Guideline for PhD students co-creating their own CPD program
Pieter Cuijpers
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Challenge and goal
In the context of a Marie-Curie program proposal, we are developing a peer-coaching and co-creation program for 14 PhD students, aimed at building agency to develop their own professional skills. This program needs to be flexible with respect to many aspects, including the diversity of the students, the institution they work in, their supervisors, but also more practical things as the distance between the locations of the students and differences in start-time of their PhD trajectory.
The professional development of the PhD students is intended to be aligned with the IDG (inner development goals) program that arose from the observation that obtaining the UN-SDG (UN sustainable development goals) requires professionals to acquire new skills for collaboration and co-creation.
Topic of the user case
Apart from training the PhD students, we also need to create awareness with their supervisors of the importance for PhD students to develop these professional skills, and we need to provide them with the tools to teach those skills or at least organize such teaching.
A first layout for such training will be part of the program itself, set-up in such a way to be executable without the supervisors having those skills, but assuming that they are willing to invest in such training. In order for the program to be sustainable, we need to involve the teachers in the program itself, and provide them with the necessary skills and background to implement future iterations of the program themselves.
Context
We have 14 supervisors of PhD students, working in different institutes throughout Europe each in their own discipline, with their own cultural background and their own expectations of what a PhD program should be about. We are at the starting phase of designing the program, and therefore still have room to discuss the goals of the program with either these supervisors or their superiors (depending who is involved in the creation of the program, which may vary).
CPD goal
The goal of the user-case, is to get these 14 supervisors on board, creating awareness of the necessessity for their PhD students to obtain the professional skills indicated by the IDG, and to co-operate and co-create a training program with them.
Needs defined in STEM-CPD Roadmap
Competences
Attitudes
Activities
Creation of the Marie-Curie proposal
Current plan, for the PhD students, is to start with a year of monthly peer-coaching sessions, comparing diaries of problems they encounter, with discussions coached by a facilitator who can introduce language that helps to think about diversity, personal and professional identity, and the needs arising from those.
By discussing this plan with the consortium that is building the proposal, I hope to create initial awareness of the importance of adressing these aspects in a structured and guided way. (There is unfortunately no time to let supervisors experience it themselves first.) After the program has been created, I plan to have a number of "supervisor alignement meetings", in which supervisors meet face-to-face, including the facilitators, and deepen their understanding of the approach that is being taken.
6 Supervisor Alignment meetings - coinciding with PhD student Event Weeks
1) Onboarding meeting face-to-face, discussing IDG and the co-creation approach.
2) Reflection workshop on the quality of our PhD's after the first year: what are their needs?
3) & 4) Reflection on the process so far - is there anything we need to change?
5) & 6) Co-creation activity for supervisors, making plans for future implementation of (parts) of the program in local everyday practice of training PhD students.
Expected impact of the program as a whole
If the program is successful, this should lead to a better formulation of research goals after the first year of study by the PhD students. PhD students should be able to come up with a research question that not only suits the needs of the program and the interest of their local supervisor, but should also include their own interests and outlook for professional development. In the following years, it should result in PhD students that are more aware of the societal role they are playing, but it should also lead to better community forming between the PhD students, a sense of belonging, and a lower drop-out rate of PhD students.
Expected impact of the CPD User Case
If the "supervisor alignment" part of the program is successful, we will see that local supervisors start initiatives to prolong this type of training of PhD students also in a broader context. This will lead to better professional development of PhD students, also outside the context of the original Marie Curie proposal.
Plans for eventual continuation of the CPD within the same topic
Steps 5) and 6) in the "supervisor alignment" part of the program should ensure that there is at least a plan for local improvement of PhD programs in each of the involved institutes. If the program is successful, the supervisors of the program should be motivated to keep in touch also after the program has finished, and continue this discussion on innovation of training PhD students of their own volition. The program is intended to increase the sense of community between the supervisors, and the activities organized during the "supervisor alignment meetings" are intended to initiate and encourage this.
Developing confidence in sound course design (type P1-1)
This CPD scenario describes a User case in which lecturers develop their competence in sound course design and develop attitudes in reflecting on own teaching practice.
The approximate duration of a User case that follows this scenario is several months.
In this CPD scenario the participants professionalize in a close connection to their own teaching practice (at their workplace) and meet in person on location with the training staff and with other participants.
Learning environment
Time
Several months
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