Communication, Time & Project Management for PhDs
Core Skills for your PhD: Communication, Time & Project Management
In this workshop we provide training on important background skills for early stage PhD students, helping them to communicate effectively with peers and to manage their time and workload effectively.
Did you know that this workshop can be part-funded by FUNDAE? Find out more
An absolutely enriching experience for my PhD journey
Workshop Summary
Title: Core Skills for your PhD: Communication, Time & Project Management
Target audience: Early stage PhD students (first year)
Format: In-person and Online (in three half-day sessions)
Workshop Goals
The first goal of this workshop is to provide participants with a grounding in some key transferrable competencies for their PhD research and beyond. The over-riding principle is awareness-raising: to develop a conceptual framework to understand and deal with some of the common challenges that arise during one’s PhD, and to acquire a set of practical tools and methods that are immediately applicable in the participants’ working environment. The second goal is to help build this year’s cohort by establishing a cohesive group identity among the participants, as a basis for Peer Mentoring and collaborative learning during their PhD.
Workshop Content
- Cohort Building. A key goal of this workshop is to form group identity and cohesion for productive collaboration during the participants’ PhD and beyond. We will run presentation exercises and group tasks to encourage participants to interact and get to know each other.
- Core communication skills. We will explore some essential aspects that are common to many science communication channels, including thinking about the audience, defining the core message, and justifying our research. This module will also touch on aspects of interpersonal communication, working with my supervisor, and giving and receiving feedback.
- Time management. How do you plan your day so you work effectively? How do you prioritise your tasks so you get the important things done first? Participants will learn simple tools that will help them be more efficient.
- Project and task management. Setting realistic goals requires practice. Participants will be introduced to a framework that simplifies project and task management, and will discover digital helpers to manage themselves and collaborate better.
Workshop Style
This is an interactive workshop with extensive elements of partner work, exercises, group discussion. We use innovative training methods and proven didactic techniques, and place special emphasis on sharing and learning from the participants’ own expertise and experience. To increase impact and applicability, we work with real-life cases from the participants whenever possible. We may ask participants to reserve time for individual preparatory work before the workshop
Our Trainers
All our trainers are scientists with many years of experience as researchers and scientific communicators. Please refer to our teams page to have a more detailed look at the trainers.
Comments from Past Participants and Organisers
All the dynamics and the tips were fantastic, every exercise was different. I loved that they only used flipcharts and not a power point. Also that they added a topic that was not in the agenda to fulfill all our expectations.
Enriching and applicable both to my PhD and to my life.
The way they explained the methodologies for time management and daily planning stuck with me in a way that previous similar courses, books, nor blog posts had ever achieved.