If you have a good idea for a PhD thesis in Engineering - one that will make a substantially original contribution, you may proactively contact any university and any industry employer and arrange a joint partnership. There need not be a very large amount of administration work involved for either party if you do all the ground work. The key is to target the employer and university that has the strongest interest in your sub-field. In most cases, there is nothing to stop any industry/university combination from jointly supporting your project e.g. CalTech and Boeing OR MIT and McDonnell Douglas. You need to argue the benefits involved to both parties. These sorts of collaborations are popular and common. If you have good skills and the knowledge is useful for both parties, you might find yourself with a full tuition fee waiver from the university and paid employment (including an expense account, travel grant, study leave etc, ) paid for by the employer who is your source of data collection. Like killing two birds with one stone - a real job that builds a PhD at the same time. On the other hand, yes there are existing partnerships where universities and industry employers have traditionally paired up and joint venture program PhD programs have long existed which you can slide into. I believe CalTech and NASA is an example. You can find out which programs exist using Google searches and by asking around. There are also professional doctorate programs which might have equivalent standing to the PhD if the thesis makes a substantially original contribution. The DEng of EngD is popular in Australia and some other countries. My personal opinion is that these types of programs are excellent. A good PhD should leave the door open for working in a number of fields: NGO, government, industry, academia and personal consulting (your own business). PhD that are overly theoretical and almost purely academic do not open as many doors. I wish you well. Jay

Hi Simonetta

I will help you out where I can and we can make some exchange later with the proof reading of one of my papers. I must admit that I know little about Audio Visual studies or Italy's PhD programs, so I am possibly not the best person. I hold D.Soc.Sc from Sydney University in Sociology.

Please PVT message me if you wish.

Jay

Hi everyone

My current research topic focus is the Dissertation Boot Camp.

If anyone has any experiences they want to share about the DBC, any comment from a sentence or more, I am happy to hear anything.

As always, I am happy to help anyone in return such as email you a journal article or answering your survey. I have personal subscription access to 99.9% of all journal articles, so happy to help you once with one if I can.

All the best

Jay

I went to that link and it says no longer accepting a response.
Well done if you have extracted your representative sample! Jay

All the best. Every resource I list in all presentations are open-access (free).

Hi AgaK

Experiences such as yours is what motivated me to complete 20 presentations on YouTube that aim to offer people in your shoes a big picture road map to help them understand what the PHD thesis is about. It has a social sciences focus, but is mostly relevant for qualitative research in other fields as such as health sciences. These presentation are far from perfect, but I think they fill a gap.

My experiences with the doctoral thesis motivated me to make this very small contribution to the field of doctoral studies. Many candidates have excellent supervisors that offer a proactive, supportive, purposefully structured approach to PhD supervision - you are lucky if you get this.

Too often the PhD process works like this. Meeting 1: supervisor says "go away and look at what other PhD theses have done and write your literature review". For each chapter you submit (e.g. methods) there is no proactive purposeful coaching only a cosmetic reactive band-aid approach that highlights some things you need to change, based on what they saw in that chapter. If they are busy that month, the feedback may be minor. Cycle repeats each month for 4 years. Few academics have formally studied adult education.

This band-aid style reactive advice given by most supervisors is usually accurate, but it may mean that it takes a candidate two years of thesis writing before they see the big picture of what is needed to write a PhD. Meanwhile the clock is ticking.

Postgrad seminars may be hit-and-miss. Usually a nominated student presents their progress, which might be semester 1 year 1 or final semester prior to submission. The advice offered relates mostly to that student. It might take a couple of years of attending these sessions to work out what is required for your thesis.

I don't mean to be negative. Joining this forum early is a good sign that you are being proactive and really want to do well - and you will.

This forum is a very good place to learn.
Jay

These links do not seem to work now and I tried them a few times before posting the entry and also a few seconds after it posted.

If you try Google Scholar and type "content analysis krippendorf 2004" the link to the full book definitely still works.

I usually advise people to access goodies like this while they are still open access, and they have been known to be removed shortly after.

Krippendorf 2004 is one of the best content analysis books out there. The other one I really like is

Neuendorf, K. A. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Sage.

http://academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/SkalskiVitae/SkalskiNeuendorfCajigas17.pdf

Hi Folks

I just discovered by chance that this most awesome 422 page book is now available free-of-charge (open-access) online. There is probably a third edition out now, but I doubt that it changes much from this edition, which is very comprehensive. Those doing content analysis in your doctoral thesis, you might find that you need to use very comprehensive specialist content analysis handbooks such as these.

If you said in your thesis "I use content analysis" to scrutinise data, I think your examiner would frown. My personal opinion is that you need to say e.g. "I use content analysis methods such as narrative analysis, policy analysis and critical discourse analysis to ....". This handbook has very specific discussions about content analysis for film, media, classical literature etc.

Enjoy
Jay

Krippendorf, K (2004), Content Analysis: an Introduction to its Methodology (Second Edition),
Thousand Oaks, California USA.

http://www.academia.edu/download/35270347/Content_Analysis_-an_introduction.pdf

Hi Satchi

If you send me your email address via PVT message, I can help.

Jay

Hi Eska smiling Snoopy,

I think Snoopy has the idea. Take a holiday in the sunshine and reward yoruself. Many PhD students are very hard working as a minimum, some may be work a holics. I suggest that you take some time away to celebrate your mammoth achievement.

Jay

Hi Folks

Few would argue that choosing the right dissertation research question is among the most important parts of your candidature.

This presentation summarises 10 factors I think are the most important issues to consider in this process. Those of you are still in your first year still may have time to fine-tune your research question is you think you are going nowhere fast or have come to a dead-end.

If anyone thinks of one or more important issues you think have been overlooked it would be great to hear back.

Jay


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrSGLiHh1ms

The single font suggestion is nothing more than a personal preference. I think that having two or more fonts distracts the reader. Over the years, I have come to favour simplicity as I think this makes it easier for the reader to focus on a single message - the thesis argument. I look forward to seeing your thesis if you use two or more fonts - as I love to see creative flair! I hope this link helps below. I am only trying to make the point to be sure as a minimum to follow university regulations. For issues such as fonts and font sizes the examiner rarely knows what the actual guidelines are. If you breach them, you will most likely be asked to correct them by the Faculty Manager or librarian after you have passed your doc exam and submit your final manuscript for archiving.

Most universities have an official guideline such as:

https://research.unsw.edu.au/document/thesis_format_guide.pdf

Fonts are discussed in this example. This example mandates minimum font sizes but leaves choices of font/s open.

I wish you well. Jay

I concur with the answers provided above - check with the university. I know that Sydney University has only four mandatory guidelines for the PhD thesis format (seriously):

1. It must be in Arial or Times New Roman only
2. It dictates minimum margins for the left, right, top and bottom of the page.
3. Font in the body of discussion must always be 12 point
4. 1.5 or double line spacing in the body of discussion

I am sure your student union can advise, or your postgraduate coordinator to diredt you to any policy document. A Google search is useful, but you might locate an out-of-date document.

Apart from that, I suggest using one font only in the thesis.

It is not a pass or fail issue. If this is the only thing your examiners didn't like about your thesis, they would suggest minor amendments.

Your are nearly there - well done, keep going.

Jay

If your Master degree is solely or mostly by research (say the thesis weight is 2/3rds or higher) there might be a chance that you can transition into the PhD mid way into your Masters research based on achieving very good progress with your master degree research thesis. This is not uncommon with those doing a 'pure' MPhil degree. I agree with TreeofLife. If you have a good Master degree, this is a good platform to use to apply to do your PhD. I sure did get in this way. Be sure to do as well as you can, especially with the research methods subjects and especially the dissertation component. I am reluctant to draw on an isolated experience as an anecdotal story, but here goes. I am aware of an honours student who got a 2:2 (it was in 2004) and was allowed to to enter the PhD at a good university. I know no more than that (she is now an associate Professor). Perhaps she had good publications already or something. The general rule is that if you have a 2:1 (2A) then it is much more difficult to get into a PhD and it is almost impossibly to get a scholarship based just on holding the 2/1. Never give up on the PhD. There are alternate routes, that might take you one a side-step journey. I definitely know a tenured academic who got a Bachelor 2/2, used that to enter and earn a Master Honours dissertation degree and then used the Masters Honours to get into her PhD and passed. Work very hard in your Masters. Jay

This link shows an example of a good scholarship application.

www.postgraduateforum.com/thread-47626/

I think that this is the minimum amount of effort required to be short-listed.

Please focus on the formatting as the content is for illustration purposes.

I think that a YouTube presentation is important to add, or some sort of digital presentation that gives your audience a feel for you the person.

All the best to you all.

Jay