How to do well in a PhD viva
After a brief chat this week with a student about an upcoming viva I thought I would list some of the useful pieces of advice from my own viva (thanks to Ian Evans for a pleasant experience!) and some recent students:
be honest
its a 2-way conversation. Talk about your work
its better without your supervisor. It also means that if theyve made a bad project decision you can happily blame them!
its quite nice at the beginning of discussing each chapter to actually point out any mistakes you've spotted
make sure you references are totally spot on
Im sure there are others so feel free to add to them.
posted on: Fri, 05 Sep | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Engaging students
OK, so there are potentially cognitive thresholds which inhibit the progression of (willing!) students in their learning....
posted on: Thu, 10 Jul | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Cognitive Thresholds
I was at the Middlesex University Teaching and Learning Conference today where one of the keynote presentations was given by Sandy Gilkes from the University of Nottingham....
posted on: Tue, 01 Jul | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
IR-pen again...
After my last post on using the Wiimote as part of an interactive whiteboard, and the follow-up on building an IR pen, I have now found that it is not quite so easy to get ahold of as I thought....
posted on: Wed, 11 Jun | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
LED IR Pen
As a follow up to the recent blog on the Wiimote interactive whiteboard, you will need an IR LED pen for the Wiimote to track. You can obviously dust off your soldering iron and build your own pen, or follow this painless and easy tutorial!!
posted on: Wed, 14 May | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Wii-moting
I came across Johnny Chung Lee's Wii remote projects this week. And, well... they blew me away!! Have a look at the 3 YouTube videos and you will see how understanding what hardware is in the Wii remote, with a little lateral thinking, can develop some astounding results. The fact that no games designers had actually thought of head tracking is amazing because the demo is cool beyond belief. If we don't see any games on the shelves that use these ideas in the next 6 months then I'll east my hat! And, from the teaching perspective, having a portable, low-cost, interactive whiteboard is brilliant. I'm building my LED pen as we speak!!
posted on: Tue, 13 May | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Worst presentation moments?
I thought lecturers in HE had some pretty funny teaching moments (I remember one lecturer writing on an overhead projector and then stopping, going white. He had just realised there was no acetate on the projector and he was using a permanent marker!), but anything we can do, Microsoft can do better. Have a look at this page for some really very funny moments in the life of an IT consultant.
posted on: Thu, 08 May | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Standard Normal Transform
Following on from the previous post on animating a stem and leaf plot for teaching, here is another one on a standard normal transforms.
posted on: Tue, 04 Dec | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Stem and Leaf Plots
My wife was teaching stem and leaf plots to first year business students recently and wanted to dynamically show how they are built from a raw data set. We use Powerpoint 97 which doesn't support motion paths, so makes any kind of "real" animation difficult. Open Office's Impress has a half-hearted approach to motion paths, but they are pre-defined (although please correct me if I'm wrong!). As a result I ended up using the only animation software I have, which is the Flash-based Swish. For a quick effort, the animation works reasonably well.
posted on: Wed, 07 Nov | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Adpative Release (and the spiral of death)
I have blogged about using Blackboard before and, by large, things have been pain free. I hit a problem recently which should have been (and was!)...
posted on: Fri, 02 Nov | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Open Office Footers
I've finally taken the plunge and am in the process of fully switching over to Open Office. I've been wanting to do this for a while, partly to move over to open source software and partly because of Portable Open Office....
posted on: Mon, 23 Jul | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
BlackBoard: when submitting a file is..... crap
I use the "Assignment" feature on BlackBoard extensively for students to submit material. Not only is there no "physical" copy to print, submit, collect, mark and return, but the student can submit from home and I can collect them from home....
posted on: Mon, 04 Jun | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Marking Presentations
I regularly get students on my courses to give assessed presentations which they are marked upon. Whilst we are primarily interested in academic achievement, we do utilise a variety of different assessment methods, of which presenting is one....
posted on: Thu, 03 May | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Public Speaking
I've just finished a two-day training course on public speaking with SkillStudio. Some might think a lecturer going on a course in speaking is a strange thing to do!...
posted on: Sat, 28 Apr | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Rights of Way Surveying
I've just returned from a weeks field course to Swansea with the first year geography students. Yet again, the weather was fantastic and offered some memorable days at Oxwich Bay....
posted on: Sat, 21 Apr | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Is a degree really worth it?
Another open day and another good article by Mike Baker on the price of a university degree. He notes the relief from the government with an increase in UCAS applications even after the introduction of top-up fees....
posted on: Sat, 17 Feb | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
What degree should you choose?
This question has been posed to me in a variety of guises by, several different people, over the last couple of weeks and remains a perennial problem for students taking A-levels....
posted on: Thu, 11 Jan | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
What is a TOID?
I set my first year class an exam and one of the questions asked what TOID was the acronym for (I would have used the OS definition but it wasn't as good as Wikipedia!)...
posted on: Wed, 10 Jan | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Being a good lecturer needs..... more sex
The BBC has reported (admittedly a year ago) on a study at the University of Paisley that was looking at the impact of different forms of sex on stress levels. Blood pressure was monitored during a variety of situations designed to increase stress, including public speaking. And the study found that participants who had had penetrative sex had reduced blood pressure and recovered from stress quicker than all other groups. The worst off were those who abstained from sex.
What does this mean for lecturers? Well I won't spell it out, but I suspect our stress reduction courses don't involve this kind of therapy ;)
posted on: Tue, 09 Jan | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Sense About Science
It's difficult to go a day without reading some loon story in the newspaper or seeing a reporter making ludicrous claims based upon flimsy evidence....
posted on: Mon, 08 Jan | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
First Year Experience: what are we trying to achieve?
Times have achanged in Higher Education in the UK. With the government aiming for 50% of young people to be entering HE, gone are the days of the "top 15% of the population" staying on education....
posted on: Fri, 05 Jan | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Academics For Academic Freedom
After a lengthy absence from illness, I thought I would give a plug for the "Academics For Academic Freedom" campaign that recently received some press from the BBC entitled Academics seek right to offend....
posted on: Fri, 22 Dec | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Blackboard Content Management System
I mentioned in an earlier blog that I upload my entire learning materials for a module as a "packaged" ZIP file in to Blackboard....
posted on: Mon, 06 Mar | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
University Fees and Living Expenses
We have regular open days at Kingston University and one of the topics that is often at the forefront of students (and parents) minds is that of the total cost of completing a degree. In particular, from September 2006, UK universities will be able to levy tuition fees ("topup fees"). There are, of course, also living expenses to think about. In terms of a no-nonsense review of each of these areas I would highly recommend reading Mike Baker's (BBC Education Correspondent) views on these topics:
Who pays the fees in your family?
What university is going to cost
posted on: Fri, 20 Jan | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Blackboard Experiences
I don't know about other users, but I have a mixed reaction to the use of "virtual learning environments" (in my case Blackboard)....
posted on: Sun, 27 Nov | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Respondus
At Kingston University we use Blackboard as our learning management system for registering students on modules and allowing interaction with course material....
posted on: Sat, 26 Nov | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
Teaching Aids
Over the years I have accumulated a few gadgets and tips to aid the presentation and delivery of course materials....
posted on: Mon, 14 Nov | path: /teaching | permanent link to this entry
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