I am reviewing the cards as a qualitative nurse educator and doctoral candidate working in hospice care. I do a lot of conference presentations. I specialise in teaching my thesis topic. I am 5 months away from submitting my thesis, so busy writing up. I am a new passionate advocate of Twitter.
What do I think of the cards? Very, very helpful for thesis writing, viva preparation and conference presentations.
Why? I like the small card presentation, easy to put in my bag, pull out and think about. Especially thinking about how my husband can help me in my preparation by randomly picking out cards whilst we are e.g. in the car. An app or electronic version would be helpful as well but I think I will probably stick to the card version because of the above reasons.
What do I think of the content? The questions are relevant and written in a very accessible way. There is a useful structure in terms of the questions you might get about introduction, methods, results, discussion, implications and utilisation. I particularly like the questions about describing your thesis in 2 minutes etc. The questions feel real, from someone who has been through it.
What about use for writing thesis and conference presentations? Actually I did not buy them for that reason…but as soon as I got them saw the applicability as well. I am already thinking have I answered these questions in my thesis. For conferences helpful as well.
Anything I would change? Only thing I would change is the colour coding. It took me a while to realise that there were 3 types of orange and 1 brown type of questions within the set of cards. I would suggest that the 3 orange types become distinct colours as I can imagine being able to e.g. say to my husband ‘ask me a blue question’ (introduction) or green question (methods, design and analysis)
Any other comment? Would be interested to know what my supervisors think and I will share with them at next supervision.
Well done – I am really glad that you have made these and definitely think that they are well designed, useful and helpful.
Contributor: Sarah Russell @learnstfrancis