The 'boundaries' of social media in research

Interesting stuff, this social media. Being someone who uses Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Blogger (obviously) and is famed for never being further than 2cm away from his mobile phone (well the football results are important!), i never realised how much more social media could offer for a research students. Aside from this self-reflective blog and my use of Twitter as a 'lurking' mechanism that keeps me in touch with the really clever people and what they're thinking and writing, there is a certain etiquette, or so i thought, about HOW MUCH you should share of your research. I'm not planning to get into a big debate about intellectual property rights and so on, but since 'PhD research' and 'originality' are supposed to be close bed-fellows, it does make you wonder where the boundaries might exist between safeguarding your own research career and sharing with and learning from others.

So anyway, what i learned yesterday thanks to one of those Clever Social Media People, is that this sort of technology can help to define your research identity and build your own research brand. And there are a million other really useful social media tools beyond the well-known multi-national FTSE100/Fortune500/BlueChips, such as Delicious (for creating index tags, useful for keeping track on key areas of the literature), Wordle (for word clouds and seeing prominent research themes) and Hashtags.org that have amazing potential for being useful to researchers.

BUT...and there's always a but, how do we engage with all of this whilst we're supposed to getting on with our research and with those aforementioned IPR issues? I know 'sharing' is the new socialising, but as we know from the music industry's fight with filesharers and how closely guarded academic publishing is, there is money to be made from all this - and yes, potentially, from that very research we are all doing right now. And if not cold hard cash, then at least individual and institutional prestige, reputation and more interesting work awaits those that 'know things'.

Like waiting for a bus, three brilliant connections come along at once

On Wednesday, i attended The King's Fund's NHS Leadership and Management Summit where they launched the findings of a six month consultation into, yes you've guessed it, management and leadership in the NHS. By the good grace of my university i was able to attend, firstly because i teach health care management and thought it would be relevant to me and my students, but secondly because one of the 'streams' was on emerging leaders, with a particular focus on clinical leaders...so two birds with one stone and all that.

My research is about how change is introduced into healthcare organisations, specifically the recent introduction of management and leadership elements into medical training, so i was, of course, hopeful that i could glean a bit of information from the sessions and perhaps make a contact or two, but what i didn't expect is for me to make three very good contacts, all of whom are keen to help me with my work. So, in one of the plenaries, i just happened to be sitting behind a trainee doctor involved in management and leadership from the East Midlands (we're going to catch up again soon); in a workshop, i met a trainee doctor who's already working with a trainee manager (likewise we're arranging to meet soon) and from one of the speakers, i have a contact working with trainee doctors encouraging them to get more involved in management and leadership (email sent, awaiting reply).

Now, these may come to nothing, but it made me appreciate how a combination of pushing to attend a seemingly relevant event, added to the slightest bit of 'networking courage' can add up to a lot. No one else was going to make that happen for me, so perhaps that's a lesson that can be filed under 'how to get ahead in your PhD.' Oh and i got to meet Gerry Robinson, you know, the bloke off the telly...

Research Training 1-0-1

So, having spent the last couple of weeks powered-down and in the offline world, i returned to things today with some slight trepidation facing an all-dayer of research training. The trepidation stems from the fact that my experience of research training to date has been, how can i put it...mixed. You can understand that there will always be a focus on getting students through their PhDs and ensuring they all receive a consistent approach to the PhD training process. The problem with that is that the PhD, by its very nature, is such a specific and individualised programme it's difficult to see how generic, one-size-fits-all training can help the individual.

My previous research experience has been threefold: one dissertation as an undergrad and two as a masters student, with the universities i studied at offering some basic training in research (quant vs qual etc...). That means i started my PhD not knowing my ontology from my epistemology and being continually frustrated with trying to work out what my various research framework, strategy, methodology, approach, design etc looked like (P.S. not much clearer a year in).

So my point is, where is that point at the start of the PhD process that says, "Simon, you are a somewhat unique individual and we can see from your previous experience that you are sadly missing an understanding of basic research philosophy, so we're delighted to tell you that we have laid on this personalised plan to get you up to speed on all things research." Quite! Now i realise that producing a package tailored to every individual would be nigh-on impossible, but where is the recognition that, despite my dearth of research knowledge, i may actually have done other things, learned other things, damn it, might even be good at some other things and that some of that could be taken into consideration/mitigation when forumlating my training programme?

I'd like to have had that imaginary conversation at the start of my PhD, one that recognises i'm busy with my teaching commitments as a full-time member of staff, so the research training i subsequently attended was then targeted at what i really needed, rather than having to have ticked every compulsory course box. After all, without beating the point to death, the PhD is a highly-personalised programme of research so the rhetoric that supports that ideal needs to itself be supported by those responsible for ensuring PhD progression with personalised and targeted research training for the benefit of the PhD student. And on that point, today's training was, happily, something i had nothing to worry about.

It's a marathon, not a sprint

On the day of the London Marathon, it's an opportune time to reflect on the nature of doing research. As a young researcher getting to grips with the finer detail of ontology and epistemology and all that jazz, i'm never quite sure where all this is heading, but i've always loved learning and i've got loads of questions that i want to know the answers to (although i know it's not that simple), but i don't know how i might go about asking them. Now a runner, looking forward to their next race, would go about the 'answering' of that particular question by setting themselves a goal, preparing for it by putting time aside to train and probably mix and match their preparation methods to give them a decent range of experiences and aptitudes for the big day. You have goals, you have a time in mind in which you want to finish, you practise and that helps you work out how good you might be and therefore what you might be able to achieve, or at least it tells you what you need to do to improve and so on.

Now doesn't that sound somewhat similar to doing research? So what might my goals be? Well, i can't think about the end yet because i have no idea what it looks like, but i can break it down, focus on short or medium term goals and then push on from there. Whereas doing a BA or an MA might be equivalent to a sprint or a middle distance, the PhD is definitely a marathon of sorts. But the goal of this marathon of mine stretches beyond the PhD itself - it is to become a better, more rounded academic and as far as i can articulate what that means it is about becoming a good lecturer, one who creates an enjoyable and interesting learning environment for students and also a good researcher, one who wants to push forward the boundaries of his own understanding to help him with his teaching and help his students learn productively and deeply.

And somewhere along that journey there is "getting the PhD" - perhaps that's the equivalent of realising you've got to start incorporating speed or track work into your marathon training if you're really going to become any good, if you're really going to be able to push on at 20, 21 miles when the burn sets in and you hit the dreaded wall - but it is not the 'final' end point, it's just another step on the way. So perhaps this PhD is simply my first marathon and like any good runner knows, you've got to deal with what's in front of you first before you can dream about how good you might one day be.

What Stevie Smith secretly knew about doing a PhD

A bit more on the title of this blog. Whilst Stevie Smith's poem talks precisely of 'not waving, but drowning' my experience so far of doing a PhD is 'both waving and drowning'.

First to the Waving. I've found myself defining me as a person in relation to this PhD. To every question of 'how are things going', i answer 'you know...alright, but...' followed by something about being busy with my teaching etc workload and then saying 'and of course i've decided to take the plunge / i must be mad / what possessed me to do this THING.' Of course, that alludes to the second part, Drowning, but in reality, when you start to define yourself by your PhD - as a badge of honour, as a symbol that you have joined that club somewhere between easyish-academic-life and person-with-academic-credentials, as a way of telling everyone about your new found way of life, you realise, and i have realised, that you are in fact waving to everyone...pssst, i'm doing research as part of my ... / i'm presenting a seminar next week on my ... / i'm trying to put some time aside for my ... Yes it defines me. Well, actually, it owns me.

Secondly, to Drowning. This is perhaps a little more obvious. You find this entry shelved between Naive Optimism and Downright Pessimism - the cliched rollercoaster of emotion, of not having enough time, of not carving out enough time, of having to do other things like your job in that time, of constantly feeling guilty that you haven't read or written or written notes on your reading, of being behind .... oh my god ... i'm X behind (where X currently equals a few months according to my scientific staring at the pile of reading).

Now call me neurotic, but i think this is quite normal; the problem is, i don't know what is normal in the context of a PhD. Despite reading several books (notably Phillips & Pugh, 2000 and Rugg & Petre, 2004) and talking to lots of former fudders (PhD-ers), i am no closer to reconciling 'doctoral studies' and 'normality.' Let's just hope i don't end up like the poem...

Let me explain...

So, hello...(in an interested, rather than a Leslie Phillips way), thanks for popping by. Today begins another new experiment for me, blogging about my management PhD (mostly). I'm not sure i'm going to be very good at this. For example, i joined twitter in Nov 08 and then tweeted thrice for the first couple of years, before rediscovering it and now find it a most wonderful place for all things work- and PhD-related. I'm on facebook, but i find it a bit dull and almost always forget to have my go at Scrabble, although it's quite good for organising stuff, but i don't like posting status updates because why on earth do people want to know what i'm up to? So what i'm saying is this might all end in disaster....

...BUT, on the other hand, i am hoping this is a place where i can tell you a little about my PhD and my experience of doing a PhD (without boring the pants off you with the minutiae) so that you can support me. When i moved from being an NHS manager to being an academic four years ago, a good friend of mine told me the biggest challenge was learning to work much more independently than ever before and getting used to being 'isolated'. Well, having started a PhD all i can say is, you think being an academic is isolating, try this! So i'm going to try and capture some of that for you.

In the meantime, there are many more brilliant places to find out about the experience of doing a PhD and you can find them via the links to the right. Oh, and finally, if you hadn't guessed it by now, the title of this blog is inspired by one of my favourite poems by Stevie Smith - just about sums up how i feel about the PhD experience. Bye for now