Education, Culture and Identity: The Future of Humanities, Education and Creative Industry
As academics, what can we do to influence the future of humanities, education and creative industries? One way is to empower and equip our brightest students to value their own imaginative potential and take greater responsibility for their own outcomes. Demystifying the Thesis (DTT) is a strategic framework that provides research students with the knowledge and skills to take charge of their own researcher development. Students from more than a third of all Australian universities have taken part in DDT programs—and customised versions of the programs have been run for students and staff from more than thirty universities in Latin America, Oman, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Nepal, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and East Timor. Evaluation and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and confirms the profound impact DTT is having on researcher development, supervisory practice and institutional capacity-building. In recognition of its contribution, in 2004 DDT was awarded the Victoria University Vice-Chancellor’s Medal for Excellence in Research Training, and in 2010 the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Award for Programs that Enhance Learning: Postgraduate Education.DTT comprises four programs: the flagship Demystify Your Thesis for PhD candidates, Beginning a Thesisfor new international students, Demystifying Thesis Supervision for supervisors and intending supervisors, and the six-day Performing the Word Writing Retreat for students keen to explore and experiment with making their writing even more engaging. In addition, DTT strategies inform other Victoria University programs, including the compulsory coursework programs for newly-enrolled PhD students, and a work-based unit for intending supervisors completing the (mandatory) Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Education. All these programs share the commitment to empowering and equipping PhD students to take primary responsibility for their own researcher development and research outputs—and in this way not accept the future as a given, but take greater control over making the future.