don’t know what to say. It has been a big week and I am at a loss for words. Maybe you are, too?

To other La Trobe researchers who have had some big feelings over the last couple of weeks: I am with you. It has been a weird and wobbly time.

Given this weirdness and wobbliness, I want to reassure you of something: we are keeping our development program for graduate researchers humming.

• Graduate Researcher Orientation will continue to be scheduled – now as an online event. We ran two online orientation sessions last week, with one more this week. It has been such a joy to gather with La Trobe’s newest researchers and hear about all the fascinating projects that are about to begin. If you are new to La Trobe, please look out for upcoming dates.
• We have workshops to help you understand the key milestones of graduate research at La Trobe: Introduction to Progress Milestones, Confirmation, Mid-candidature Review, and Submission to Examination. These have always been available online, but we are now expanding the number of online sessions available.
• Our Accelerated Completion Program will commence this week via zoom, and run over the next 8 weeks. Our aim is to help graduate researchers who are in the home stretch of their candidature to finish their theses well.
• We also have a suite of upcoming writing workshops including workshops on Writing a Literature Review, Structuring your Thesis, and Writing with Confidence. Now might be a really good time to invest in your own professional development as a research writer!

Tseen Khoo 

I’m very used to working from home and offering sessions via Zoom so I was thinking this transition would be relatively easy. I have been partly right. My set-up at home and my family’s ability to understand my work-from-home (WFH) routine means that that aspect was fine, even with the kids around (and – as of today – on holidays!). Where it has been challenging is realising that WFH is not a choice now, but the way it has to be. I had things to say about this. It has made me much more aware of the importance of the casual proximity and conversation that generated its own sets of knowledge and insight into our work and colleagues. These are things I’m trying to re-create on Twitter (#LTUWFH) and through informal catch-ups with colleagues. For the programs I run, here’s a heads-up about some key items:

• Intellectual Climate Fund (ICF) and Research Culture Fund (RCF): These schemes are still going ahead but you’ll have to get more creative, given distancing/isolation contexts! 
• The next ‘Writing for the public (Communicating your research)’ full-day intensive is on 12 May. This is still happening on that date via Zoom, and will have more flexibility in the programming.
• The ECR and MCR development intensives are currently being reconceptualised as we’re fairly sure no-one wants to spend 2 days on Zoom! Make sure you’re on the ECR or MCR mailing list to receive updates – email red.grs@latrobe.edu.au to join. 

Running as usual – but only on Zoom – are the workshop series ‘Researchers and social media‘ and ‘Blogging your research‘, and the 5 rules of grant club.
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Stay in the loop with our updates by reading Graduate Research Scholar, follow us on Twitter or Facebook and (if you’re an ECR or MCR) sign up to one of those mailing lists.

As you can see, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to ensure a good experience in front of screens! In all of this, as much as we’re all trying to be professional under extreme circumstances, we need to remember that we’re human, it’s a very tough time, and that ‘normal’ has left the building (as have we).

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Relevant resources and updates: 

• Graduate Research School FAQs 
• La Trobe COVID-19 updates 
• RED workshops and programs 
• Shut up and write – still going strong and now with many sessions on Zoom!
• Really good overview of transitioning to working from home (by Katherine Firth of Research Degree Insiders)

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