Developing the PhD programme

[Richard]

Here is a summary of what we discussed after the progress presentations today:

All students are expected to be at KMUTT full-time for the first 3 years.
In Year 1, students will attend courses, attend research discussions and clusters, and become involved in other activities.
In Years 2 and 3 (and beyond if students want), students are expected to attend research discussions and clusters, may attend courses if they wish, and are expected to be involved in other activities including:

Helping out with academic administration on Faculty projects e.g. rEFLections, conference organisation
Being involved in large-scale SoLA projects e.g. the evidence-based curriculum
Being involved in funded research projects e.g. Support Adaptive Testing
Be involved with staff research projects either as research assistants or collaborators
Join staff book clubs

In the research clusters, every student is expected to lead a session at least once a semester. This could concern issues in research or be much broader, such as discussing an interesting article. The students in each cluster are: DA cluster: Lanchukorn, Kunthida, Daron, Stuart, Punjaporn, Prach, Harris, Tabtip, Sayamol, Watcharee, Eric, Naratip; Autonomy cluster: Puttharaksa, Pornpol, Parinda, Archana, Urarat, Jariya, Amin, Jeffrey, Chatrawee, Rattima, Piyarat, Manthana, Thiwaporn.

Students are encouraged to attend a conference as a group. Finacial support will be provided.

Small offices will be assigned as workplaces (not social spaces) for PhD students on the 9th floor.

Is everything here right (maybe except for my spelling of your names)? Do you have any further suggestions or comments?

Richard

[Pornapit]

should we spell out that to attend the conference, they can present a paper from TLL, their own paper which may be a part of their requirement for graduation or the research they are interested to conduct with their friends, not just attending as a group.

Stuart, do you mean just attending or presenting as well?

I'm working on the small offices on the 9th floor, we may be able to allocate 2 rooms for two people to share one at a time. Will see how it works first.

[Eric Ambele]

As a new Ph.D student in an entirely new environment, I should say that I have been able to learn a lot in the just ended semester in terms of conducting research in applied linguistics. I find helpful and productive the suggestions from my seniors and teachers as spelt out here

[Wannapa]

For the research cluster, I'd suggest that we have a timetable for the whole semester and the students register for their time slot. Then a week or two before their talk, they should let everyone know their topic or circulate a paper that they'll discuss. That would help the participants have some thoughts/ideas (beforehand) and thus we can have a fruitful discussion.

[sgtowns]

should we spell out that to attend the conference, they can present a paper from TLL, their own paper which may be a part of their requirement for graduation or the research they are interested to conduct with their friends, not just attending as a group.

Stuart, do you mean just attending or presenting as well?

My suggestion about the conferences is that we should consider to choose one local (Thailand) conference per year where everyone is strongly encouraged to at least attend and strongly encouraged to present a paper too. I don't think that it should necessarily be a requirement either way. My thinking was that it would be similar to what happens at DRAL -- I don't think everyone was required to present (right?), but everyone was encouraged to present and lots of people did. But DRAL is not every year of course.

The papers presented at the chosen conference could be course papers, or papers that are written with other students on any topic that interests them, or papers written with other non-supervisor Ajarn. It would be really great if a lot of Ajarn are there as well. I remember one conference in Bangkok a few years ago where Aj Richard gave the keynote and several other Ajarn were there presenting as well. It was a great "academic environment", and a good chance to network outside of our KMUTT group.

Stuart

[Woravut]

Apart from external issues, one thing I think all phd students should have is CURIOSITY....and....STRENGTHENED CURIOSITY (for your research) ...and EXPANDED CURIOSITY (for other academic areas or issues).

This is internal. I hope while the school is trying to facilitate your academic development, you are also trying to ignite your internal drive for improvement.