CPD/what I wish I’d known about the thesis
CPD/what I wish I’d known about the thesis
This is just a quick blog to follow on from the very useful blog by Rich Garthwaite on CPD and then talk a bit about the thesis.
ICE events.
There lots of presentations at One Great George Street which generally start at 18.30 so can be a good excuse for leaving site at a sensible time. There are a few annual talks which I have attended and thought were interesting for those in London or for those not, logging in online.
Joint Professional Meeting between the Royal Engineers and ICE, this year on 28 April 2016.
James Renie Medal – this is the top 3 successful CPR candidates from the previous year vying to demonstrate that they best reflect Renie’s principles.
ICE tour and history presentation. I did not hugely rate the presentation but having been to a few more things since, knowing a bit about the background to the creation of the ICE as well as seeing more of the institution’s home is only of benefit. The tour is by all accounts good.
Flemming Award, Smeaton lecture and John Mitchell lecture. These annual lectures which cover a geotechnics (and other topics) and two were recorded.
https://www.ice.org.uk/eventarchive/the-2015-fleming-award-competition
https://www.ice.org.uk/eventarchive/smeaton-lecture-2015
For those more geotechnically minded the Rankine lecture at Imperial College is pretty much the top end of geotechnical discussion and worth going along to hear about current themes in academia and industry. Next year (March) will be an overseas presenter. Don’t under estimate how popular it is!
These all help both towards CPD hours as well as attribute 9 in terms of participating in ICE events.
Thesis
The second point of this blog is just to point out some of the ‘what I wish I’d knowns’ regarding the thesis writing. Perhaps something others have found similar things, or not. I have got 4 points. Might be useful for Phase Twos now, albeit at preparation stage only.
Format. Slightly dull point but if anyone has resisted making use of the word styles, auto-format templates I would strongly encourage getting on board early. With 4 x TMRs, 5 x AERs and a thesis it will save hours on formatting if all of the lists of contents, figures, tables and most usefully references are all done for you. Also internal referencing within the document becomes easy as the document will self update. Highly recommended.
Timing. I found there was no time between TMRs, AERs and site work to start writing the thesis much before Christmas – clearly possible, you would just have to be more organised. Therefore the likelihood is you may choose a topic related to site and be writing it when not on site. However, it will help if you know what it is you are doing much before Christmas to allow primary data collection – as per the coursework timeline.
Primary data collection. For the reason above, if doing a site related thesis, collecting primary data from site is critical. If it’s tests on concrete or monitoring data or something else, I would advise deciding in sufficient time to get the information you need. You probably won’t manage to capture it all, so get all the details of people you might need to pull favours from afterwards.
Keeping a record. The biggest thing I am finding is not remembering quite what happened and when it happened. This is practically in terms of why some of the primary data is as it is (so I recommend keeping a site diary for sole thesis purpose of recording activities relating to the data). This is also cerebrally; trying to remember what you discussed or wrote on a notebook, 5 notebooks ago, did not work so well for me. I would have kept a better electronic record (text, photos,) of discussions, events and even thoughts to help remember everything when coming to put pen to paper a few months later.
Just my thoughts anyway.
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Damo you beat me to it on the thesis post. I heartily agree with you on your comments.
On the formatting front it is relatively easy to power through a TMR or AER without doing things such as referencing properly. With a thesis and 70+ references this would be a nightmare. I would definitely recommend phase 2s looking at the thesis format (or using a JSP 101 format and modifying it) if they have not already.
Record keeping wise I recommend keeping a folder for all your references, figures and other stuff for each document as invariably you will have to make changes in the future. I started using the google drive for this for my thesis so I could add things when I was at work: my home laptop groans under the weight of my spreadsheets. It also helps in case of computer Armageddon. In the early months my record keeping was terrible but a dedicated notebook has helped.
Everything takes longer than you think, sometimes much longer. I had problems with getting data and then actually using it because of the errors.
Read the Cranfield literature review document early. I wish I had read it before doing my TMRs. Though this comment might not be a good example, I think that it improved my writing significantly. You may as well incorporate that into your TMRs too.
The submission forms do help. I didn’t find the literature review that bad in the end as it is just like doing a TMR, which you get conditioned to in the end.
Rather than say ‘start early’ I would say start thinking about the components early. It’s a big piece of work and you will find plenty of rabbit holes to dive down and frustrating obstacles to tackle. But the actual writing is probably the easy bit, so if you have a good plan, some data and a thought through methodology then even if you don’t have any words on the page you are probably in a good place, until April. By April you need words!
Henry, I agree with your points too which is no good as normally I can find something to argue about.
Good Drive is good, not least because of the back up it will store but also because of the space it has and the a ability to share a link to the file. This removes the need to email a document which will probably grow larger than can be emailed anyway. Also using the submission form on the ele helps produce back up versions of different chapters which is useful too.
Very much agree with your final paragraph – preparation early is very useful for making life easier later on. The TMR process hugely helps get into the mindset so the sort of things that are needed start to become more obvious in regards to the thesis.
Good post Damo,
I whole heartedly agree. I struggled to find a source for my primary data until I moved to phase 3 and realised there was some modelling software that could produce it for me. For the M&Es I would also recommend approaching manufacturers’ for information, especially during phase 3. One of Monodraught’s engineers came into our London office to help with my thesis research. I hadn’t worked with him previously and he knew there wasn’t a live project associated with the work, but his view was that I was a potential future customer and was therefore happy to give up a couple of hours whilst already in London.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
Damian,
I read your blog with interest and a little surprise. From your formatting point I take it we do not still have a lesson on formatting where you all set up templates to JSP 101 on your laptops so that Word does all of this automatically for you? If not we need to resurrect this lesson from the not so distant past!
Likewise, there are many academic software tools out there for referencing; I recall I used something called LaTex(?), but it was a bit cumbersome. I suspect that there is something useful in the AppStore that will meet the need.
Finally, I wholeheartedly agree with pulling forward any timelines on the thesis. Think about risk and time. Whilst not wishing to close off the opportunity of selecting a topic for a thesis based on what is occurring on site, my feeling would be to select a topic early and start work on it before the end of Phase 1. You can always change later if the perfect subject appears further on down the road. By leaving it late, the data may not be as readily available as one might have hoped, and then what?
SRL
It looks like the spirit of the “forms” approach to the Thesis is generally well received. The idea was absolutely to ensure that you developed your work in chunks so as to not be blinded by all of the elements that go into the submission. They are also provided as a back up should everything go wrong, I’m less convinced of their use in that respect given online storage is becoming more and more the norm but nonetheless you do get an originality report etc. The method isn’t perfect however so please don’t leave without providing some feedback and suggestions for improvement.
The literature review is a key element – a very significant use of it is in identifying what you will need to gain from your primary data source – looking around for data without knowing what data you need can be frustrating, you end up with a lot of information only to find that most of it is irrelevant. The literature review should also help you shape how you will analyse that data and inform you of what results you should be cataloguing.
On referencing lists and software – whatever works for you, the most basic method is a spreadsheet of reference sources and some notes linked to copies of the reference documents, a step ahead is using something like MS Word to automate referencing the gold standard is the use of referencing software – Mendeley, Endnote or similar. Personally I prefer Mendeley because its free!!