Workshop dates
Weds 9 Feb (14:30 – 16:00) and Thurs 24 Feb (14:30 – 16:00) and Thurs 3 Mar (09:30 – 11:00). All three workshops will be online.
The Academic Skills and Development team are looking for PGR volunteers who would be willing to facilitate a peer to peer discussion based on questions/issues that the final year undergraduate and masters level students raise and a willingness to share their own experiences and expertise of having written up a dissertation/final year project. We would like representation from all three faculties – FHMS, FEPS and FASS. Volunteers can be available for one, two or all three sessions, whichever suits you best.
Please contact Jen McLay if you would like to help: j.mclay@surrey.ac.uk
Workshop Format: We are taking a blended approach to the workshop. The students will have access to a series of online teaching resources which will cover various aspects of writing a dissertation/final year project. They are expected to engage with this material prior to the workshop. This is followed up with either an in-person workshop at our training rooms in the library or a live zoom session on the workshop dates shown above.
The session will be a discussion/Q&A forum. The plan is to group students by discipline/faculty (where possible) and allocate them to a breakout room (online) or group (in-person) with a PhD student of the same discipline/faculty (or as close as possible). Each participant will be expected to contribute questions that they want to discuss in the breakout room/group.
The idea is to have a peer-to-peer discussion with a PGR facilitating and sharing their expertise to the issues raised by the students in their breakout room/group. This will last about 20 minutes. Then we will bring everyone back to the main meeting and ask each group to highlight any key issues, share advice and ask any questions to the whole group for advice that they were not able to receive during their own group discussions for the remainder of the session.
Several staff members from Academic skills and development team, including myself will be running these sessions. We anticipate participants coming from all three faculties. For the in-person workshops, our training room has a maximum capacity of 30 people due to covid restrictions, therefore we are likely to have up to 20-21 students maximum. Online, there is no limit, but we anticipate around 25 – 30 students.
