DoSSIER

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced quite a lot of problems in almost any research project. We organize this online induction workshop to establish and coordinate communication and collaboration between all project members and PhD students and signify full propelling of the project. The program  of the Induction Workshop:

Day 1: 23 November 2020 (9:00-13:30)

Project introduction

Self-introductions of ESRs and supervisors

Doing a PhD - what does it mean?

Day 2: 27 November 2020  (9:00-13:15)

Student only break-out session

Planning

Introduction to the PGCertRPD and its requirements

Day 3: 7 December 2020 (9:00-13:15)

Parallel break-out groups by deliverables currently being prepared

Health break-out group discussion

Legal break-out group discussion

Innovation break-out group discussion

On Feb 19, 2021, the "Introduction to HCI" workshop was conducted by Dr. Martin Halvey from the University of Strathclyde and one of the DoSSIER advisors to the DOSSIER early-stage researchers. The one-day workshop covered these main topics: What is HCI; Experimental Design; and Investigation Techniques. The first part of the workshop was HCI definition and history, also it touched upon the related fields as psychology; Physiology; Medicine; and Ergonomics Sociology.

The second part of the workshop covered the experimental design in HCI and covered in more detail areas related to 'variables', 'task', and 'participants'. Besides, Dr. Halvey talked about ethics as crucial things to look at while designing experiments and how to ensure take into account the rights, safety, and wellbeing of the participants at all times. The final part of the workshops was about the various investigation techniques such as questionnaires; interviews; focus groups; observation; etc. Also, the advantages and disadvantages of each one of the mentioned techniques.

Dr. Halvey covered a wide range of important concepts that are crucial for the DOSSIER Ph.D. students to learn about at this stage of their careers. Especially that many of them will work on designing experiments and collecting data themselves. Learning about these concepts at the early stage of their career definitely would help them carry high-quality research and save them a lot of time. 

On the 10th of March 2021, the “DoSSIER Doing Research - Part 1” workshop was held for 15 Ph.D. students who take part in the Domain-Specific Systems for Information Extraction and Retrieval (DoSSIER) project. This workshop is one of a series of training workshops that covers variety of helpful and important topics for the early-stage researchers of the DoSSIER project.

The workshop was led by two of the project’s advisors: Arjen P. de Vries and Leif Azzopardi. Many questions were discussed during the interesting and insightful workshop which led to a very interesting discussion. Some of the raised questions were:  what does it mean to be a good researcher? what is a scientific process? And how to make an impact in the field of information retrieval as a young researcher? One of the answers was to rely on existing research to improve on it but also produce something new. Early-stage researchers can produce helpful results that may later be used by industries and by other researchers.

During the four-hour workshop, the students were divided into four breakout groups to discuss different questions such as "researchers' goals of researching", "research collaboration with other researchers", and "doing internships in the different companies". Many crucial points were discussed regarding the issues that early-stage researchers might face during their internships, and how to prepare in advance to minimize the chance of having any issue or conflict of interest with the hosted companies. Moreover, there was an emphasis on finding the right research questions that make their research valuable.

Leaving aside serious matters, the atmosphere of the workshop was fun and there were lots of joking around. After all, research is also about having fun, meeting new people, making new friends, visiting different countries (when allowed), understanding other cultures, and enjoying the research process. Students left the workshop looking forward to part 2 of “DoSSIER Doing Research" workshop.