the training of postgraduates

The training of postgraduates

by F? L. Primrose, RI Leonard and K. E. Singer The research and management skills requiredfor gaining a PhD dger greatlyjom those associated with other graduate courses. A training programme f o r doctoral students should teach the skills needed to conduct research and heb prepare studentsfor subsequent careers in industry or academia. When developing the Graduate Support Programme (GRASP) to provide this training at UMIST it emerged that no general philosophy existed regarding the training needed to pursue a PhD. The requirement to train 350 new doctoral students a year has meant that GRASP represents a radically new approach in teaching provision. Experience with running GRASPfor a year has conjrmed that all the training neededfor PhD research, and preparationfor subsequent careers, can be provided within the current three year research grant system.

Introduction

he Total Technology department at the Uni- versity of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) has designed a T Graduate Support Programme (GRASP)

which has the potential to teach all research students at UMIST the essential skills needed for their research and to prepare them for transition to their subsequent careers. The GRASP programme for first year PhD students started in October 1994, with 150 registered on it. A second programme, for final year students, started in February 1995, again with 150 participants. These programmes were expanded in October 1995 to include all 350 first year students at UMIST and all final year students from February 1996. In developing GRASP it was found that the training needs of PhD students are very different from those of other students. Thus the aim of this paper is to describe these needs and then to explain the constraints encountered in developing a training programme for postgraduates.

Identifying training needs

In developing GRASP, the first stage was to identi6 the training required by PhD students. This is influenced by several factors, of which the main ones are:

the date the research is due to start the previous training and experience of the student the skds and knowledge required for the project the SUS and knowledge required for subsequent employment.

Unlike undergraduate and taught MSc courses, only 70% of research students start in September; the remainder begin in January or April. This means that a training programme for PhD students must be

sufficiently flexible to allow for differing start dates.

There is a wide variation in the previous training of students starting a PhD. Some have just finished an honours degree or MSc course; others may be mature students returning to university after several years’ industrial experience. Many students will not conduct their PhD in the same university as their first degree. For example, only about 50% of Total Technology students are in the department where they took their previous degree. Also, 45% of PhD students at UMIST come from overseas, and many have not gained their first degree in the UK. Because a high percentage of students come from a non-UMIST background, the scope of the training provided for postgraduates can not be reduced by simply improving the training of UMIST undergraduates.

In defining the shlls and knowledge that first year research students require, a number of different elements have to be provided, namely:

departmental topics, e.g. use of laboratory equip- ment and safety generic topics, e.g. experimental methods in chemistry project-specific technical topics research skills management skills an overview of industry for students whose project will involve industrial collaboration.

For final year students, the elements are:

an overview of industry for those considering an

advice on writing a thesis and passing the viva

job-hunting skills.

industrial career

examination

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When devising the GRASP programme, it was found that the first three elements were already covered by supervisors: the first during a student’s initial induction, the other two by arranging for the student to attend existing lecture courses. ]It was in the remaining elements that the provision of training was inadequate.

To devise a training progranme, it was necessary to identify the research and management s l d s that a student needs to obtain a PhD. Although several other UK universities are developing training programmes for their PhD students, these started at about the same time as UMIST, thus the help obtained &om them has been very limited. The situation u7as that information about the s l d s required for a PhD did not appear to exist and an original list had to be created. The 1994/95 GRASP programme for first year students covered 16 SUS and, as a result of feedback &om running the programme, this was extended to 22 SUS for 1995/96. Details are shown in Table 1. Although American universities run training programmes for all their PhD students, this is primarily technical training rather than research skill training.

Not all students need to attend all the sessions. Although there are a large number of PhD students at UMIST, they work as individuals and have unique training needs. The extent of this individudty was demonstrated in the 1995/’96 progranme, for whch first year students were asked to register for the sessions they wanted to attend. The number of students registering for each of the research and management skdl sessions varied from 48% to 86% ofthe overall total registered for GRASP.

The needs of PhD students are different from those of undergraduate and taughlt MSc students, not just in the range of the subjects to be covered, but also in their content. For example, the librarians organise tours of the UMISTlibrary for all new students, including a demonstration of the computer systems used for Table 1: Skills covered by the UMIST Graduate Support Programme for first year research students

literature searching. However, this only deals with the mechanics of the process, what PhD students need is an understandmg of the philosophy involved in a literature search, i.e. why they are doing it, what they are trying to achieve, and how can they acheve it. Having identified what PhD students actually needed, course material then had to be produced for this new approach to the subject.

A problem stated by supervisors was that they spent considerable time correcting their students’ English when reading reports, papers, theses, etc. This related to all students, notjust those whose native language was not English. The problem was that ‘academic English’ is different to everyday English, but students were not taught what the differences are. Again, new course material had to be created for this identified need.

Designing a training programme

Having produced a provisional list of the skdls that students need, the question was how to teach those skills to 350 individuals. The traditional approach of teaching in small groups (e.g. of 30 students), with lectures being followed up by course work assessed by the lecturer, would have involved the appointment of several additional members of staff. Ths would have made the programme extremely expensive and complex to administer.

The approach adopted was to organise a programme of lectures on Tuesday afternoons throughout the academic year. Each subject (listed in Table 1) is covered in either a 1.5 or a 3 hour lecture. The objectives of the lecture are defined for each subject, together with the competency expected at the end of the session and the way the student would demonstrate ths competency. All the descriptions are bound into a booklet which is given to each supervisor and student before the start of the programme. Thus, after dmussion, students can select the sessions to attend. Having defined what should be taught, an expert was needed in each subject to teach it to an audence of several hundred students. Twenty one people, from 11 departments, are used to run the progranme, and, because GRASP is organised centrally for the Graduate School, staff can be selected from anywhere inside or outside UMIST.

As well as research and management slulls, students whose projects wdl involve industrial collaboration need to understand the way that companies operate. Thus a series oflectures are included in GRASP to give first year students an overview of industry. Because students who are considering a career in industry also need a sindar understandmg, the same lectures are included in the programme for final year students. Table 2 gives detds of the final year programme.

UMIST and Manchester University jointly operate a comprehensive careers service for students &om both universities. Most activities, however, have been aimed at the employment needs of undergraduates. For example, the employers’ ‘dkround’ is timed to recruit


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students who wdl start a new job in July but many postgraduates are only just starting to job hunt then. Running the sessions on job-hunting slulls showed that the needs of postgraduates differed from undergraduates in more than just timing. Whereas many companies recruit a number of undergraduates each year and provide a common induction programme for them, PhD students are recruited as individuals, at a higher starting salary, to fill a specific vacancy.

Students become highly expert in a specialist topic during their PhD. Often this is not directly relevant for non-academic jobs so that employers usually look for admtional attributes, such as interpersonal s u s . Yet advising students in their final year that they need interpersonal s u s is too late for them to acquire this expertise. As a result, GRASP now includes a session for first year students on how to acquire the slulls and experience that potential employers will be loolung for. Sessions in the programme describe some of these skdls, such as teamwork and leadershp.

The main aims of GRASP are to increase PhD submission rates and to help students make a successful transition to their future careers. Already feedback is being received from final year students, and this is being used to help improve the job-hunting element of the programme, as previously described. Trylng to improve PhD submission rates, however, is rather like steering a supertanker. It takes a long time between talung corrective action and seeing the results of that action. PhD students at UMIST have up to 4 years from the date they first register to submit their thesis. This suggests that it will be 1999 before any effect on submission rates can be measured and subsequent actions taken to enhance the programme. Because it is unacceptable to wait 4 years to see if a training programme has been successful, a process of monitoring and continuous improvement has been adopted.

Monitoring and encouraging attendance

In developing the GRASP programmes it was necessary to identi@ factors that might reduce attendance, including anythng that would cause supervisors to &scourage students. For example, charging departments for sending their students on GRASP would act as a dscouragement and could lead to larger departments trying to start alternative programmes. Also, charging departments would require a system for recordmg attendance and trans- ferring fimds, but this would bring no extra cash into UMIST, only transfer money between internal budgets. To avoid creating a disincentive for attendance, GRASP is avdable to all students without charge.

In loolung at ways to maximise attendance, one idea suggested was to give students a certificate of attendance. For someone with a good honours degree and worlung for a PhD, such a certificate has little value. With taught courses, attendance on a training programme that includes assessed assignments can

Table 2: The UMIST Graduate Support Programme for final year research students

provide cre&ts towards the final examination. Obtain- ing a PhD, however, depends solely on the quality of a student’s research, and credits can not be obtained towards this. Because of the cost and complexity of setting up a recording system and the likelihood that it would make little difference to attendance, certificates are not awarded.

An alternative approach would be to make attendance at all sessions compulsory. Doing so, however, could create considerable hostility to GRASP For example, students who would rather be researching might be disruptive to students who actually wanted to be there. Compulsory attendance would have to be monitored to stop it being open to abuse and would need a bureaucratic mechanism whereby students could obtain exemption &om sessions where they already had prior training. Experience shows that students miss sessions for a variety of reasons. Thus, if attendance were compulsory, someone would have to decide whether a reason was genuine. A further problem would be that much of the feedback received from students and supervisors about the programme contents might be aimed at providing excuses for non- attendance.

Students are required to discuss their training needs with their supervisor at the start of their project. Experience from running GRASP has shown that if supervisors talk to their students after a GRASP session it is easy to establish whether or not the student has attended. Because of this, a centrahsed system for recording attendance is not needed. Attendance wdl also be encouraged by the development of a system whereby students have to demonstrate their competency in the required research and management skills at the end of their first year.

A large number of questionnaires were completed by students and supervisors during the development of GRASP Although the feedback from supervisors was supportive of the programme and their suggestions were constructive, some supervisors who did not complete their questionnaire may hold the view that systematic training for PhD students is superfluous. Demonstrating that training can improve the quality of


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research, thereby improving PhD submission rates, is probably the best way to convince everyone that training is important.

The success of GRASP for PhD students led to the suggestion that a similar, albeit shorter, progranme be developed for MSc students. Some 650 students are attending 45 different MSc courses at UMIST, yet only limited training has been provided in the slulls needed for dissertations or advice given on job hunting. Investigation suggests that this situation applies to most universities.

The training needs of MSc students were found to mffer from those of PhD students. For example, an important benefit of G U S P for PhD students is meeting other doctoral students to compare notes. The isolated nature of inany PhD projects means that when students encounter problems, as they always do, they do not know whether they are caused by their own lack of ability or by poor supervision, or whether they are just inherent in research. Being taught the correct way to conduct research and then discussing their experiences with other students and GRASP lecturers means that the lecture format adopted for PhD students has significant advantages. MSc students, on the other hand, already have a group relationship and would not gain in the same way from the lecture format. To find out more about MSc needs, a pilot programme for about 300 MSc students is being run in 1995/96. This consists of seven lectures on research s M s and five giving job-hunting advice.

Students need to gain practical experience in using the shlls they are taught on the programme. If this is not done in a structured way they can spend sigmficant time without becoming fdly proficient. A mechanism is therefore needed whereby students can obtain the required experience, but at a time that suits their other work commitments. One reason why training courses are normally expensive and attendance is limited to a small number of students is that they provide this follow-up experience by assignments assessed by the course tutor. On GRASP: the aim is to develop material for the basic research. slulls such that assessment and feedback can be provided by the supervisors. For exaniple, students wdl be given exercises in literature searching which can be related to their own project. Having completed each exercise, the students can then discuss the results with their supervisors.

The potential use of computer-aided learning (CAL) techniques is now being investigated. The aim is to provide follow-up experience to GRASP lectures, with feedback, in a structured way. It is envisaged that the 84 lecture hours of the first year programme w d actually increase to around 300 hours when all the additional assignments are included. Although this

represents about 20% of the first year of a PhD, most of the assignment work relates directly to a student’s project and would be needed anyway. The increased efficiency of a student’s research over three years should more than compensate for the time spent on the initial GRASP training.

The aim of GRASP is to teach the research and management s M s that are required by all PhD students, irrespective of department. It is assumed that supervisors w d arrange for any project-specific technical training that students may need. There are, however, a num.ber of generic topics, such as experimental statistics and advanced computing, that are ofien used, but not by all students. These topics are normally taught on MSc or undergraduate courses, but the teaching approach may not satisfy the needs ofPhD students. Thus the aim is to investigate generic research topics and to find out what training is needed and what is currently being provided.

Conclusions

One of the main reasons why GRASP could be developed so quickly is that it operates within the existing university regulations. In developing the programmes, it was emphasised that GRASP was not questioning or supplanting the responsibility of supervisors to ensure that their students were adequately trained. Rather the programmes were to provide support for departments and supervisors. This approach has minimised conflict and any criticisms have tended to be constructive.

To maximise the ability of students to obtain a PhD, a ‘code of practice’ is needed that defines the way in which a PhD should be conducted. This should state that a student’s training needs and the effective provision of such training must be identified. The nature of a PhD means, however, that each student’s training needs are unique and can not be prescribed in detail in a code. It is easier to specify in a code of practice that students have to demonstrate that they have acquired the shlls they need, rather than to try and specifji the training needed to acquire them.

Since 1995 all research students starting at UMIST have been able to attend a programme that can teach them all the SMS they need to pursue a PhD. Running the programmes centrally rather than letting each department provide its own training has ensured that all the required s k d s are taught to a high standard. Even when the scope of GRASP is extended to give students experience ofusing the slulls they are being taught, this will only require about 300 hours. The increased efficiency of a student’s research, as a result of t h s training, means that al l the training can be included within the current three year grant system.

0 IEE: 1996

The authors are with Total Technology, UMIST, PO Box 88, Manchester M60 lQD, UK.


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the training of postgraduates

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