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

Session 2

Emma Coonan & Isla Kuhn

Cambridge University Library

Course content

• Session 1: managing found/published information

• Session 2: managing the information you generate

Store – organise – retrieve – synthesize

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?

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?

Active reading

“The art of reading is to skip judiciously”

~ P.G. Hamerton

Step 1: Why are you reading?

http://sfl.emu.edu.tr/dept/alo/active4.htm

• 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?

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)?

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

Useful tools:

• highlighter and pen• PDF-Xchange Viewer/Foxit

Base document (Teresa)

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

Index cards

Mind mapping

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

Information issues

Tools for keeping on track

• Research diary

• Road map

• Big picture

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)

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

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

Road map (Jamie)

Road map: time management

Road map: time management

Big picture (Sandra)

Big picture

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

Learning styles

Final tips

• Where to start

• Time and space

• Help and support

Where to start

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

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

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)

Thank you!