Study Groups: Postgraduate Group Reflection

As study groups have now been running for a few months, it seems about time to report on how things are going. After some discussion, Amber and I have decided to do blog posts with the same headings but focused on how our individual groups are working so that we can see the different experiences. My group is generally a postgraduate group, with masters and PhD students, while Amber’s is primarily undergraduates. Hopefully by writing about the two groups, we’ll be able to think in more depth about how the study groups work and what we can build on as they continue. So, here is a reflection about my group, looking at a typical session, the group aims, highlights and downsides, and moving forward.

A typical study group session

My study group is usually on a Thursday afternoon and begins with small talk as people begin to arrive. Quite often this is a chance for attendees to raise if they’ve had an issues in the week that they’re struggling or talk about what they’ve been working on. This is a general discussion where anyone can dive in to talk and I do little to control it, merely supplying a few questions to give direction if it seems necessary or even talking about my own week.

Once most people seem to have arrived, I move the discussion on to goal setting. In this, the conversation is much more structured as I move between each group member in turn to ask how they are doing and what they are working on today. The tasks can vary widely – we’ve had some people who have been dealing with the “housekeeping” side of postgrad life, such as answering emails and setting up meetings with supervisors, while others may be reading up for literature reviews or drafting up a chapter. If the attendee just seems to need some encouragement, I’ll cheer them on and then talk to the next person, but if they need more than we may, as a group, dive into their question. For example, there was one week where an attendee was struggling with an essay introduction. Various members of the group contributed to the discussion and agreed that we would look at the attendees draft together once it was written.

We then move into a series of study bursts and brief check-ins. From my experience so far, most of the attendees seem to get into a flow and so need minimal discussion in the check-ins. On the days that someone does raise something, this may involve them sharing work (as with the introduction example above) or asking for advice/input from the group. This has led to many good exchanges of information and resources between group members and seems to be helping everyone move forward in their research.

Following a series of study bursts and reaching towards the end of our time, I will give the group the option of one last study burst or time to socialise. They usually choose one last study burst but we have, at various points, relaxed as aims have been met and spent our time discussing research plans and more fun topics to blow off steam. We then round things off and the study session ends.

Aims

Goal setting is obviously a big part of the way the study group works but the weekly goals are generally all fragments of wider projects. As the attendees in my study group are primarily postgraduate students, they have less short-term assignments and therefore are more focused on their wider research. The group aims, at this stage at least, seems to therefore be the following:

1. Motivation.

At least half of the regular attendees are research-based students and therefore have minimal contact time elsewhere. Study group seems to give them motivation as it is time carved out of a busy schedule, with accountability built in to the structure. Evidence of this was clear this week when one attendee admitted she’d not managed to do any work today and so was relying on her study group time to get the work done ready for submission. The focused time gave her the motivation to get the work done.

2. Support.

Many of the attendees seem to use the study group discussion times as spaces to raise ideas or concerns about their research that they have not yet felt able to do with their lecturers or supervisors. They therefore get support and advice from other group members to help them move forward and, at times, reach out for help in other spaces.

3. Discussing methodologies.

Because there are some many attendees at the start of a bigger research project, along with the variety of subjects covered by members of the group, we’ve had lots of discussion about methodology. There has been a lot of comparing methodologies across disciplines, leading some of those still determining their topics to consider applying a methodology commonly utilised in another discipline to their subject.

4. Finding where they and their research fits.

The group is made up mostly of masters students and PhDs at the early stages of their dissertation, meaning that much of the current aims have related to defining and deciding on the specific subject their research will cover. Typically, this has meant at least 50% of attendees each week have been focused on either reading around their subject or drafting a literature review. Discussions around areas of research therefore come into this which, alongside the methodology discussions, seems to be inspiring attendees to look at their own subject in a new way. But, more importantly, we’re seeing group members grow in confidence about their subject and their research building each week.

Highlights and Downsides

My favourite parts of study group are always going to be the moments where I get to step back and the group supports itself. Recently, there was an attendee who asked for advice on how to access a text that the uni didn’t have in the library. Several group attendees dove in to offer different suggestions, from accessing networks through social media to putting a request in at the library. It was a great moment of the group coming together to support another member.

Another series of moments I’ve really enjoyed have been the methodology discussions. Because group members come from very different disciplines, there is clearly a lot of curiosity about how the other side does things. This has resulted in many conversations where say, for example, a student from the sciences has asked someone from the humanities to explain a method not commonly used in their field and then pondering how this could be applied to their subject. From a research standpoint, this growing interdisciplinary perspective can be a useful way forward and it’s been great hearing the suggestions of how to use different methods from each discipline.

I honestly don’t experience too many downsides with the study group. It can sometimes be difficult to juggle the needs of different group members, particularly when it comes to timing bursts and managing discussions, but the payoff of seeing everyone get motivated is worth it. The hardest thing, from my perspective, is when someone raises something that I know can’t really be covered in the timings of the study group. For example, I have an attendee who is struggling to narrow their research topic into something manageable for the time and word count they need to fit it within. We have bounced ideas around in the group and I have shared resources with them through email to try and help, but it’s really something that needs one-to-one support (I have encouraged them to make an appointment). It can be difficult to navigate supporting this student while also ensuring there is time for the others to either voice their own needs or study. This student is, however, making progress and hopefully will make a one-to-one appointment soon.

Progression

In our usual one-to-one sessions, we get snapshots of what out writers are working on but very rarely get the full story. We don’t know if the resources we’ve shared or tips we’ve discussed have helped. In study group, we see many of the same faces week after week and so really get a sense of how their work is going. For my group, I imagine that moving forward will be the same slow build that comes with a longer-term research project. The flow at the moment is reasonably consistent as most of the attendees are at similar stages in their research. It will be interesting to see how this changes as those doing a masters move more quickly through the stages of research.

I’m looking forward to seeing Amber’s blog to compare the two groups and see what commonalities exist!