2. I've recently discovered Evernote as a brilliant way of organising all those bits and pieces you collect along the way. It lives on your PC but is also net accessible - you can email and even tweet stuff straight into it which is very handy. Oh and it stores all of those PDFs you tend to collect all over the place.
3. Another recent discovery is dropbox - it syncs files on your PC with versions on the web and on any other PCs laptops you might have. Because I work in several different places I was always putting stuff onto memory sticks and trying to remember where I left the latest version. Dropbox also does a version history which is also very handy - perfect for those slowly evolving chapters.
4. I have also found survey monkey very easy to use although I'm conscious that there are are many other online survey tools and that this might not be the best.
5. PhD Comic is worth checking out if you haven't seen it :-)
6. I discovered that transcribing recorded interviews is something you have to do when writing a phd etc. Full time students tend to do it themselves - it can take ages but I'm told it's the best way to get familiar with the data. You can get software and even a footpedal to stop and start the recording to make life easier. I know some people use a voice recognition software and repeat the recording back into the computer (unfortunately the software doesn't exist yet to directly transcribe interviews from MP3 etc). As a part time student who simply didn't have the time to do it I paid someone, Dulcie Munroe to be precise - the service was excellent (no - I'm not on commission).
7. I discovered this brilliant blog called The Thesis Whisperer the other day which is a definite must subscribe!
8. I am now also using NVIVO sofware for coding my interview scripts. I got access via the university library, which was handy.
2 comments:
I didn't get my interviews transcribed; I listened to them over and over and marked them for nodes directly in NVIVO. Saved me time and money.
This would really help a lot for people who are having a hard time writing their research paper. And in addition, it would be a thesis help to check out PhD comic a lot. It might look like procrastinating, but it would certainly help you refresh and relieve some stress by laughing off about other thesis work.
Post a Comment