Rachel Sing-Ee Tan

Early this year, my colleague, Tracy Rogers, initiated a writing group in our department, Higher Education Development Centre (HEDC). The group is attended by most of the HEDC postgraduate students. I am delighted to be part of this group. We initially tried fortnightly and monthly meetups, before we came to the agreement that weekly meetups each Monday morning works best. Essentially, we believed that a Monday morning writing session could be a positive motivator for the rest of our week. The overall benefit that I get from the group is developing the mental stamina for writing. The group gives numerous benefits that turn into energy which carries me through my research. In this post, I would like to highlight three vital advantages of a writing group: collegiality, developing focus and enhancing a habit to write that helps me to endure my PhD journey. 1) Collegiality for motivation The writing group delivers a sense of collegiality because we share our research achievement

The Graduation Day at the University of Otago is an eventful day filled with three main events; a brunch, a procession and a ceremony. Although it was not my graduation yet, I was pleased to attend the August Graduation Day with my friends. For me, it was not only to congratulate our friend’s success but it was a sociable and inspirational gathering. We were there to congratulate Alfie, or to be precise Dr Althea Blakey, on her graduation. For some of us, PhD candidates, it was an inspiration to see our fellow ‘comrade’ who had made it to the finishing line. Alfie is certainly a positive role model. She managed to complete her thesis while juggling between work and family. Alfie, and many other PhD graduands proved that perseveration would bring us light at the end of our PhD tunnel. The graduation’s brunch session allowed us to mix and mingle. Held at the Central Library, guests were invited to attend the meaningful day and congratulate the success of graduands. The s

Last year, I joined a tour, organised by Lizzy Lukeman from the alumni office, to learn more about the University of Otago. The tour started with a little history of the university, which was the first university in New Zealand. It was founded in 1869 and started with three professors and 81 students. The university has since grown, whereby today, it has more than 22,000 students, 1,500 academic and research staff and 2,000 general staff. From the tour, I learnt about the various facilities and interesting architectural design, and enjoyed a different perspective on the campus. The first highlight was the getting to know the university’s student association, the Otago University Student Association (OUSA). It represents the voice of students in the university and provides different services to enhance student’s life at the campus. Lizzy showed us to the radio station and the office of student magazine, Critic, managed by OUSA. Then, we went to the OUSA’s building that serves $

My recent trip to the State University of Zanzibar was my first time to travel for work. It was also my first time to Africa and I am especially grateful to Dr Maryam and Umayra for hosting Dr Ben Daniel, my supervisor and I. I am also grateful for Ben’s patience and guidance that helped me to successfully collect rich data from my interviews. Here, I share some of the experiences I enjoyed whilst I was not conducting my research. These experiences, whilst extremely enjoyable, also helped inform my understanding of the research context. I am thankful that our lovely department administrator, Candi, chose an excellent hotel in Stone Town that was within a 10-minute walk to my interview location. Stone Town is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the name was chosen because the buildings were constructed using coral stone. I was living in a 19th-century town and in the middle of historical and cultural sites. The buildings’ architecture have Arab, Persian, Indian, European, and Afri

My PhD Field Work At Zanzibar My PhD on globalisation in higher education provided an exciting field trip to Zanzibar in January 2016. My research looks at how globalisation has impacted on an emerging university in the developing world. I interviewed the staff at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA). It gave me two lessons. First, I am a Malaysian student of Chinese descent studying in New Zealand, and the trip widened my cultural horizon on East Africa. Second, I learnt the skills of data collection as a social scientist and it is these that I am sharing in this blog post. In my field trip, I learned to distinguish formal data, such as interviews, from my informal data, such as my field notes. For the former, I conducted semi-structured interviews that were recorded and transcribed. During interviews, I kept notes that highlighted potential key topics for further probing with in-depth questions. By conducting the interviews, I had on-field training on how to bui