1. Research Success and Structured Support: a new approach to developing early career academics in Higher Education
Dr Hilary Geber
Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development
University of the Witwatersrand,
Private Bag 3, WITS, 2050, South Africa
Tel: Fax:
Valuing Complexity: Celebrating Diverse Approaches to Teaching & Learning in Higher Education.
NUI Maynooth, August 27, 2009 – August 28, 2009

2. University of the Witwatersrand Strategic Goal - 2020 target
Increase the number of academic staff holding PhDs from the current 48% to 70%.
322 without PhDs to be qualified in the next 12 years
Publication rate – increase to 1.5 pa.
Increased support & management of research

3. ‘Structured support for Research Success’ Programme
Launched 2007
3 Professional coaches trained in
10 Academics selected according to criteria
substantial progress towards completion of higher degree, with completion within 18 months from the beginning of programme.
Initial survey
Participants paired with coaches

4. ‘Structured support for Research Success’ Programme
Hard Skills
Research Writing Skills
Voice & Presentation Skills
Effective Speed Reading
Time & Stress Management
IT tools: MindManager; Virtual training; Visual Thesaurus
How to write NRF funding proposals
Soft skills
Coaching (12 sessions offered)

5. Participants 3 obtained PhD before Research Support programme
1 registered for PhD during Research Support programme
4 Registered for MSc in Health Sciences
2 Dropouts

6. Purpose of the study Structured written surveys & in-depth interviews
Does a structured programme help early career academics achieve their research goals?
What aspects of the structured programme are most beneficial?

7. Hard Skills offered by programme
Research Writing Skills
All attended
Voice & Presentation Skills
Effective Speed Reading
5 attended
Time & Stress Management
7 attended
IT tools: Mindmanager; Virtual training; Visual Thesaurus
– 3 obtained these
How to write NRF funding proposals
1 attended

8. Findings
Differing expectations of the programme – career development; publications; and personal development
The effectiveness of goal setting within the programme
The effectiveness of the core courses offered by the programme
The effectiveness of coaching during the programme
The tangible outcomes of the programme

9. Career development expectations
‘To obtain skills in research writing and guidance in managing my time and tasks effectively. I also wanted to learn strategies to become an effective an independent researcher.’
‘I hoped that through the course I would be able to get a better understanding of how to do good research. I wanted to equip myself with the tools that I could use in my research. I specifically wanted to get a grasp of how to improve my writing skills.’

10. Expectations about establishing a publication record
Expected to write a number of papers, have some systematic follow-up on progress, and tracking of their own writing deadlines.
‘I was registered for an M.Sc, and having trouble getting going, not getting lot of feedback from my 2 supervisors. I was hoping the programme would help.’

11. Personal development expectations
to work on strengthening personal attributes which they felt they needed to develop for being more effective researchers.

12. Goal setting within the programme
‘Especially for someone like me who is just starting out in an academic career, it is too easy to get bogged down with teaching, with the result that research and writing papers tends to fall by the wayside if there aren’t structures in place to draw one’s attention and focus back to these areas periodically.’

13. Setting specific goals for the year
Career development
Publication
Personal development

14. The effectiveness of the core courses Research Writing
Participants fall into three groups –
those who experience an immediate transformation and who begin to write and produce writing prolifically;
others are enabled to get through the writing of articles and academic work in a more enjoyable way but do not become prolific writers;
others simply do not change enough to change their old habits or attitudes and do not become productive writers (Badenhorst, 2008).

15. Research Writing
The course revolutionised the way academics write, how they think about writing and how they view themselves as writers.
It provides many explicit explanations of what happens in the writing processs and techniques.
It empowers participants to take charge of their writing.
It deconstructs some of the mystery about writing.
This does not replace research methodology courses

16. The effectiveness of the core courses Voice & Presentation Skills
public speaking at conference
presentations and in classrooms
Foreign academics and second language English speakers find it quite difficult to make themselves understood

17. The effectiveness of the core courses Effective Speed Reading & Time & Stress Management
Helpful in dealing with reading load for research, literature reviews, reports.
Provided simple but effective ways to avoid time wasting and more efficient ways of managing time.

18. Coaching programme criteria
There is no transgression on the domain of the supervisor.
The coaches limit their input to providing personal support to participants to achieve their higher degree / research goals.
Participants and coaches enter into a contract explicitly defining objectives.

19. Coaching programme criteria
The participants take personal responsibility for achieving the agreed objectives in co-active coaching
Each contract constitutes a ‘coaching programme’ of 12 coaching sessions face-to-face.
Coaching is a completely confidential process. No information about any participant is supplied to any party by a coach.

20. Coaching offered by programme
Goal setting with coaches
3 PhDs: 5 to 12 sessions
1 PhD candidate & 4 M Sc candidates : 12 & several additional sessions
Need much more support in managing research outputs & academic discourse

21. The effectiveness of coaching
Coaching helped with interactions with colleagues, departmental heads, and students.
Coaches who are familiar with the Higher Education discourse are able to weave the strands of the core courses together
Coaches were instrumental in helping participants achieve their goals and keeping them on track.

22. Tangible outputs from the structured support for research success programme
Papers accepted for publication
International - 2(WM)
National - 1(IF); 7(A, WM)
Papers under review - 3(I, WF); 1(WM) 4
Conference presentations
National - 1 (CM)
International - 2 (I, AF); 2 (A, CM) 4
Conference presentation prize-
International - 1 (IF) 1

23. Tangible outputs from the structured support for research success programme
NRF Rating - 1 (WM) 1
Grant funding
NRF funding – National - 1 (IF) 1 (WM) 2
Grant funding – International (WM) 3
MSc completed - 1(AF) 1
Promotion - 1(IF); 2(C, WM) 3

24. Overall evaluation of the programme
The structured support for research success programme has shown that:
a wide variety of support programmes essential
and coaching even for a rather limited period of less than a year has a dramatic effect
gets young researchers into a position where they perform well and view themselves as successful and independent researchers.
enables supervisors & managers to track research outputs more consistently