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Many university lecturers have integrated feature films and television series (FF/TV) into their lessons to improve student engagement. Although film in teaching might seem like a well-established practice, it is reliant on a range of fast-changing technologies to effectively integrate FF/TV into instruction, learning activities and assessments. This study utilises the Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) model to analyse survey and interview data regarding (1) lecturers’ familiarity with a range of concepts and skills related to film production, delivery and integration technologies; (2) their methods of learning about technologies that help optimise their FF/TV use; and (3) their institution’s provision and support in implementing various technologies integral to teaching with FF/TV. A modified framework is proposed to add to the pedagogical benefits of effective teaching with FF/TV at universities.

Researcher developers conduct their work in the borderlands between academic disciplines and university administration. Navigating this third space [Berman, J. E., and T. Pitman. 2010. “Occupying a...

Digital education, now common in higher education, is particularly evident in the expansion of blended and fully online offerings at universities. Central to this expansion are educational developers, staff who support teaching and learning improvement in courses they do not themselves teach. Working closely with staff, students, and the curriculum, educational developers see first-hand how the digital learning agenda is both implemented and experienced. This article reports on findings from a national study of three educational development groups: academic developers, academic language and learning developers, and online educational designers, from 14 Australian universities. Although their institutional settings, roles, and work practices varied considerably, a central theme was the tension arising from a perceived shift in institutional priorities from 'people development' to 'product development': that is, from building human (educator) capacity towards curriculum resource development, particularly for the online environment. Participants reported a decline in autonomy, with institutional strategy and targeted projects increasingly directing both the work that gets done, and the skill sets required to do it. Their observations have implications for how universities conceptualise the development and support of the educational process. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

It is widely accepted that the academic job market is very limited and unlikely to expand any time soon, yet enrolments in PhDs continue to rise. If the PhD is no longer preparation for academia, where do these graduates go on completing their degrees? This study of Australian PhD graduates in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) explores motivations to undertake a research degree, their experiences of academia, and their current employment. These personalised narratives reveal the impact and value of doctoral education on the employment trajectories of HASS PhD graduates in non-academic careers. These stories uncover both the ‘cruel optimism’ and positive employment outcomes experienced by HASS doctorate holders. It is argued that commencing PhD candidates should be encouraged from the outset to seriously consider their doctorate as preparation for careers beyond academia; rather than being ‘failed academics,’ these graduates succeed as high-level knowledge workers.

Higher education learning is increasingly enacted in digital environments and doctoral education is no exception. Scholars–supervisors and PhD candidates–actively create their own digital profiles, and their research is often disseminated via social media in tandem with the traditional publication of journals and books. Online learning behaviours, social media and doctoral education are complex, and, when considered together, present distinct challenges. This paper explores the work and practices of digital academics using social media through a case study of an academic blog, Doctoral Writing. We use statistical data from the blog to map evolving pedagogic practices and forms of doctoral writing support and engagement. This analysis reveals horizontalised networks of co-creating consumers and producers who interact on social media platforms in ways that signal new transnational networks of learning and teaching. This paper contributes to our understanding of academic engagement with social media in contemporary doctoral education, particularly doctoral writing Refereed/Peer-reviewed

“The learning is the network” (Siemens, 2005) has special resonance for contemporary doctoral candidates, who are as likely to meet their supervisor via an online video platform like Zoom as in a book-lined office. In fact, the physicality of books and libraries now exist alongside – and within – a hyper-connected digital world. This chapter uses “connectivism” as a lens for reflecting on the impacts of digital hyper-connectivity, considering how doctoral learning actually occurs across numerous technologies and multiple sites, in ways that disrupt older, more stable, supervisory models.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Remote supervision of doctoral writers became the norm in 2020 when university campuses around the world suddenly closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For some supervisors the rapid move to online supervision signalled a radical shift in their approach to working with PhD candidates, but for others it has been a smooth extension of their existing supervisory practices. By bringing together scholarly works and selected grey literature on remote supervision of doctoral writing, this paper explores how we might understand best practices for developing doctoral writing at a distance.

Becoming a writer and providing supervisory support in that journey is complex and multifaceted. It is a relational process involving novice writers, their supervisor(s), and the tricky relationships between these key individuals. Often, others also enter this space—institutional and external sources of support, families and social and learning networks inform and transform the relational influences impacting the writing experience. Clearly, learning to write as a credentialised doctoral research scholar is so much more than simply the acquisition of skills. We see writing as a process of identity formation involving struggles with authority, self-representation and the personal—most especially we recognise the powerful emotional forces at play as doctoral students test out the possibilities for new, authentic writerly selves (Ivaniĉ, 1998) that honour personal, disciplinary and supervisory expectations and norms.

Skilled researchers develop their craft as writers beyond compliance with grammar. Their tools of trade include precision in word choice, logic in structure, clarity of style, and manipulation of syntax for accurately placed emphasis.

This book on doctoral writing offers a refreshingly new approach to help Ph.D. students and their supervisors overcome the host of writing challenges that can make—or break—the dissertation process. The book’s unique contribution to the field of doctoral writing is its style of reflection on ongoing, lived practice; this is more readable than a simple how-to book, making it a welcome resource to support doctoral writing. The experiences and practices of research writing are explored through bite-sized vignettes, stories, and actionable ‘teachable’ accounts. Doctoral Writing: Practices, Processes and Pleasures has its origins in a highly successful academic blog with an international following. Inspired by the popularity of the blog (which had more than 14, 800 followers as of October 2019) and a desire to make our six years’ worth of posts more accessible, this book has been authored, reworked, and curated by the three editors of the blog and reconceived as a conveniently structured book

A ‘knowledge society’ relies on a workforce with high-level skills in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Continuing development of ICT will arise partly from research undertaken by doctoral graduates. However, compared to other cognate disciplines, ICT has relatively few students taking up doctoral studies. This article explores some of the perceived barriers to undertaking doctoral studies in ICT in three Australian universities. Current students were surveyed regarding their post-course intentions relating to employment and further study, and the resulting data was analysed in terms of type of university attended, gender, nationality and first-in-family status. Overall, the perceived barriers to doing a research degree were related to the financial implications of such study and a limited understanding of what research in ICT involves. The following recommendations are made to universities and higher education policy-makers: that universities ensure that students have accurate information about the financial costs of doctoral studies; that students be provided with authentic undergraduate research experiences; and that pathways be developed to facilitate a smooth return to research degrees after periods of working in industry. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

International university students are a growing section of the workforce and are thought to be at greater risk of injury. Qualitative studies have highlighted vulnerabilities, but there is a shortage of quantitative research exploring the injury experience and associated risk factors of this emerging issue. In this study, a total of 466 university student workers across a range of study programs in a single Australian university completed an online survey, with questions relating to their background, working experience, training and injury experience. Risk factors for injury were explored in a multivariate statistical model. More than half had not received any safety training before they started work, and 10% reported having had a work injury. About half of these injuries occurred after training. Statistically significant risk factors for injury included working more than 20 h per week (adjusted odds ratio 2.20 (95% CI 1.03–4.71) and lack of confidence in discussing safety issues (AOR 2.17; 95% CI 1.13–4.16). The findings suggest the need for a more engaging and effective approach to safety education and a limit on working hours. This situation is a moral challenge for universities, in that they are effectively sponsoring young workers in the community. It is recommended that longitudinal studies of international student workers be conducted.

The demand for higher degree research qualifications is growing in response to the requirements of the knowledge economy, greater international competition for and mobility of students, and increased demand for research and researchers. As institutions struggle to keep up with the changing forms and requirements of doctoral education, students and supervisors appear to be turning to alternative spaces for learning and networking, notably in the sphere of social media.

This chapter describes different kinds of writing groups and the roles they play in supplementing the feedback cycles between student and supervisors. It proposes that both critique-focused and productivity-focused writing groups provide rich and diverse opportunities for doctoral students to learn key academic practices through participating in authentic scholarly networks of exchange over writing. Critique-focused writing groups can be facilitated by institutional representatives, such as language experts and supervisors, or by peers. Critique-focused groups require significant commitment, since members need to commit to regular participation and invest additional time for reading and reviewing peers' work. Productivity-focused groups are a relatively new, and increasingly popular, model of writing group in which participants get together to write rather than to discuss their writing. For supervisors whose students belong to productivity-focused writing groups, the main benefit is that their candidates are generating text.

As practices and expectations around doctoral writing continue to change, so too do the demands on academic developers and learning advisors. Social media is increasingly playing a role in doctoral education, just as it is in higher education more generally. This paper explores a blog initiated in 2012 to inform and support doctoral writing; since its inception, it has grown to include diverse and overlapping communities of academic developers, language and literacy specialists, supervisors, and students with shared interests in doctoral writing. This case study reflects on our experiences of entering the online environment through the lens of connectivist learning, noting the practices and communities that have been established, and the blog’s positioning in relation to our formal roles within universities. We consider how blogging relates to our work as academic developers. Details of our experiences, with our analysis and reflection of them, can inform other academic developers seeking to engage in social media networks as part of their working lives. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In designing supervisor development programmes that are appropriate to changing research contexts, it is necessary to draw on both established best practice and emerging innovations that respond to the changing contexts of higher degree research. We undertook a narrative enquiry at an Australian university to establish a clearer understanding of the supervisory models and pedagogies currently employed by effective supervisors. Three key findings have emerged: these supervisors employ a broad range of approaches informed by their own experiences of being supervised; they place great importance on their relationships with students; and they reveal a strong awareness of their own responsibilities in actively developing the emerging researcher identities of their doctoral candidates. These aspects of supervision models should be emphasised in supervisor development programmes.

Despite the increasing numbers of candidates embarking on higher degrees by research (HDRs, e.g., PhD, professional doctorate, practice-based doctorate), we still have limited knowledge about why they are choosing this path. What are the factors that motivate students to embark on research degrees? Given that many of those who succeed in completing their doctorates will not go into academic positions, the motivations for choosing to undertake a research degree may not match the experience or outcomes (and hence, perhaps, contribute to incompletion rates). This article investigates the motivations of students in all faculties embarking on HDRs at an Australian university. A survey of 405 students was subjected to a factor analysis. Five factors emerged: family and friends, intrinsic motivation, lecturer influence, research experience, and career progression.

Transnational academic mobility and the ongoing push towards “internationalization” together raise challenges for the cultural climate of today's universities. This paper explores these issues from the perspective of supervisors of research degrees in an Australian university in which “internationalization” and “academic mobility” apply to supervisors as much as to students. The concepts of the imagined community and cosmopolitanism are employed to interpret a series of one-on-one and group interviews conducted with international academic staff, conversations which reported surprisingly untroubled negotiation of cultural difference. Using the insights provided by the concepts of “imagined community” and “cosmopolitanism”, we investigate the mechanisms mobilized by these supervisors in apparently backgrounding cultural diversity in the workplace, and consider the implications of the academic subjectivities they perform.

International students represent an increasingly large segment of the Australian workforce. Most international students are working while studying, but there is a scarcity of quantitative data regarding potential work-study conflicts. Data from an online survey were analyzed with multivariate statistical methods to clarify the risk factors associated with perceived work&ndash, study conflicts in an Australian university. More than 66% of students felt that working demands interfered with their study. Negative impacts included tiredness and timetable clashes. Statistically significant correlates of work&ndash, study conflict were a perception of unfair wages and a lack of confidence in discussing occupational health and safety issues with employers. Underpayment may signify other vulnerabilities, such as unsafe working conditions. As many universities seek to increase their international student enrolments, these are important factors to consider for student retention. To mitigate this potential negative influence on study, universities should provide education and training related to international students&rsquo, rights and responsibilities in the workplace.

Supervision of research degrees is currently undergoing significant re-evaluation, as the research environment itself responds to new and ongoing external policy and funding pressures, internationalisation, increasing cross-disciplinarity and the proliferation of sub-specialisations amongst other factors. The Exploring Supervision Program is designed to aid new supervisors of research students to find effective ways of negotiating supervision in the context of this changing academy. To this end, a workshop facilitation approach is employed that we call ‘collaborative critique’, a technique designed to extend understandings of complex situations through discussion and debate stimulated by narrative, case studies and role plays. Here, we outline the rationale of collaborative critique and then demonstrate how it is used in a workshop on working in the multicultural academy.

Team supervision of PhDs is increasingly the norm in Australian and UK universities; while this model brings many improvements on the traditional one-on-one research supervision, it also introduces new complexities. In particular, many students find the diversity of opinions expressed in teams to be confusing. Such diversity in supervisor feedback is often experienced as unsettling, and the study indicates that students generally seek consensus from their supervisory team. The power dynamics existing in the relations between team members in this situation need to be carefully considered, and supervisors must be alert to the ways in which doctoral students can be effectively and productively inducted into the norms of academic debate and collaborative research projects. The paper explores the implications of diversity in feedback in relation to developing a pedagogy of supervision.

As interdisciplinary research becomes increasingly common in universities, new types of research culture appear to be developing. The doctoral students undertaking studies in this research climate are themselves increasingly diverse (Gardner, Jansujwicz, Hutchins, Cline, & Levesque, 2012; Pearson, Cumming, Evans, Macauley, & Ryland, 2011), coming into their studies from nontraditional pathways, from a variety of disciplinary and professional backgrounds, as well as from a range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Informed by interview data collected from members of doctoral writing groups, this article outlines the academic researcher identities these diverse students need to develop in order to operate effectively within rhizomatic research cultures. By considering this through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1988) model of rhizomatic knowledge structures, we can begin to understand how the contemporary research environment values heterogeneous, non-hierarchical, networked styles of work on research projects. The article proposes that multidisciplinary doctoral writing groups offer experiences that enable researchers to embrace the qualities of flexibility, multiplicity, collegiality, and connection and that these qualities will be of benefit to students in the current research environment.

What is it about the teaching-research nexus that inspires engineering undergraduates to want more and become researchers themselves? In this study, we sought to discover more about the influences on current PhD students’ choices to embark on higher degrees by research in various fields in engineering in an Australian research-intensive university. An online survey and follow-up focus group discussion revealed that these students are driven primarily by a genuine interest in research itself, rather than other factors such as career advancement (although this too, plays a role). While this is not particularly surprising, what did become apparent was the specific undergraduate experiences that most strongly influenced their decision to undertake research degrees, including enjoying doing project-based work, being exposed to lecturers who were passionate about their own research, and working on a vacation research scholarship. Further analysis reveals that the weighting of various influences changes according to whether the students are local Australian graduates or international PhD candidates.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Writing groups for doctoral and scholarly writing by Claire Aitchison (University of Western Sydney) and Cally Guerin (University of Adelaide) Chapter 2 Writing together, for many reasons by Anthony Pare (McGill University, Canada) Chapter 3 Pick-n-Mix: A Typology of Writers' by Groups by Sarah Haas (University of Ghent, Belgium) Chapter 4 Doctoral students create new spaces to write by Rowena Murray (University of Strathclyde, Scotland) Chapter 5 Scaffolding the thesis writing process: An ongoing writing group for international research students by Linda Li (University of Canberra, Australia) Chapter 6 The writing group as gift by Cally Guerin (University of Adelaide, Australia) Chapter 7 'If they're not laughing, watch out!': Emotion and risk in postgraduate writers' circles by Lucia Thesen (University of Cape Town, South Africa) Chapter 8 Learning from multiple voices: Intertextuality, feedback and authority in doctoral writing groups by Claire Aitchison (University of Western Sydney, Australia) Chapter 9 The transparent transaction: Writing groups in the development of academic writers and writing mentors by Michelle Maher (University of South Carolina, USA) Chapter 10 A weekly dose of applause! Connectedness and playfulness in the Thesis Marathon by Judith Wolfsberger (The writers' studio, Austria) Chapter 11 Circles of trust: The generous embrace of academic writing retreats by Barbara Grant and Sally Knowles (Auckland University, New Zealand Edith Cowan University, Australia) Chapter 12 Listening to doctoral students talk about research writing and groups: Implications for doctoral programs by Doreen Starke-Meyerring (McGill University, Canada) Chapter 13 An intimate circle: Reflections on writing as women in higher education by Agnes Bosanquet, Jayde Cahir, Elaine Huber, Christa Jacenyik-Trawoger and Margot McNeill (Macquarie University, Australia) Chapter 14 Shut up and write! Facilitating informal learning in doctoral education (with 'no critiquing, exercises, lectures, ego, competition or feeling guilty') by Inger Mewburn, Lindy Osborne, Glenda Caldwell and Tseen Khoo (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Queensland University of Technology Queensland University of Technology Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia)

While the concept of the wandering scholar is not new, the speed and frequency of academic mobility have rapidly gained momentum in the 21st century (Kim 2009). Linked to the notion of the ‘borderless’ university (Cunningham et al. 1998; Hearn 2011; Watanabe 2011), scholars today expect to study and work in more than one country, to present their research at international conferences, and to collaborate with colleagues from all around the world. The result is a multicultural academic workforce in many universities for whom boundaries between national cultures are increasingly being erased and where all members require high levels of intercultural competence…

Writing groups for doctoral students are generally agreed to provide valuable learning spaces for Ph.D. candidates. Here an academic developer and the eight members of a writing group formed in a Discipline of Public Health provide an account of their experiences of collaborating in a multicultural, multidisciplinary thesis writing group. We consider the benefits of belonging to such a group for Ph.D. students who are operating in a research climate in which disciplinary boundaries are blurring and where an increasing number of doctoral projects are interdisciplinary in nature; in which both academic staff and students come from enormously diverse cultural and language backgrounds; and in which teamwork, networking and collaboration are prized but not always proactively facilitated. We argue that doctoral writing groups comprising students from diverse cultural and disciplinary backgrounds can be of significant value for postgraduates who wish to collaborate on their own academic development to improve their research writing and communication skills; at the same time, such collaborative work effectively builds an inclusive, dynamic research community. Refereed/Peer-reviewed