Doctoral Wellbeing and Technology-Enhanced Learning

ABSTRACT

Worldwide, about half of the doctoral students that start a PhD never finish it, and a similar proportion show mental health symptoms (like stress or anxiety). Recent research in doctoral education has uncovered motivational factors related to these problems. This practical seminar draws from these research findings, and lets participants and the instructors share solutions and practices that may help the chances of PhD completion. In the final part of the workshop, we look “behind the scenes” of the seminar itself as a technology-enhanced learning experience, and how particular pedagogies and technologies (e.g., flipped classroom, learning analytics) have been used in it to foster engagement, reflection and learning.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

After the course, participant PhD students will:

• … be familiar with some of the motivational pitfalls when doing a PhD thesis in TEL (or any very long task with little structure and feedback)
• … have a feeling of how they are doing right now, on your progress towards thesis completion
• … know about solutions (e.g., practices, tips or resources) they can put in place to overcome those pitfalls
• Have met other doctoral students, and will have shared common experiences, aspirations and hurdles.
• … have some ideas about how they may use technology to support student  learning (which may come in handy when teaching during current COVID restrictions)

CONTENT AND STRUCTURE

1. Before the workshop (1 week before, 30min) 
   1. Initial questionnaires (burnout, progress, dropout ideation, magic wanding, thesis conceptualization satisfaction…)
   2. Watch a short video to present and motivate the workshop and its activities
   3. Watch some optional videos about stress, self-regulation… and breath!
      1. Optimal levels of stress  
      2. Moods for learning   
      3. Square breathing practice 
   4. Read two blog entries on the topics of the webinar (on PhD student dropout, and the importance of progress)
2. Session (1,5-2h)
   1. Commenting on the readings + the importance of progress, mental health and appropriation (with some real data from participants) (10’)
   2. Exercises: “Progressing serenely in a project that makes sense” + “finding obstacles” (20’)
   3. Depending on the results, do one of: (30’ each)
      1. “Progressing…” (productivity problems +  catalog of solutions)
      2. “… serenely…” (avoidance and mental health, tips and practices)
      3. “… a project that makes sense…” (CQOCE diagram + map of thesis… exercise to start the map, focusing on fuel)
   4. Behind the scenes: a primer on TEL, flipped classroom, and learning analytics (LA) (10’)
   5. Exercise: Looking at the seminar as a TEL experience, with different “hats” (think-group-share?) (30’)
   6. Open Q&A (other burning questions), closing (10’)
3. After the workshop: Webinar evaluation questionnaire

COURSE PLATFORM

All DETEL webinars are supplied with additional materials in mini-courses on the open Tech4comp platform. Please enroll in the webinar’s Moodle course: https://moodle.tech4comp.dbis.rwth-aachen.de/course/view.php?id=19

HOW TO JOIN

The link to join the webinar will be sent to all registered participants. The registration will remain open for the duration of the webinar series (until 2 July 2021). Register now!