A couple of people in my wider circle have recently asked me about how to get started on a PhD … More
Category: Research Skills
The Insider’s view from the Library: 7 things I bet you didn’t know librarians could help you with.
Research Degree Insiders doesn’t normally do guest posts, but this was a special exception. While I have worked in jobs … More
How to fix slow progress
Your progress might feel slow, but that might just be the normal speed of trying to learn new things, or experimenting (and … More
How do you get from “pre-research” to search, and then research?
Last time I posted about “pre-research”, I talked about moving from pre-research into searching and then researching for a literature review. I … More
Wikipedia, Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias and “pre-research”
We all know academic writing “shouldn’t quote Wikipedia”… but what we often get wrong is why it’s not ‘the done … More
Ten things I’ve learned about learning a new skill (especially if you are rubbish at it to start with)
When you start a PhD, you are doing something you’ve been practicing for a long time, studying, and you’ve … More
5 situations when ‘Planning by Chatting’ is an effective technique
I’m currently setting up a Learning Hub for La Trobe to bring together all the learning support across 6 campuses, … More
Talking across disciplines
Is your work ‘interdisciplinary’? (Or maybe it is ‘cross-disciplinary’ or ‘multi-disciplinary’.) Or is the purpose of your work to take … More
What is knowledge and how do I contribute to it?
This is, perhaps, one of the biggest questions for many PhD candidates. Candidates know they need to make an ‘original … More
Turn your notes into writing using the Cornell Method SECOND EDITION
In 2012, I wrote a post for The Thesis Whisperer blog on the Cornell Method of note taking and how … More
