hey there,
in general, i like your idea. some points to think about:
- some PhD students suffer from bullying. Others suffer from other things. Do you want to address "just" bullying?
- I assume most institutions of higher education have rules and regulations and offices set up for such cases. The problem lies less in the lack of regulations, than in the enforceability. To enhance the enforceability, I think, you'd have to change fundamental things such as "the culture of academia". I have my doubts that fighting for more rules would make a difference in the long run.
- There is a problem, applicable to most social movements: that people who are being bullied usually do not have time and energy to really fight back in an organised way. People who aren't being bullied, unfortunately don't feel compelled to make a stand out of solidarity for their less fortunate peers. Who then should carry the movement?

i don't know the technical specs, but i am less interested in interactions, so i am using an existing discussion board within an online community. it is very topic specific, a bit like this one here (postgradforum), but on a different topic obviously (no, i am NOT doing participant observation here . it is technologically a bit more advanced, gives more options.
sorry, can't help more.

yes, i know what you mean about conferences and stuff. my sup DOES react fast and good when i need a reference or similar, but on the content side she doesn't help so i have kind of stopped asking.

maybe letting your supervisor know that "you are currently experiencing insecurities and need some guidance", or "you are struggling to get that conference abstract done and need help" would work. give your supervisor a clearcut, simple, small-step thing to do, instead of just asking for "supervision" which is long-term, far-away-deadline, and fuzzy. they are just human, after all, and most will appreciate easy things on their to-do list which they can get done and cross off quickly...

hey corinne, that's too bad! i have been making a similar experience, i absolutely love my supervisor (as a person, as an academic) but she is just rubbish at supervising. i find that when i send her e-mails i either get a reply in 30 minutes, or not at all (more often the latter). she never reads my stuff, just browses through it really, so she never has any comments to make apart from very general chatting. her other students say similar things. sometimes i get really upset about it, and, like you, want her to SUPERVISE me for god's sake, it's not that hard and it's part of her job. then at other times i think, oh well, it's not that cool but i can deal with it... and when i write something that is really good, i will MAKE her read it and she will be all surprised and impressed!
i know, this doesn't help you in a pragmatic sense, but maybe it's good to know that others are in the same situation?

well i don't know what they cover and what they don't, but i always found them useful, and i'm not on a student visa either. they do also say that if you have a question which isn't covered on their homepage, you can call them, so that might be an option for you. they are very helpful on the phone, too. even if they can just point you into the right direction for more info...

hey sue000,
i am using existing online discussion boards for part of my data collection. things you need to consider include anonymity (or not), the ease of exporting the data to your analysis programme, or, to print it out, without it just looking like text salad, and the ease of saving/logging the inputs.
since you are starting a new discussion board, are you intending to use it as a sort of online focus group interview? if yes, perhaps you should consider a chat tool instead, where dialogue comes more naturally. if not, you might want to consider using an existing discussion with an established community of contributers, instead of building your own which can be very hard.

check out http://www.ukcosa.org.uk/
you will find tons of relevant information there.
good luck!

if, however, there are other PhD students teaching, you could get together and get organised. you could argue something like "the department wants to offer its PhD students the opportunity to gain teaching experience. if however the pay is very low, this opportunity is only really available to students who are funded already and teach as a "hobby". students who work to earn their living cannot teach unless they can then reduce their other workload, or they will be unsuccessful in their PhD. so, to create equal chances for all students, the pay should be raised"
I think it is important that you get together with other PhD students for this!
You could also argue that the quality of your teaching is bound not to improve by being rewarded such a low pay. So if the department is interested in raising its teaching quality it should start by paying its teachers better!

hey M, my high pay is a result of PhD students a couple of years ago protesting against the low wages. i don't know what exactly they did but they got together and argued for better conditions.
i think if you are the only one in your situation, it is all up to you and your bargaining. you could argue "whereas the department wants to get the teaching I offer without too many costs, it also has an interest in me, being a PhD student, finishing my PhD quickly. now if I teach and still have to work a lot on other things in order to finance my studies, I will not be able to focus on my PhD at all, and the department will have to bear the consequences of being downgraded for its low PhD students success. Therefore, I argue, teaching pay should be at least enough so that I can reduce some of my other work in order to still be able to get on with my PhD."

i was a ninetofiver (or rather, 11 to 7) for some time. but somehow the workload i am faced with now doesn't let me stick to that anymore. teaching takes up most of my sundays (prep) and mondays (classes and office hours), and marking takes up whole weeks of 9-5 work. so if i want to get any serious work done on my PhD, i have no choice but to move into the evenings and weekends.
that said, this is more of a result of combining work and full time study than of the workload of the PhD itself. i agree with everyone else that 5 days a week of 9-5 should be fine. i don't quite see where you want to fit those 12 weeks of holidays in however, o.stoll. unless you count going to conferences as holidays?

my desk neighbour teaches in a different department and she gets £32/hour for the class hours and nothing else, although she marks assessed exercises every week.

so what i am saying is, usually your department decides how it is going to be. if you want to change that you will have to get some other teachers together and go on strike or something. work out a new "standard" deal with your department. problem is, there are usually plenty of PhD students who WILL teach for that low pay so why should they pay more?

hi,
at my uni the payment for class teaching is organised differently at every department. some departments pay just the actual contact hour, others pay for preparation and marking of formative work as well. some pay around £40 per hour, others around £16 per hour (inculding holiday pay). it really depends and there is no standard apart from the standard the department sets.
i am quite lucky in that i am paid £38 per hour for the actual class hour, plus £16 per hour for the office hour, plus £16 per hour for 1-2 hours of preparation/marking per week. obviously preparation and marking takes LOTS longer than that (especially marking) but some of that extra work is compensated by the high pay for the class hour.

oh dear - imagine these people, out of curiosity they google themselves and up comes this

if that would happen to me i'd probably register as a user with a unrelated name and start spying on those people who nominated me only of course it would never happen to me as i'm just to typically geeky, i guess.

well for starters, it would be ideal if it were available for 'overseas' students, as we make up a great deal of the postgrad student body.

i am frankly shocked at the discriminatory treatment of banks towards "foreign" students. although i have british citizenship and am a fulltime PhD student i do not qualify for a student account, although they all claim that these accounts are for people like me. solely due to me not having lived in this country recently (i have lived here for more than a year now and still don't qualify). i suspect this is actually against EU law, or then the brits once again managed to get some preferential exclusive treatment from the EU laws.

"or is Shani in reality a supervisor?"
LOL you made me laugh! What made you think that? Or are you being ironic, erm, were you thinking "who would be the the least likely to be a 'secret' supervisor, due to being overly dumb?"...
I can assure you that I am a very normal, unfunded, struggling second year PhD student. Well... some of my friends and me, we do discuss our work together a lot. Sometimes it feels like they are my real supervisors and I am their's, as we sometimes give each other more advice and time than we get from our sups.
But your question is valid. Are there any supervisors lurking on here? Now is the time for your coming-out!