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Managing your information: a workshop for first-year Ph.D. students Session 2

Cambridge University Library. Managing your information: a workshop for first-year Ph.D. students Session 2. Emma Coonan & Isla Kuhn. Course content. Session 1: managing found/published information Session 2: managing the information you generate Store – organise – retrieve – synthesize.

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Managing your information: a workshop for first-year Ph.D. students Session 2

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  1. Cambridge University Library Managing your information:a workshop for first-year Ph.D. studentsSession 2 Emma Coonan & Isla Kuhn

  2. Course content • Session 1: managing found/published information • Session 2: managing the information you generate Store – organise – retrieve – synthesize

  3. Session content • Active reading: notemaking and recording • Creativity vs. project management • Keeping track: road maps, the big picture and lightbulb moments • Learning styles: how do you work?

  4. Feedback • What resource or strategy did you try out? • How did it meet your expectations? • How does it fit your needs and workflow? • Will you keep using it – and would you recommend it to others?

  5. Active reading “The art of reading is to skip judiciously” ~ P.G. Hamerton

  6. Step 1: Why are you reading? • To understand a concept? • To gather specific facts? • To identify the structure of an author’s argument? • To find alternative views so you can challenge an argument? http://sfl.emu.edu.tr/dept/alo/active4.htm

  7. Step 2: What’s in it for me? • What’s relevant/useful for my own argument? • What other work does this piece mesh with? • What lightbulb moments does it spark? • What might be a blind alley (a white rabbit)?

  8. Step 3: Notemaking and futureproofing • ‘Gut’ your text: highlight, underline, strikethrough • Annotate, use symbols • Leave yourself clues about the content, e.g. on the cover page/in your referencing system • When extracting information, distinguish between direct quotation, paraphrase and your own ideas

  9. Useful tools: • highlighter and pen • PDF-Xchange Viewer/Foxit

  10. Base document (Teresa)

  11. http://www.open.ac.uk/skillsforstudy/index-cards.php Index cards

  12. Mind mapping

  13. Activity: interrogate your text Choose an approach …. • colour-code, mark up and annotate by type of information/what’s in it for you • produce a 25-word summary • think of two questions that Jeremy Paxman would ask the author • represent the argument as a mind map

  14. Information issues

  15. Tools for keeping on track • Research diary • Road map • Big picture

  16. Research diary “The research diary can be seen as a melting pot for all of the different ingredients of a research project - prior experience, observations, readings, ideas - and a means of capturing the resulting interplay of elements.” (www.biad.uce.ac.uk/research/rti/riadm/issue1/research_diaries.htm) The "vehicle for ordered creativity" (Schatzman & Strauss 1973: 105)

  17. Road map Fundamental structure of your research project: why – how – what? • Why are you doing what you’re doing? • How have you chosen to answer the question? • What have you found out? What does this mean? Giles Yeo, Clinical Biochemistry/Wolfson College

  18. Road map Fundamental structure of your research project: why – how – what? • Why are you doing what you’re doing? • How have you chosen to answer the question? • What have you found out? What does this mean? Research proposal

  19. Road map (Jamie)

  20. Road map: time management

  21. Road map: time management

  22. Big picture (Sandra)

  23. Big picture http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/journalismlabs/2009/05/

  24. Learning styles

  25. Final tips • Where to start • Time and space • Help and support

  26. Where to start

  27. Where to start … not with the introduction! Road map/research proposal should give you structure Keeping a research diary and making summaries will get you writing Write modularly, then link up chunks

  28. Time and space Time of day: creative thinking vs. repetitive work (e.g. proofing, bibliography checking) Time out to relax and reflect Ph.D. research is a snapshot in time – not never-ending! Working space:the right environment for you Enough room for a spatial overview of your work

  29. Help and support • University sources: GDP, CPPD, Skills Portal, Graduate Union • Supervisors, research groups, librarians • Friends and peers • Online forums, e.g. Graduate Junction (www.graduatejunction.net), Postgraduate Toolbox (www.postgraduatetoolbox.net)

  30. Thank you!

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