Writing the introduction and background of a research article can be daunting. Where do you start? What information should you include?

A great place to start is creating an argument structure for why your research topic is relevant and important. This structure should clearly walk the reader through current, relevant literature and lead them to the gap in the literature that your topic fills. To do this I use the following 4-step argument creation structure.

1. Create argument funnel questions/statements
2. Harvest article quotes that explain/backup each of the argument funnel questions/statements
3. Organize article quotes to best support each section of the argument funnel
4. Write prose that utilizes the article quotes to progress your argument from most well known to your specific topic

1. Argument Funnel Creation

Create an argument funnel with statements that take the reader form the most well known and widely accepted knowledge connected to my topic down to your specific research topic.

Completed Argument Funnel Example

When creating your funnel statements think about what research exists related to your topic. Where are the gaps in the existing literature? How do you know those are the gaps? If you get stuck, think about the 50,000 ft view of your topic and how you would explain the necessity of your research to people not in your field.

2. Harvesting Article Quotes

Find research articles that pertain to each of your funnel statements to back them up with evidence. As you find the articles put them into a citation manager (e.g., Zotero) now to save yourself time later. While reading the articles, pull (copy and paste) article quotes/excerpts that MAY be relevant. Pull more than you think you need, especially duplicates of the same idea by different authors to strengthen your argument. Store your quotes/excerpts in a document organized by your funnel statements with in-text citations with the page number you pulled it from. The National Academy of Engineering reports can be valuable top of funnel resources.

3. Organizing Article Quotes

Once you have harvested many article quotes for each of your funnel statements, organized them in an order that walks your reader through the literature landscape in a logical way. As you do this assume the reader doesn’t know anything about your topic so start at the beginning. Chronological order is a good place to start but may not always fit your argument. Think about your quotes/excerpts as puzzle pieces, where do they logically fit together?

4. Writing Prose

Now that your article quotes are organized, summarize the quotes in your own voice with appropriate citations. This is the time to begin including transition/connecting words and phrases between summarized quotes to bring your reader through your argument. Don’t forget to include “so what?” sentences and phrases after summarized quotes. In other words don’t only report what other authors said or found, tell the reader why that is important to your argument.

I have been fortunate to travel across the U.S. for academic conferences and workshops as a graduate student and as an engineering education consultant. From my experiences, I’ve learned a few things about preparing for travel, being present and engaged in the content presented, and completing reimbursement paperwork. I’ve compiled the following tips for academic travel from my personal experiences that may be useful to you. 

• Know the booking procedures well in advance. Whether you are paying for your travel out of pocket or being supported by your institution, there are travel and lodging booking procedures that must be followed. These procedures can be dictated by your institution and/or the organization hosting the event. I recommend looking up these procedures four to five months in advance and creating a to do list around the booking processes.
• Be intentional about your personal objectives. When preparing to go to a conference or workshop, I recommend taking some time to think about your personal objectives. Are you going to the event to learn about new techniques and innovations in your field? To gather feedback on your work? To network with other graduate students or professionals with similar interests? To find your next collaboration? To find your next employer? Whatever your objectives may be, consider how you will meet each of them while at the event.
• Take notes on the back of business cards you receive. You will most likely be interacting with many people at the event and the conversations you have may melt together when you try to recall them after the event. When someone gives you their business card during a conversation, I recommend you write brief notes about your conversation on the back of the card to help jog your memory when you get home. If you don’t have a business card, take notes in a notebook, laptop, or even on your phone.
• Take breaks when needed. Academic conferences and workshops can be overwhelming at times. I recommend taking 15 – 30 minute breaks when you need them during the event. While you may be tempted to go to every session that catches your eye, breaks and rest are important to keep you present and able to engage in meaningful ways.
• Provide as much documentation as you can for reimbursements. If your institution is supporting your travel on a reimbursement basis, I recommend providing as much documentation as you can when filing for your reimbursement. Providing a clear history of your spending can only help in the reimbursement process. For example, it is good practice to collect and submit itemized receipts for all purchases along with any reimbursement forms required by your institution. 

Throughout the dissertation research process there are many decisions you must make. What is your topic of choice? Which methods will you use to answer your research questions? How much data do you need? But how do we make these decisions? I try to follow the three-step method below for making research-related decisions.

1. Consult the relevant literature. Find examples of what other researchers have done within your field around your topic of choice. Often you can easily find helpful information on your topic within the literature that can inform your decision making. Sometimes you cannot and that is okay.
2. Discuss potential options with trusted mentors and peers. Take advantage of the wealth of knowledge your advisor, dissertation committee, and even your peers have within your field. Your mentors have completed the dissertation process themselves in addition to the research they are currently performing. Their experience and expertise can help guide you toward an informed decision.
3. Trust your gut. At the end of the day this is your research, and you will need to make final decisions. Sometimes, whether you think you are ready or not, you will need to make research decisions to keep making progress toward graduation. Use all the help from literature and trusted mentors or peers and make the decision that feels right to you. Just don’t forget to document the ‘why’ behind your decision.

Give this research decision making method a try!

In November 2021 I applied for a full-time position outside of the university that I thought would be a good fit for me even though I was still in the early stages of completing my dissertation research. My thought was, “at the very least it would be good to update my resume and get some interviewing practice in.” I received an offer with the stipulation of a January 2022 start. I began weighing the pros and cons of taking the offer while working towards completing my degree. I discussed the following pros and cons list with my mentors, peers, and family, all of which were very supportive of whatever decision I would make.

Pros:

• No more worries about funding (my GRA position was set to end a semester before I was planning on graduating)
• Stress of a job search taken away (I watched my peers stress over finding a job while finishing up their dissertations and defenses)
• A full-time salary (speaks for itself)
• A job that I thought I would really enjoy

Cons:

• Jump from 20 to 40 hours/week of work on top of completing a dissertation (am I capable of doing this? Will my mental health suffer?)
• Slower dissertation progress (in my 9th year of higher education in a row do I really want to prolong this experience?)

In the end I chose to make the leap, accepted the offer and am so happy that I did (now three months later). While my dissertation progress is slower, there is no longer the internalized pressure to finish quickly in order to get to the next stage of my life. If you are a current graduate student considering taking a full-time position on top of school or you are a full-time employee considering tackling a graduate degree on top of your current responsibilities, I highly recommend creating a pros and cons list and talking through it with trusted mentors, peers, and family before making such a big decision. However, the choice is ultimately yours. What do you want for yourself and is this an opportunity for you to get a step closer to achieving it?

From the desk of Meagan Ita, PhD

ita.4@osu.edu

For the farthest back that I can remember during my adult life I have identified myself as an “academic”. Yet, during the mid- to late- years of my PhD (which took nearly 7 years) I experienced dramatic ups and down and a strong degree of cynicism about the academic system that had me rejecting any future career in academia more times than I can count (alas, I think this normal toward the end of a PhD…). Yet here I am almost one year into a postdoc role with many thanks to great mentors that encouraged me to stay open-minded about experiences in academia: there is life beyond the at-times soul-draining experience of a PhD and not all institutions, departments, mentor-mentee relationships, nor cultures are the same. Indeed, my postdoc role now is atypical (more on that later) and my experience as a postdoc in a Department of Engineering Education has been completely new compared to my experience as a PhD student in a Department of Bioengineering. Below I reflect on some of the biggest factors in my academic transition, some of which I have welcomed and others I have resisted.

PhD: working individually on one well defined project

Postdoc: working on many multi-person projects that range from well-defined to vague

During the last few months of my PhD in the latter half of 2020, I would literally sometimes go multiple days without speaking to anyone from work. I had experimental plans scheduled down to the minute (I was doing cell culture and wet lab work) and almost welcomed the COVID restrictions that meant I could work alone with laser focus and no distractions. Although I worked on many diverse projects across multiple collaborations and worked as a teaching assistant throughout my PhD, that last year was solely focused on my thesis work and I more or less completed everything on my own. This made a work week that consists of multiple Zoom meetings a day across a variety of projects with several different project leaders … an adjustment. Although my Outlook calendar induced some sense of claustrophobia, working with so many diverse individuals across diverse projects has been exciting; I have noticed opportunities for collaboration across teams and met so many individuals throughout the college, university, and outside of our institution. Energy management (in parallel with time management) is also critical to finding chunks of time to do independent deep work. On the claustrophobic-Outlook days I stick to the low-energy tasks and save the high-energy tasks for the less claustrophobic days.

PhD: being THE expert on my thesis topic

Postdoc: feeling incompetent at everything

A mentor of mine once referred to this feeling of expertise to incompetence as “postdoc-it is”, and I am still experiencing this. I recall a colleague calling me the “KEEN expert” a few months into my postdoc role and I burst out laughing: “How could I possibly be an expert at something after months?! It took years for me to be an expert on my thesis work!” While I still do not proclaim to be a KEEN expert, I do think my idea of what it takes to do a job well and competently had been somewhat mis-calibrated during the PhD. One of the most important skills I learned through my PhD training is how to teach myself anything. Coming out of the PhD, I was (and still am) confident that I know how to learn and how to access resources when I do sense that feeling of incompetence trickling in. Through practicing this, I am continuing to become better acquainted with the field of Engineering Education and my narrower postdoc work within the field. The switch in fields from Bioengineering to Engineering Education has been a huge adjustment. The approach to study design, the experimental methods, how you write papers, the theoretical frameworks are all so different, and I could go on. However challenging, working in two different fields has been inspirational in all the ways multidisciplinary work leads to creative innovation. For example, I see opportunities for pain researchers to benefit from mixed methods approaches (measuring pain can be quantitative and self-reported/ qualitative), and ways that network neuroscience methods could be integrated into studies about how engineering students connect concepts.

PhD: having complete ownership of my work

Postdoc: sharing ownership and supporting others in their work

My postdoc role is unique. It is funded through a private foundation (Kern Family Foundation) and does not have the same publication expectations as more traditional (usually government-funded) postdoc roles. Much of my time is spent supporting others on their independent initiatives; for example, I support faculty in curriculum development. In this case, the faculty member concludes their work with a deliverable, whereas I come out of it without a hard deliverable. Initially, this type of “supporting role” resulted in me feeling like I spent a lot of time and energy on something with nothing to show for it. Over time, my supervisor has helped me realize that that is not the case; supporting others in their work (much like an advisor would their trainees) is in and of itself meaningful work. I am recognizing that this is also a form of leadership. Now, I can look at the others’ work I supported and say, “I helped X faculty members create curricula that reached Y students”.

PhD: having a job description defined predominantly by my adviser

Postdoc: having a job description defined largely by me

Although I have a few very specific responsibilities for my role it is also my responsibility to identify what I want to get out of the postdoc and set goals accordingly. I found this uncomfortable at first because it differed so much from how I operated during my PhD. Moreover, at the beginning of my postdoc position I was, frankly, SO burnt out. I started my postdoc role days after my thesis defense (I do NOT advise doing this) remotely and during a COVID spike, with outstanding papers and thesis edits still on my “to-do” list. I found it very difficult to manage this “academic spillover”, find motivation to set my own aspirational goals for this position and, more broadly, my career, all the while onboarding to a new role and meeting expectations. Talking to other postdocs helped me realize that this is normal. One seminar I attended referred to a postdoc role as ½ postdoc responsibilities, ¼ “academic spillover”, and ¼ professional development for your next career step. Over the last few months, I have gotten much better at managing my time to accommodate all three of these work buckets and maximize my efficiency doing so. I also do not feel as guilty spending time on the ½ that is not the explicit “postdoc responsibilities”. Talking to other postdocs in the department and meeting weekly has helped tremendously with accountability to put energy toward those very important, not urgent items like professional development, too. Acknowledging and embracing the freedom in partially defining my own position has also led me to pursue projects and engage with teams in ways that support my professional goals.

Overall, the last year in my postdoc role has been a tremendous learning experience. The switch in field has revealed where my perspective is narrow and challenged me to consider new ways to teach and conduct research. Being in the “driver’s seat” is intimidating at first but I am embracing the control as I steer toward my next professional career move.

My master’s thesis research turned Editor’s Choice article in the Journal of Civil Engineering Education has recently been featured in College of Engineering news. Check it out here!

As a long-distance graduate student, it was difficult to find a space in my home that felt like the “workplace”. For me, going to workplace environments, like the graduate student offices on campus, increases my motivation and productivity but moving to Akron has limited my ability to go to campus. As the vaccination rates have increased and as public places and business are opening back up, I have begun a quest of finding my new “workplace” in Akron. I have explored the following places and given them ratings for workplace likeness, comfort, and cost.

The public library has the highest rating in each category and is my favorite new “workplace”. It has a variety of seating options (couches, tables, outdoor area), is quiet, free, and has great Wi-Fi but the hours it is open is not consistent throughout the week. I’ve tried both local and franchised coffee shops *wink wink* and the constant conversation and people coming in and out makes for an exciting but sometimes distracting “workplace”. In coffee shops I feel the need to buy something to justify using their space and Wi-Fi which is not necessarily sustainable as a graduate student. In my town, I have a large grocery store with seating and a mini food court that has free Wi-Fi. It is definitely more of a place to gather with friends or have a meal than a “workspace” but will work in a pinch. And finally, the public park is great for reading research articles that you’ve pre-downloaded or writing. Getting outside and soaking up the sun is a great option for a very small number of tasks a graduate student normally accomplishes in a “workplace” and as such has a very low rating.

I’ve found that none of the options I’ve explored work for every occasion. However, I would argue that having variety in the spaces you work can boost motivation and productivity. Some days I want quiet and comfort, others I want more social interaction and the din of others moving through their day. I have embraced the ability to choose where I work every day and will continue to explore new places in the hopes of finding my ultimate “workplace”.

People say that every PhD journey looks different. As a student who is used to working at a high level and pushing through obstacles, it was difficult to imagine that I would need to approach my dissertation work different than my peers who function in a very similar way. People say that a doctorate degree is a completely different educational experience than an undergraduate and even master’s degree. As a student that completed an engineering undergraduate and master’s degree in six years, I thought I had nailed down how to be a successful higher education student. I set time-based milestones in each of my previous degrees as a way to motivate my progress toward completing them. I thought I could use the same tactic for motivating progress toward my dissertation.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

Burnout is no joke. Attempting to complete three higher education degrees in succession without a break can cause some serious feelings of burnout. A worldwide pandemic is no joke. Living with a genetic lung disease that causes you to take quarantining extra seriously leads to some serious feelings of loss and lack of motivation. The combination of these two mentally heavy loads along with extremely high expectations of myself led to a much overdue breakdown and halt in my dissertation progress. When this happened, I had to have a serious look at how I was and was not functioning as a PhD student.

At that moment I turned to my advisor.

Together we worked to create a new system for how I motivate and make progress toward completing dissertation milestones. For me this looked like focusing more on the learning process and not as much on sticking to a timeline I had previously created. I had to change my mindset of meeting deadlines to leaning into my curiosity and passion for K-12 engineering education. This alleviated a lot of my daily stress and allowed me to begin making progress again. My biggest takeaways from this very hard lesson to learn are that completing a dissertation can require a change in mindset on how you get work done, be honest with yourself when things aren’t going well, and ask for help early and often.

One year ago my unique thesis topic was approved. I successfully convinced my advisor to allow me to create a transportation engineering education thesis as a part of my civil engineering master’s degree. Since then I have explored the existing literature on transportation engineering education, created research questions, designed a research study that was approved by my institution’s internal review board, conducted the study, and am now in the data analysis phase. This experience has allowed me to explore engineering education research that is focused in a specific discipline of engineering. From the literature I found that there is very little research done on graduate transportation engineering education and as such made it the focus of my thesis. The goal of my research is to uncover the skill sets that should be developed during a graduate transportation engineering education such that students are prepared for the transportation engineering field of the future. In order to accomplish this I have conducted interviews with transportation field experts, both in industry and academia, to uncover what skill sets are needed for the future.

Being able to conduct this research at the master’s level has been an amazing learning opportunity. Before starting this project I had participated in other research projects that were mostly in their ending stages and as such did not have a good understanding of the entire research process. I now have a deeper and more intimate understanding of the stages of research design that can help me as I pursue a doctorate degree in engineering education at the Ohio State University. As I move into the summer months I will be completing the data analysis and composing my final thesis document. I hope to be able to disseminate my research to both the transportation engineering and engineering education communities.

– Meg West

My journey began in August of 2017 with the inception of my graduate education career in the Civil Engineering Department at Ohio State University. Initially, all I wanted was a PhD in Engineering Education and my enrollment in the Civil Engineering Master’s program was a way to get credit hours while I waited for the acceptance of the PhD program at OSU. Just for a little background about me, I received my Bachelor’s in civil engineering but wasn’t excited about the jobs available, a.k.a. civil engineering was not my calling, but during my undergraduate career I thoroughly enjoyed experiences in engineering education research and being a teaching assistant.  As a graduate student, my disinclination toward civil engineering as a long-term career has not changed. However, after a couple of conversations with Engineering Education Department faculty and a little digging of my own I became interested in the possibility of doing a technical Transportation Engineering Master’s with an education focused thesis. You may ask, “what does that mean?” In short, most, if not all of the courses I take would be focused in transportation engineering topics while my thesis would focus on bettering the education of transportation engineering majors.

I began researching what others have done to better the transportation engineering education experience and found very few instances of research based in transportation engineering education. This gap leaves room for new research and gave me hope that I could create a thesis topic that would help to fill it. I went to my civil engineering advisor with multiple potential thesis topics centered in assessing the current climate and future needs of transportation engineering education. I was extremely nervous for that meeting. I worried that his response to my proposal would be something along the lines of “No, that’s crazy, you can’t do that here!” As it turns out he did not like any one of my specific thesis topic ideas but was interested in a mixture of my ideas with some of his own. After discussions between Civil Engineering Department and Engineering Education Department faculty members throughout this past semester I was approved to do an education focused thesis! I will be starting work on my thesis this summer and couldn’t be more excited to continue my journey in engineering education!

Meg West