Digital Tools plus a Project Management Approach (and some Common Sense)
Supervising a doctoral student is a complex task. Unfortunately, it’s made more complex, and often more frustrating, because communication is poor and there is no central record of student progress, accessible to supervisors and students. We’re starting to use cloud document sharing, but this is still rather ad hoc and uncoordinated, spread across multiple cloud services.
Supervision could be easier and students would progress better if the right technology were brought in and both supervisor and student had a common understanding of how the tools will be used.
It’s not hard; it just requires some commitment. Here I’ll try to provide some recommendations for what tools to use and how best to use them.
I want to start with a provocative claim: A PhD is a project and it should be thought of as co-managed by the student and the supervisor. As such, it needs to use modern digital tools for Project Management. Katie Shives made the same point in 2015 in an Inside Higher Ed post.
Email. Noooooo!
It’s important to start by acknolwedging email and then putting it in its rightful place. Faculty members are from the ‘email generation’, while grad students are now members of a post-email generation. Email is not going to go away; it’s useful for communication. But the challenge is for faculty members to accept that it should be used only for communication and not as a record-keeping system for graduate progress.
I’ll be blunt: searching your email for a student’s name and then finding relevant messages is a terribly inefficient and mistake-prone way to keep track of grad student progress. The problem is pretty clear: email is used in a ‘threaded’ way, but when people start new messages, the history is in an old message, and we often reply to a message with an old subject line and so there’s a mixing of threads.
Plus, using email attachements to share drafts of work for comment is also 20th century stuff: much clunkier and tougher for the student than having work reside in the cloud as a Google doc, Word document, or Dropbox file.
Recommendation: Email is for threads of communication, but all decisions and action items should be recorded in another system.
Recommendation: Do not email drafts for comment. Put them in a cloud drive with a clear directory structure suited to the program and discipline. Use track changes and comments and replies to comments.
Cloud services (Google, Microsoft OneDrive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc.) and how to use them
So we need the cloud for file sharing at least. The cloud, enabling us to work on files collaboratively, is a game-changer for doctoral supervision and student progress. But it’s massively underused. When the cloud is used, it’s often with too little structure and no common understanding of how it will be used; when this happens it’s little better than sending attachments.
Before looking at the different platforms, I’ll outline a generic structure that I would use with students.
Directory Structure. Each student should have a top-level directory called “Firstname Lastname PhD”. I’d suggest the following sub-directories:
- Forms and Official Documents
- Letter of Recommendation Materials
- Dissertation
- Annual Logs (if you aren’t using Prograds)
In the top level directory (above these sub-directories) you should have a document called “Firstname Lastname Master Plan”. The Master Plan will be a central place to see the student’s chronology and it should contain links to other documents, such as dissertation chapters or research materials, datasets, and so on. Both faculty and student can add to the document and use comments to ask questions and resolve them.
Recommendation: Settle on and stick to a directory structure. Ideally, all students would use the same structure, so faculty have an easier time finding things.
Which Platform?
I’m going to rule out Dropbox because it just doesn’t have the right commenting functionality.
The other three – Google Drive/Docs, Microsoft OneDrive, and iCloud – all provide file sharing. All three can house Word documents.
Google gives you the advantage of a built-in, searchable document application that includes commenting and resolving comments. If the drafting of the dissertation can be done in Google Docs, then this will work well. If faculty and students are using Gmail, then they will receive notifications about new comments.
Microsoft OneDrive has the advantage of native sharing of Word files, versioning, tracking changes, and editing anywhere through a browser (like Google Docs). However this is probably only the best solution if the University has Microsoft Office 365 and both students and faculty have accounts.
But in fact the most important criterion is which platform can be agreed on by the department so each faculty member has all their students’ materials in one place. It’s a real problem if – as is the case now for many faculty – different students are sharing their materials on different platforms.
Ideally, each faculty member would have a master directory called “PhD” or “Graduate” under which each student has their own directory with a standard naming convention (e.g. Smith – Jane).
Recommendation: Soft-require all PhD students to use the same system. Either Google or Microsoft, as appropriate to the school’s IT context.
Timeline
Students should have a forward-looking timeline clearly represented in the Master Plan document. The timeline will include goals and tasks that will be completed in a sequence according to department guidelines and what works best for the student.
Faculty should spend time reviewing the timeline with the student each month.
The timeline should use an outline format with each level representing year, term, month.
Ideally, the lowest level will consist of task or goals that can be completed. (Sub-tasks are possible too).
Recommendation: Supervisors can use the student’s timeline as a way to gently hold the student accountable for getting the work done in the right sequence and on time.
Tasks
Most of us use some kind of task-management system, even if it’s just a daily notebook or planner.
For organizationally ambitious students, it may be valuable to use project management software. These tools allow tasks and subtasks to be organized in folders or sub-projects, given activity and due dates, put on a timeline (Gantt chart), and so on. Using one of these is probably a good idea for a project with a lot of operational or logistical complexity and a clear sequence that must be followed.
There are a number of good free options for projects like dissertations, with some possibilities for sharing particular tasks for comments from faculty. They can all integrate with Google Drive, MS OneDrive, and iCloud. Some integrate with Google Calendar and Outlook. It’s unlikely that faculty will develop familiarity and engagement with these systems, but if a student wants to use one, faculty should be receptive to click a link and add comments to a task.
All of these tools can be used as a personal to-do tool alongside the dissertation project.
Some options are:
- Clickup (recommended). Very extensive free plan, allowing invitations to all committee members. Excellent timeline/calendar features.
- Notion (recommended). A different kind of tool. Combines notes/docs, easy-to-use databases, calendars, and flexible task management. Great for fieldwork or interviews or other data collection. Also great for bibliographic work. Free for students. Sharing is a bit limited, but functional. Templates and ideas are here:
- Lily May Toomey’s post on using Notion for a PhD, with a Notion template.
- Simone Smerilli’s take on this, with a template and some ideas about using your Notion dissertation zone in collaboration with your supervisor.
- Notion’s own basic template for Thesis Planning.
- Sociology grad student Joelle Phua’s video on using Notion for everything, including the dissertation.
- Trello. Simple but somewhat limited task management system based on a Kanban board.
- Asana. Powerful and a decent free tier, but the free product doesn’t include timelines.
- Wrike. More of an enterprise system, but free allows up to 5 members. No timeline (Gantt chart) on the free version.
Recommendation: Students with a lot of moving parts and fieldwork, experiments, or lab work should use a project management system. Faculty should get a tour of the system from the student.
Schedule
Here’s a suggested schedule. The most important thing is that the student and supervisor agree and stick to a schedule.
One of the main benefits of all the stuff I’ve discussed so far is so meetings can be productive, with the student documenting their work and the supervisor having material to review before the meeting.
Weekly: Once through coursework and onto exams, prospectus, and dissertation, students should enter a summary of progress in that year’s Annual Work Log YEARxxxx – First Name Last Name. Each weekly entry should end with a “What’s Next” where the student indicates what will be done the following week. The current Annual Work Log can be placed in the top-level directory for ease of access.
Ensure that the weekly entries are directed to meeting monthly and higher-order goals.
Monthly: A scheduled one hour meeting with the supervisor where the Weekly log is reviewed and issues are discussed. The meeting should start with a view of the Master Plan and its Timeline.
Semi-annually: A meeting with the full committee to show the Plan and Timeline, review progress, and hear committee members’ views.
Recommendation: As soon as the student has a supervisor, a schedule should be agreed on and put in both student’s and the supervisor’s calendars. Meetings should not be skipped! They can be done remotely with screen sharing if necessary.
When you combine these practices with department-wide use of a tracking and communication tool like Prograds, you’ll almost certainly see better progress, fewer missed deadlines, less stress, and smoother administration of the program.
