Category: Post Graduate Student Representative

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!

SensorAble Participant Public Information Studies Now Closed

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Thank you
I am pleased to report that both the SensorAble Online Focus Group and Surveys are now completed. Thanks to everyone who provided their incredible participation, guidance and kindness.
SensorAble Online Survey
Your support may lead to the development of theory and research that just might make the world a little less distracting and anxiety-producing for the neurodiverse.
SensorAble Focus Group

Stay tuned to this space as I continue to scrub the data, and provide updates on what the research yields. Baby steps initially, leading to the development of my PhD thesis and hopefully some tangible results that provide autonomy, greater participation and comfort at both school, work and other venues.

Thank you and please stay safe and well during these most unusual times.

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.

The New Normal?

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This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is keep-calm-the-new-normal.jpgSince the start of COVID-19 affecting global academia, many aspects of university life have changed dramatically. Whether by university building closures, on-line classes supplanting face-to-face lectures and laboratories being shuttered in favour of scientists having to re-think their methodologies and processes, I have been wondering how much more upheaval can researchers contend with?

On one hand, and in my particular case: day-to-day functioning as a distance, PhD student hasn’t changed much. Admittedly, I wash my hands more (always a good idea!). I now retain a 1.65 litre container of hand sanitizer within reach at my desk all times. I am also less than likely to run to the grocer in favour of shelling shell more money to the benefit of local food delivery companies.

My communications with colleagues, laboratory partners, supervisors, administrators, tutors and professors has not changed one iota. I do, however, have an increased window on my colleagues home/home life. Their venues are now on display for the entire world…and it can be fun meeting their family members…both furry and otherwise. In truth, our daughter Phoebe loves to join in, particularly during online sign-offs where she enjoys spreading good cheer and show-off her latest academic conquests. Most recently, she bragged about completing Cyrano de Bergerac read-through along with her statistics, oceanography/zoology and genetics classes.

With the publishing of this post, however, we will have been in isolation (e.g. physical distancing…not social distancing) for well over one month. My university officially locked its doors on Friday the 13th of March 2020, but our family shuttered our residence long before that. When will we begin to return to a newer normal?

From the The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME, 7 April 2020) 

Well the good news (?) is this: the supposed peak of medical facilities use has moved two weeks earlier. What was once identified as 3 May has now moved to 15 April. This represents the day of maximum hospital occupancy (e.g. beds, intensive care unit and ventilator usage).

What’s unclear is that which has moved the curve forward. Is it simply resultant from efforts to distance ourselves from one another, healthcare operations releasing more recovered patients, a faster morbidity timeframe, or — perhaps — erroneous data?

It would seem that there will certainly be more suffering initially (and sooner?) given the metrics available. Too, there will be fewer of us around when/if the new normal subsides. And at least in the United States it would appear that our government’s ability to contend with the fallout (from a strategic vantage point) will likely be as coordinated as its initial and ongoing attempts to contend with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Always an optimist, I must admit that I am feeling rather pessimistic about the new normal. For all measures, antediluvian or otherwise, it would appear that the COVID-19 scenarios are not good. The whiplash effect due next Fall/Winter is likely to be as onerous, and pending elections, our ability to respond as a nation seems nefarious given our current leadership. How this affects those of us intent on making contributions to at-risk populations is even more in question.

Not that our resolutions are ill-conceived. It’s just that you cannot possibly assist others if you, they and the system are ill.

The bright side is that the world, herself, seems to be healing herself. From a carbon emission standpoint, global warming/temperature measure and from our ocean’s pollutants…there appears to be positive news. But for how long? Will the new normal bring relief to planet earth? Stay tuned…

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COVID-19 Update

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In addition to my PhD endeavors and responsibilities within both the Knowledge Lab and Development Diversity Lab, I am also a UCL Student Trustee, Board of Governance member and Post Graduate Student Representative. As I actively stand for students throughout UCL (both on the ground in London and internationally at a distance), I want to use this space today in an effort to update my constituents on the following as it relates to academic matters, specifically:

  • Our student union (SU) officers have been diligently working with UCL administrators to carve out an Extraordinary Extenuating Circumstances (EEC) procedure. The union hopes that this information is robust enough to cover almost all circumstances, however, you are welcome to reply with your questions and comments at reps@ucl.ac.uk.
  • Similarly, the SU has created guidance detailing Illness and Unexpected Disruptions to Your Exam or Assessment information. While many Post-Graduate Research (PGR) students will not be affected by assessment, per se, there is important information related to illnesses that you may want to consider.

As was mentioned in a memo to UCL Academic Reps, Ashley Slanina-Davies (UCL Students’ Union Education Officer) offered that “we are meeting with UCL to represent the interests of students and raise student concerns every single hour of the day and if you have any concerns, have feedback from your peers to pass on or think there is something that can be improved with information being communicated, please do get in touch with me and the team at the Union.