Category: MPhil/PhD Upgrade

Time is Marching On: A 4 Q 2021 Update

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While the original intent of this blog was to catalog the first years of my PhD Distance Learning Experience, I have returned now well into my penultimate year to provide a much-needed update. If not for any other reason, I needed a break from statistical analyses and am now prepared to take stock of what’s been accomplished during the last 18 months…

  • A little more than a year ago, and following my MPhil/PhD Upgrade, I accepted two posts at UCL including a PGTA to the Digital Media Masters Students Programme and a Content Developer for the EdD Education Programme. Both were incredibly gratifying and I was able to contribute, particularly leveraging my previously honed at-distance skills that came in handy when helping others migrate to new ways of learning and instruction online. After all, no one knew in 2018 of the coming pandemic.
  • Both PGTA and CD roles enabled me to pursue and receive Associate Fellowship in the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA, Advanced HE) from February, 2021.  Since that time, I’ve been fortunate to be welcomed as a Full Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and an Impact Fellow at UCL’s Institute of Healthcare Engineering (IHE).
  • On the research front, I’ve completed the design, pilot, production and data collection for the SensorAble project. I am “well down the road” regarding data analysis and have started to author my materials, including both the Methods and Results section for both my Dissertation and Journal Articles. I’ve also presented my findings at both UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience Development Diversity Lab and at the University of Cambridge Cognition Education and Emotion Lab.
  • I am motivated to begin helping shape Public Policy by contributing on both sides of the Atlantic. This includes building upon my recent appointment as Chairperson for the Center for Autistic and Related Disabilities (CARD) at Florida Atlantic University, and in authoring forthcoming POSTNotes on invisible disabilities to Parliament. I’ll be making applications for various grants (small pots of money!) to help contribute to shining a light on neurodiversity issues relating to sensory, attention and anxiety at both HEI, employment and social venues.
  • Last summer, I began shifting my focus from doctoral training to cognitive and human computer interaction (HCI) knowledge building. The latter is now begin to catch up to the former as my research was decidedly less technologically oriented in the earlier phases. I am now happily exploring Open Learner Models, artificial intelligence, machine learning, multimodal learning analytics, etc.
  • As I look to publish my first journal article, I have participated in numerous conferences and continue to increase my communication and dissemination skills. Four OSF Pre-prints are now registered and available on GoogleScholar, ResearchGate, UCL Explore, and elsewhere.  I even managed to complete a peer review for an  article on behalf of my supervisor Sarah White, and also assisted my other supervisor Joni Holmes in editing her journal article.

There’s much more planned for the remainder of the next phase of my journey (i.e., the upcoming 18 months prior to defending my dissertation). It is my fervent hope that I will include these benchmarks in coming posts. For now…stay safe, healthy and enjoy the holidays!

Upgrade Done!

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Background

Since enrolling as an MPhil/PhD full-time, distance learning, research student at University College London (UCL) way back (?) in June 2019, every day has been in service for this moment…the Mini Viva or Upgrade to full PhD status.

I have been brilliantly guided by my tutors, lecturers, administrators, colleagues, lab-mates, family and of course supervisors along this path and I feel well prepared for the moment at hand. Too, I feel relatively calm and eager to share my progress to date; however, I am more interested in learning and receiving guidance from my illustrious panel with regard to modifications, corrective measures and recommendations going forward.

In many respects, my primary supervisor, Prof Kaśka Porayksa-Pomsta, has all but telegraphed the primary concerns related to my proposed research from the very beginning; that is:

  • My metamorphosis from entrepreneur to academic (researcher) is something that must be contended with, as the two camps are both decidedly different and must be respected.
  • My desire to develop prototypes in favor of harvesting theoretical and computational underpinnings in support of an assistive technology must be well-tempered.
  • The scope of my research is enough to fill multiple doctoral thesis and thus must be narrowed, and then narrowed again (and again, and perhaps again a few more times).

As such, both Kaśka and I fully expect the Upgrade Panel to quickly discover these point, hone in on them, and help me “tease out” those important concepts of my last year in hopes to convey my understanding, appreciation and preparation to complete my thesis within these boundaries and within the ascribed timeframe.

Over-engineering my responses

From the onset of my presentation, which Kaśka later reported was the most concise, comfortable and compelling she has heard me convey, I felt a level of authenticity from my panel. They too indicated that the slides well-attended to my rationale, methods and data collection and that my training, preparation and desire to contribute to academic knowledge was noteworthy.

The panels questions and comments were incredibly thought-provoking, so much so, that I had to ask for clarification on two separate occasions due, not to an error in listening-skills, but to a confusion about how to best address the answers to meet the query.

In one particular example, and largely because I had spent so much time preparing my defense relating to ontological, epistemological and theoretical positioning and frameworks, I almost over-engineered my response when a considerably more simple answer would have sufficed. I fear I may have tripped over my delivery in this section only (!), as I could feel my brain shifting from a considerably higher gear at tremendous RPM, into a considerably more comfortable transmission mode that allowed me to relax into the matter at hand.

I told you so…

And as we neared the apex of the defense, both panel members gently guided me to my state my resolve around the scope of the project. From the onset, I stated my appreciation for shifting from entrepreneurial to academic positioning, toward eschewing a randomized control trial of a prototype to a more theoretical/computational approach and to continually narrow the breadth of modalities to half a handful of study.

And this was the primary lesson…my understanding of the narrowing and how I would go about this was still, perhaps, not direct and concise enough (yet)! In addition to several poignant examples of how my design methods could be further simplified (e.g. considerations of Wizard of Oz methodology were brought to light), the permission for me to select one modality (borne perhaps of my currently concluded data gathering/research/PPI) might enable me to effectuate study of one type of stimuli (e.g. sonic, optic or interoceptive GSR)…but only one!

And with that, I nodded again to my supervisor who was (up until this point) silently taking notes, camera and microphone off, and–no doubt–wagging her finger at the camera knowing all the time that she had “told me so”.

Once I had finished acknowledging that I had been advised of this, Kaśka gently (magically!) appeared on camera with the widest of smile and stated the same. It was actually a very lovely and touching moment…one that I shall not forget…as it placed a cherry atop of the whipped cream of my now fully assembled and soon to be complete upgrade.

The next best thing…

And while I had been longing two carry this process out face-to-face in Bloomsbury, this would not be the case owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the end, and despite some of the technical glitches I had heard transpired from other friends and colleagues with their upgrades and presentations, I was grateful to have had this unique, online mini-viva. My panel was generous with their time, effort and genuine interest and I was pleased with the outcome.

That is: I passed!

Funny how in the entrepreneurial world, the words “passed” connote a pejorative meaning. I much rather prefer the academic version and am pleased to be jumping into the deep end now of scholarly work.

As Kaśka mentioned whilst we were awaiting the panel’s decision: “We will make a researcher out of you yet. I am quite proud of you!”

And that was, of course, music to my ears.

MPhil to PhD Upgrade

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Nothing marks the first year of doctoral training quite like one’s preparation for The Upgrade. It actually sounds like a made-for-television special or even an independent film. Needless to say, it is more assuredly neither.

From my perspective, it has been business as usual. I have been preparing for upgrade wholeheartedly for no less than six months. Now that I am approaching my twelfth month, an having completed three years of required training last month (in one year no less!), I am fully devoting my energies to all things upgrade.

In actuality, this is not completely true. For the past two weeks, I’ve also been knee-deep in starting my  research from a data collection via multiple online focus groups, transcriptions and starting to tag text within my qualitative software application for analysis. Oh yes, literature searching continues unabated as well.

However, for the purposes of this blog post…I shall pretend that I have only those concerns relating to casting of the MPhil shackles and becoming a full-fledged PhD…all made possible by The Upgrade.

And what of these shackles, anyway? Depending upon whom you speak with, the MPhil process is shroud in much mystique and sine qua non. There are others, considerably more experienced than I who will tell you that “the Upgrade is nothing but a formality, a bunch of tick-boxes put in place to prevent the University and student from failing one another”.

Wait a minute…failure?!?!

“Not to worry!” my informant suggests. “It merely ensures essentials such as your ability to speak English, write appropriately, ascribe to a timetable, and produce research that is not underwhelming in scope or unimaginably impossible to complete. You’ll have no problem…I wouldn’t worry.”

Which, of course, sets worry in to motion.

Being the A+ type multiplied by infinity personality-type that I am (e.g. aggressive, ambitious, controlling, highly competitive, preoccupied with success, workaholic and lack of patience), I begin to sweat even more of the details of something that I have been preparing for…seemingly for…for…forever!.

It was with great desire, then, that I obtain guidance from my supervisors in order to best develop an upgrade roadmap avoiding, at all cost, a road to perdition. So with that, I await feedback regarding my Upgrade Report, so that I may carve out a compelling Google Sheets Presentation.

And yet, I am already aware that there is a good portion of my Upgrade Report (that will appear within said presentation) that will now likely never become actionable.

Why?

Owing to COVID-19, those myriad face-to-face focus groups, surveys, questionnaires and trials of pilot technologies requiring in-person activities must now all be (and some already have been) migrated online. In fact, the overall tenor of the proposed research has taken on less of a prototyping, engineering vantage point. These modifications have occurred in favour of those that are considerably more scientific and proof of concept/research.

In modulating the original plan, the idea now is that a post-doc may result in a more engineering-funded objective leading to prototype development. All of this hinges upon a PhD with substantial research that is compelling  to attract funding and sponsorship. And the road to PhD, at least today, travels through…you guessed it:

The Upgrade!

At least this is what my esteemed supervisors are suggesting. And that which I am completely trusting in as the end-game result. So with keyboard in hand, I await my monthly supervisory meeting taking place in less than one week. I’m hopeful that my Upgrade Report meets with approval, that my presentation may reflect that which is within the report, and that my Upgrade Panel, Upgrade Appointment and all associated departmental paperwork is “in the works”.

Fingers crossed. We shall see within a week’s time.

Monday monday….

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Today is a writing, writing and “more” writing day!

After inhaling the magic of my morning coffee elixir, I began early today by creating, editing and publishing a brand-new website announcing my PhD Project Research (along with the first official project-centric blog post). Once completed, these pages (screen captures) became a component of my MPhil/PhD Upgrade Report’s “Appendices Section”.

In order to round out this Appendix, I completed authoring a Post-mortem Participant-Public-Information Survey. This particular document is to be completed by participants who complete the lived-experience PPI Study (e.g. either a focus group or questionnaire) that form the first phase of my three-part study.

And finally, after spending the afternoon programmatically coding the aforementioned questionnaire in the Gorilla Experiment Builder application, I ran preliminary tests on the actual “main section” of the PPI. Once test data collection was confirmed, secured and anonymised, I then captured screens for inclusion in the aforementioned Appendix.

Of course, there were about two dozen email relating to doctoral training modules, student government documents for upcoming Governance Meetings and several National Student Survey documents that needed my attention prior to convening next week’s UCL Trustee/Student Union Meetings.

Certainly, there’s never a dull moment as a PhD Student…distance learners included! Now I am off to get some exercise with our daughter and prepare—what will hopefully be—a lovely dinner for the family. The it’s back to (you guessed it) more literature research!

And so it begins

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A brief backgrounder:

I enrolled at UCL as a full-time distance learning student in June 2019. As a U.S.-based entrepreneur since 1993, and a family man (with a magnificent, special needs teenager and brilliant wife of 25 years), UCL’s Post Graduate Research Program appeared as the best solution to help make transformative research and contributions to what I perceived to be an underserved and deserving segment of our society.

Today is a typical weekend day, packed with a variety of meaningful and motivating scholastic work. I started quite early (5.a.m.) by placing the finishing touches on my first draft of an MPhil/Upgrade Report (due four months from now). Having uploaded this to my brilliant supervisors (Prof Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta and Dr Sarah White), they will now have the opportunity to iterate the content by (re-)considering all that we have learned through my pursuits up to this point.

Later this same morning, I refocussed my efforts on the few remaining Doctoral Research Training modules I have left in my “requirements bin”. My final three subjects include Qualitative Analysis, Research Methods and IMPCorC. As today is an induction week for new students, the reading load is uncharacteristically light; however, Dr Sveta Mayer (who is the Programme Leader for Online MPhil/PhD) firmly believes in establishing and maintaining esprit de corps among the cohort of both returning and newly minted PhD students. Hence, I will spend a good deal of time “online” today reinvigorating my responsive efforts to supply answers to questions about my research, how mixed methodologies and theories affect my proposed study, etc. Then, I shall “turn the tables” and enquire about new student’s research and provide an encouraging soliloquy of life as a distance-learning researcher. “It’s the best thing I have taken on next to my marriage and birth of our daughter!”

After a quick email reminder to both supervisors about looming Ethics Application Deadlines, I spend the majority of the afternoon authoring an upcoming presentation I am to make at the Development Diversity Lab (within UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) in two weeks’ time. This will be my second presentation which is streamed live to my secondary supervisor and attending students/participants at Alexandra House (on Queens Square, just a short walk from the Knowledge Lab). As a “mature” student who completed computer and electrical engineering undergraduate degrees in the mid 1980s, it amazes me that I can work in Florida—some 7,500 kilometers away from London—and confer in real-time what knowledge, experiences and camaraderie ensues with my fellow laboratory mates.

If only I could partake of the complimentary tea and treats provided….

As the evening approaches, I map out specific readings related to my ever-mounting literature research. Combined with a few extracurricular modules on neural network training (MATLAB Onramps, etc.), I dive in after a nice dinner with my family. If I have the strength, I’ll start porting my lab presentation outline to a PowerPoint Template; but something tells me I may be out of coffee…so a quick run to the market may prove useful for a morning re-start.