Q&A: Participating in roundtable discussions

I recently received the following email from a reader (edited for anonymity):

Hi,
I am invited to participate in a roundtable discussion next month, and I was wondering if you have any tips for participants. I am a PhD candidate and the roundtable is focused on Some Topic which was the focus of my last degree, an MPhil. I am excited to participate, but tend to be a quieter, more reserved personality, and I want to do well on this, my first, roundtable.

I took quite some time before replying this message. Since I tend to be more quiet and reserved myself, I am not the person who is the most active participant in discussions during committee meetings. However, I think I have found what works for me, with my personality, and still being of service during such presentations:

1. Volunteer for keeping minutes

If you can, you can offer the chair of the discussion to keep the minutes for the meeting and develop the report afterwards. Your action will be valued, even though you may not have spoken much during the meeting. If you are taking notes, you can also at some point ask another researcher to expand on a point that is interesting, for your personal interest but also to complete the report of the meeting.

2. Think ahead of a few topics to discuss

Before the discussion, you can think ahead about different subtopics that can come up during the discussion. Which point would you want to get across on each of these topics? What evidence do you have to support your claims? You may want to have a short preparation with the references you may want to mention on your laptop to refer to when you speak.

3. Think ahead of questions you want to share with others

To move the discussion forward when it gets stalled, you can prepare some questions that you may want to bring up for other participants in the discussion. You may for example prepare some questions in the following style: "Author X found result X, which contradicts findings from Y. I've been thinking about this discrepancy for a while now, and I have the impression that factors A,B, and C can explain this. I'd like to elaborate a bit more on this topic in this group. What is your opinion on this topic?" By formulating a question in this way you show the thinking and the work you've done, but you also open room for discussion and participation with others instead of just voicing your opinion.

4. Summarize the results you want to show

This element is closely related to nr. 2. If you did the work on this topic a while ago, you may want to make a short summary of your most important results for yourself, and have it on your laptop to look at if you need to refresh your memory. You may want to revise again the most important publications on the topic. If you make a claim, you can refer to these publications. If the paper does not seem to ring a bell for the other members, you can propose to pass it around on a stick or project the paper to show some of the main results and discuss this. Similarly, you can have a few graphs or tables with your main results that you can show by projecting this information during the meeting.

5. Don't speak too quietly

If you tend to be a more quiet person, you may also have the tendency to speak a little more quiet. If your voice is naturally quiet, see if you can use a microphone, or try to speak up, so that your opinion and contribution does not get drowned by the others. If you feel a bit nervous, try to speak slowly and breathe with your diaphragm to calm yourself.

53 interesting ways to communicate your research

Some weeks ago, I laid my hands on my copy of "53 interesting ways to communicate your research". This book is a collection of essays on communicating your research, covering a wide range of strategies for science communication.

"53 interesting ways to communicate your research" is not only a very interesting book to browse through and discover some new tips you can implement in communicating your research - it also features an essay by yours truly on sharing your research process through social media.





In total, 37 contributors all provided material for this book, which was edited by Aiofe Brophy Haney and Irenee Daily. The publisher, The Professional and Higher Partnership Ltd, gives a short description as follows:

To maximise the value of your research, you need to communicate it to others. There are many ways to do so: examples include applications and bids, conference presentations, gray literature, journal papers, media (old and new), public talks, and teaching.

This book provides fresh, creative, ways of making the most of these and other opportunities. It provides 53 practical suggestions, each based on ideas tried and tested by the contributors.

Abstract: To be an effective researcher one needs both to conduct high quality research and to communicate it. Research may be communicated to a variety of stakeholders including specialists, researchers in other fields, business, government, the third sector, and the public. A range of methods is available, including presentation, publication, and new and traditional forms of media. 53 practical ideas, rooted in experience, are provided. Overall, the text is designed to help reflective practitioners in professional, scholarly, or scientific research prosper.

Publishers’ foreword:

Until now, our Professional and Higher Education series has focused entirely on teaching and learning. 53 interesting ways to communicate your research signals our decision to extend the series to cover other aspects of work in post-compulsory education.

While broadening the series, our intention is to preserve its original values. Each book in the series provides constructive ideas that are rooted in practice and readily applicable.

Overall this book is designed as a supportive resource for researchers working in professional, academic, or scientific settings.

If you want to get a peek at the tips and hints covered in the book, you can check out the (quite positive) review over at the Thesis Whisperer, with a Top 10 of things she learned from reading this book.

Besides the book, there is also a follow-up project Researchology, a blog in which the different techniques from the book will be put into practice.

Five platforms to increase the visibility of your research

As a young researcher, you like to share your work with the world. Even though I've focused on online tools you can use to increase the visibility of your research on this blog, there are other platforms that you can use to showcase your work.

Gaining visibility for your research might be more difficult when you start than for a well-established senior professor. Your name might not be known in your field yet, and therefore a little extra effort to bring forth your message might be necessary.

You might think that conferences are enough for you, and someone else might think that online sharing of your work is the best way to increase your outreach. But I beg to differ: try to reach out through different platforms, try to engage with different audiences, and connect with different groups.

Building a reputation for your research shouldn't be linked solely to one platform. You might feel more comfortable at using one given platform, but growing into a well-rounded researchers requires your ability to share you knowledge on the majority of these platforms.

Here are the five main platforms over which you should divide your efforts:

1. Online
Share your presentations on Slideshare, Storify tweets from conferences, update your LinkedIn account, use (micro)blogging to reach out to your peers, keep a profile on Google Scholar, Academia.edu or ResearchGate.

Do you need to be on all these websites, on every single social media platform and constantly chattering away online?
Of course not! Choose wisely, and keep your goal in mind. My (initial) goal was for other researchers to find my work and my contact information when they Google "slabs subjected to concentrated loads in shear". Spend your time online wisely, and make sure you don't get trapped in the black hole of the internet.

2. Industry
Try to show up at industry events and share your work with practitioners. Even though you might be into very theoretical research, it's always useful on one hand to show the industry the value of your (theoretical) research and on the other hand to stay informed about the issues that are important in practice - these both elements can be crucial when you apply for a grant.

3. Within your institution
Don't be an anonymous grey mouse in your institution - but share your work with colleagues. Have a project description on a poster outside of your door, and update your information on your institution's website. Get involved in side projects that bring you in contact with researchers from different disciplines. Let people know what you work on, and where your expertise lies.

4. Conferences
To reach out to peers in your research field, attend conferences and present your work there. Conferences are arguably the most traditional platform to share your work - and it's the best opportunity to share our work with a global community of fellow researchers.

5. Talk to strangers
Life's like a box of chocolates - so if you pick up a conversation on a plane or in line for lunch, then don't brush off questions of others about your work (don't overload them with information either, when they show you not to be too interested in your boring science). You never know how someone might turn out to have a good, practical question for you, or happen to know someone who "does something similar". Embrace serendipity!

What platforms do you use to increase the visibility of your research? Do you focus on one platform, or do you divide your efforts over multiple platforms?

Authenticity in 2.0?

I recently tweeted and wrote on Facebook about a paper rejection. Afterwards, I heard the comment that I should not write about those things, for several reasons:
- People will only remember my bad news and not my good news.
- You have to remain quiet with regard to failures.
- Your "competitors" will read this and feel good about it.

However, my goal on this blog, and on Twitter is to show the real life in academia:
- the lovely places where you get to travel to conferences as well as the late nights in the office;
- the immense joy upon approval of a manuscript as well as the rejections and lessons learned;
- the juggling of tasks as well as the moments of solitude in which you find yourself wrestling with a difficult concept.

I was more than relieved when I read "Being Inappropriate" by Chris Ashford. It also led to a short discussion on Twitter, where I mentioned the negative comments I got on tweeting about paper rejection. I storified the tweets



You might wonder why I tweeted about the paper rejection, but did not dedicate a blog post to it. The reason is that I don't feel like this chapter is finished. I received the comments of the reviewers, and I understood my "mistake". As I was struggling with the word limit, I decided to cut out most of the information on my experiments and refer to previously published work of mine. That technique left me with more words to spend on explaining what I did next (applying the findings to a method for assessment for existing solid slab bridges, and checking a set of existing bridges according to 2 methods). However, the reviewers -rightfully- pointed out they had no idea what the recommendations are based on, and the paper doesn't tell the full story.
For a blog post, I would like to have the story completed - I already know what is missing, but I still need to go and reflect on how I can incorporate all the necessary information into an improved and revamped version of that paper. Therefore, until the story is complete and I know how to tackle the problem, I will not write a full post on it.

So far, I don't think it is harmful to write about rejections and the learning processes in academia (because in the end, you learn from a rejection and you will improve your writing afterwards, no?). But I'd like to know: do you write about rejections? Or do you only highlight your successes and achievements?

Cleaning out the information stream

During my recent holidays, I realized that I am not absorbing much of all the information that the internet constantly pours over me. Usually, I have several tabs open (mailboxes, news, social media sites, blogs,..) which continuously pour out information - and usually I can only scroll through and try to catch a few grains here and there. Still, it started taking me too much time, so I decided to do some major cleaning to start the year fresh.

Here's a few information channels that got clogged up with random noise:

1. Newsletters
I seem to have a constant stream of newsletters flowing into my mailbox, from every possible store I've ever visited and every company I've ever used a service from. Usually, I just delete these message without even opening them - but it still generates a lot of mail. And it still triggers me to check my mailbox (too) often to see if there's a new shiny thing in there. I now am opening every unwanted mail, and unsubscribing or marking these messages as spam (if it's not possible to unsubscribe).

2. Blog subscriptions
After not reading my Google Reader for a week, I had almost 300 posts to weed through. I realized that some (even most) subscriptions did not match my current interest anymore. For a while, I followed a lot of fashion blogs, learning how to put together a nice outfit from cheap stores and thrift stores. I also followed frugality blogs for a while, to get my personal finance together. Then, I also followed exercise and nutrition blogs. For all of these, I reevaluated the situation. I now only kept the subscription to blogs of which I still enjoy reading almost every single post, and I am very thankful for everything I learned through blogs or categories of blogs which I am not actively following anymore.

3. Facebook
With over 800 likes and over 500 friends, my facebook had turned into a museum of myself - and not a platform for interaction. I've significantly reduced the number of friends to people I genuinely interact with, and I'm working on reducing the number of likes. Hopefully, in a few months I'll have a newsfeed without much noise in it again.

4. Twitter
Likewise, my Twitter account was turning into an archive of past interests and memories. I've made some space in my following list, so I can focus again on the information I'm really after, and make some space for new ideas.

The basic elements of a presentation with slides

I've written this post for students who will give a research presentation for the first time, pointing out how slides can help you through your talk. In fact, I was recently reflecting on how my style of presenting has changed over the past two years, and what I wish I had known back then. I've reached the point where I can go to the front and present without my stomach trying to escape or my breath turning strange, but I don't fully enjoy it yet and I still have a lot of room for improvement.

1. An overview slide
The audience will appreciate if you tell them first what they can expect from your presentation. If you give an outline of how your presentation will look like, it is easier for the listener to place the different slides and parts of the story within the framework that you present in the beginning.

2. Spend time on your introduction
Don't think you should rush to the core and show the world the wonderful science you are spending your time on. A good introduction is necessary to make sure your audience can actually understand the bigger problem, and then -hopefully- follow your approach to the problem.
Also, on conferences in FarFarAway, I like taking the opportunity to briefly sum up the other research related to my topic done in our research group, and introduce the different partners which work on the general research project of which my PhD is a part.

3. Using formulas
I heard this at TEDxDelft:
“With every formula you show, you lose half of your audience; on my first slide there are two” — Leo Kouwenhoven
Don't fill up your slides with formulas, no one will remember them and maybe people won't be able to read or analyze them when you go over them too fast.
If you need to use a formula (or more), take your audience by the hand and walk them through the equation. I like using animations to highlight parts of formulas and explain step by step why a certain parameter is in the formula. Otherwise, if you only want to point out one parameter, you can use a phrase like: "What I want you to notice in this formula is the relation between XX and XXX." (Credit goes to Dr. Rosenstein, who taught me to explain visual data by grabbing the attention of the audience with the "what I want you to notice here" phrase).

4. How to explain graphs
I hate it when someone says: "and this graph shows the results" and then continues to the next slide. From a course by Dr. Rosenstein I took at Georgia Tech, I remembered the following for the rest of my presenting days:
- explain which variable is on the x-axis, and which units it has,
- explain which variable is on the y-axis, and which units it has,
- explain the data points,
- explain the legend,
- state the conclusion, what we can learn from that graph.

5. The end
Here's a great post on how to end a presentation. It is very similar to how I finish a presentation, including the ending phrase from Dr. Rosenstein's course.

Here's a recent example of one of my presentations.

A presentation in Dutch

Most of the time, I present in English, but every now and then I gt to talk in my native language.

It's a strange sensation that talking about my research in my mother tongue takes me slightly more effort than talking in English, for the following reasons:
- I usually read papers in English, and am more familiar with the technical terms in English
- In Dutch, I feel more tempted to slide into my own dialect, and I have to do extra effort to talk in standard Dutch. In English, I simply have a funny foreign accent.
- I present more often in English than in Dutch, so I am more familiar with presenting in English.

I was wondering if and how other non-native speakers experience presenting their research in their native language...

For those who are interested, here's the presentation I gave:

Afschuiving in betonnen platen

View more presentations from elantsoght.

Who am I to speak up?

I have to admit something: I continuously question myself, asking "Who am I to speak up?".

- Who am I to write a blog and give advice on the process of doing a PhD? I'm just a second year PhD student who likes trying out different ways of working, but maybe my writing is pointless clueless blabbering.
- Who am I to raise my hand at a presentation and discuss? Why would I dare to speak up while much more experienced researchers are in the same room?
- Who am I to supervise students? I'm only just their age and sometimes even younger, and I only have very limited practical experience...
- Who am I to tell the Ministry of Transport how to evaluate their existing slab bridges? I've only been breaking slabs in the lab, but I've never designed a bridge which has been really built.

The list goes on and on, and it all comes down to one of the PhD emotions which is denoted as the imposter syndrome.

I still face these thoughts frequently, but I now know to tell myself: "Hey, there's another imposter syndrome thought coming up!" and then I just shrug my shoulders and continue my way.

I'm trying to convert my thoughts like this:

- I started this blog to keep track of how I am experimenting with workflow processes, to document my journey as a PhD student and -most of all- simply because I enjoy writing. If I look at my personal motivation, the question "Who am I to write this?" is simply irrelevant.
- Raising my hand and getting involved into discussions is simply part of a learning curve.
- In my tiny little area of research, I am in fact becoming an expert, with all the rights to talk about what I have observed in all the experiments I did.

With this post I would like to call out to everyone out there who might be contemplating starting a blog or making their work more visible.
In the end, it all comes down to these five words:
You have nothing to lose

How to get a PhD by Phillips and Pugh

This book review is based on the third edition of "How to get a PhD"

"How to get a PhD" covers a wide range of aspects and is stuffed with helpful advice for starting doctoral researchers. All chapters contain an action summary at the end, which sums up to most important ideas of that chapter. Although this book is clearly written from the perspective of British universities, it can be read by anyone outside.

Here's an overview of what I found particularly useful in this book:


1. Chapter 4: How not to get a PhD

Be aware of the seven way of not getting a PhD:
- not wanting a PhD
- overestimating what is required
- underestimating what is required
- having a supervisor who des not know what is required
- losing contact with your supervisor
- not having a 'thesis' (i.e. position, argument) to maintain
- taking a new job before completing.

Most books contain great advice on how to work towards your doctoral degrees, or point out what pitfalls you might encounter. Pointing out directly which behavior will totally boycott you from getting your degree, is not so common. This books devotes an entire chapter to this topic, and it's very helpful to be aware of these danger signs.

2. Chapter 8: How to manage your supervisor

Be aware that you must accept the responsibility for managing the relationship between you and your supervisor. It is too important to be left t chance.

Great advice, which I learned over time to be true. I initially thought my supervisors would keep close track of what I am doing, and would come to me regularly asking about my progress. I noticed it's quite different.

3. Preparing for the viva

Here's a tried and tested way of revising the complete thesis and preparing for the via, both at the same time.
First you take a maximum of three sheets of feint-ruled A$ paper (try to manage ith two if you can). You draw a straight vertical line down the centre of each sheet. You now have to sets of about 35 lines, i.e. 70 half lines. Each half line represents one page of your thesis. Now you number each half line. One to 35 are the left hand half laine and 36-70 are the right hand half lines on the first sheet of paper.
Next you take your time, say about two weeks, to write on every half line the main idea contained on the corresponding page of your thesis.

Sounds like some of the best advice I've read about preparing for your defense, and I'll try to implement it when I graduate (in more than 2 years from now).

4. Chapter 11: How to supervise and examine

In connection with chapter 8, this chapter gives the reader more insight in the relationship between student and supervisor. This chapter is written from the point of view of the supervisor, and is definitely wroth reading for students too. I was inspired by this chapter in my way of supervising master's students.

Preparing a presentation without slides - the aftermath

Today I presented my research in the lab to the parents of the first year students. Talking for 15 minutes straight without slides and to a non-technical audience appeared to me a rather difficult task, but it turned out to be a really enjoyable experience.

Here's what really worked to keep the attention:

1. Point out objects

Even though the group was gathered around my specimen and I, I've been taking the opportunity of standing in the lab to show and point out as many aspects of my testing as possible. I could show the formwork, rebar cages, an undamaged specimen, the damaged specimen in the setup, the frame for the loading, the frame for my measurements, the cracks marked on the specimen, the thickness of the floor... I tried to keep it interactive by giving them some time to have a look through the holes which show the thickness of our strong floor and by inviting them to take a look at the bottom of the slab.

2. Compare with real life situations

I gave comparisons between the loading in our tests and the maximum load of a truck in the Netherlands, I pointed out the cost per square meter for replacing a bridge and told them how many tons of concrete have been used in these experiments. From the reaction on people's faces I could tell that turned out to be interesting information.

3. Keep it light and informative

Although one of the main rules is not to try to be funny, I thought I little joke and smile here and now was working quite well in this context.

4. Let your enthusiasm shine

If you love what you're doing, your enthusiasm will add a little extra to your talking, and it seems to be really appreciated.

The importance of good communication

I haven't been writing much lately, nor have I been doing my best at meditating, getting enough sleep, focusing and all the other good plans I had for 2011. I've been stressed out and tense for the better part of the past month, with more and more tension until now.

The reason for this is that there was tension between me and one of my roommates. There's no need for me to write out here what went wrong, but I've learned an important lesson from this conflict.
Talking can make you avoid a lot of trouble.

And that is probably one of the main reasons why tension between two people sharing a house has led to a friendship being completely ruined.
I tried twice to have a serious conversation in which we would be able to look for solutions all together, but we barely exchanged any thoughts. And the tension remained.
I tried again last Thursday, after several days of being sick in my stomach, proposing a temporary solution, and I only got a reply of "We might look into that." And then I was ignored and they (roommate and husband) were staring at their laptop screens again.

To their friends and family, of course, they have been portraying me as a horrible person who has done them terribly wrong. However, I really wish they would realize that they could have avoided a lot of problems when they would have shared their ideas with me and would have let us find a good solution. My roommate changed her planning (what we agreed upon before she moved into my apartment), and her current planning is basically non-existent. This already led to a lot of doubts for me, as I had no idea what we would be up to in our house.
Some good communication could have saved all of us from the stress this situation brought us.

Reflections on Lifehack's 11 things to avoid in 2011

I recently came across Lifehack's post on 11 things to avoid in 2011.

Since one of my reverb 10 prompts was about 11 things to let go of in 2011, I was quite interesting in this article... and got some ideas as well while reading it.

What especially drew my attention were the following topics on the list:

4. Assuming that you always know the entire story

You don’t. Ask more questions. Listen. Ask more questions. Give yourself an out and don’t back others into corners when you give your final answer.

Too often I interrupt, and I have the horrible habit of interrupting when someone asks me a question. I hear a key word and I start answering, and I realized it really bothers. It gives a very bad impression too, when I do this at the end of a presentation during the Q&A.
With friends and loved ones, too, I often feel the need to relate to their story to tell a similar story of something which happened to me or which I heard before. Unfortunately, that makes me sound as if I don't care and want to drag the attention towards myself.

6. Blaming anything on gender

For example: I was in an argument recently (imagine that!) and my partner in the argument forcefully uttered the remark, “typical male!” in response to something I said that was admittedly unkind (imagine that!). This created a predicament in which my subsequent apology would be not just for my comment but also for my gender. I can’t change my gender (really, not an option) so I’d be apologizing for being myself. Crazy, right? She doesn’t do that because she’s a woman. She does it because she’s an imperfect human. He doesn’t do that because he’s a man. He does it because he’s an imperfect human. Things are simpler when we approach conflict with as few stereotypes as possible.

Such an approach will change things. I promise you.

I wish gender wouldn't be so much of an issue, but it's tangibly there, all the time. I regularly feel uncomfortable just for being young and female. I shrink down when students look surprised at me, showing their disbelief that I am going to explain them something. It is as if everyone needs to have an opinion about me, before even looking at the work I actually do. It doesn't help me that I am so aware of this. I'd like to ban the idea of "what are they now thinking of me" from my head and just trust in myself and the value of my work.

10. Not asking for help

You’d be stunned if you knew just how many people are ready and willing to help you if only you’d clearly define your need and directly ask for help. Don’t ask for help like the friend who begs people to help him move but has nothing put in boxes when they show up. Ask for help like the friend who has done everything in his power to achieve and needs only that final push from a buddy to reach success. We want to be a part of your success!

One of my challenges for 2011 is to gather my courage and ask for what I need, whether that is help, input of ideas or the permission to present somewhere. We have a saying, which, translated, would be something like "No you always have, yes you can get." I'll try to live by that a bit more, and let go of my fear to disturb or upset someone.

Reverb10 - Day 20: Beyond Avoidance

December 20 – Beyond Avoidance.

What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)

(Author: Jake Nickell)


Be direct in my communication

Today, I was reading some handouts about communication, and more in detail about giving and receiving feedback.
One advice really drew my attention: no soft soap. The author wrote that, the more you talk around the message, the smaller the chance the other person actually understands your need.

Too often I've felt that people are neglecting my questions and need for help or advice. However, I never realized that this is caused by the fact that I never dare to state how important or urgent something is. All this is because I am afraid to be impolite or too demanding.

In fact, when formulating clearly what I need and when I need it, I simply convey my message in a clear way. When I need something, I shouldn't be afraid to ask for it.
In the end, one of the goals of a PhD project is to learn from your advisor, which is only possible when you ask him/her questions.