Graduate student (PhD/MS Thesis) engagement plan

[kerprof]

The facilitator in the  mentoring workshop provided several templates for Individual Development Plan.

Using these templates, I am thinking of making up one myself and enforce starting this Spring semester.

They did not mention about the frequency of the plan... I am thinking of using it as a semester plan  instead of annual plan  and implement it semester by semester (Spring, Summer, Fall)

Please advise your thoughts/experiences on using IDP on a semester basis instead of annual basis.

[Hegemony]

This sounds as though it will take a whole lot of time. All these meetings, every week — yikes. And a whole lot of writing and data every week. In my field it would be irksome micro-management, but maybe it's the norm in your field.

Why not talk to the prof who has the most successful grad students at your place, and ask what they do?

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

In this document the following responses are tracked

1) Significant accomplishments for the week
2) Hours worked during the week
3) Any problems encountered
4) Goals for the coming week
5) Anything that they would like to talk to me about

3-5 are OK (it may be better to ask #3 directly in addition to having it in a document)
2 is meaningless (unless you are paying hourly rate for specific tasks, you will likely get expected work week length most of a time)
1 is outright counter-productive if asked on weekly basis: having around 52 (minus vacations) "significant accomplishments" per year is outright impossible without redefining "significant". Alternative would be to ask the same question monthly, or, even better, to ask entire group, if somebody feels they had such accomplishment (i.e. this would remove pressure from individuals).

One participant in the research mentoring workshop mentioned that they track daily running document per student with the following
details over the whole semester. They mentioned that they have a small team and told that this should work for small teams.

In this running document, each day student summarize research work and meetings.

...

I am thinking of enforcing this semester for the students and use this for the weekly meeting with the student as well.
Please advise your thoughts/experiences on using such a document to engage the graduate student mentees.

I strongly recommend for you to try to run such document yourself (i.e. for your own work, but only for the tasks resembling ones students are supposed to be doing) on a daily basis for a couple of weeks.
This way you will find whether this approach is even suitable in your field.

The facilitator in the  mentoring workshop provided several templates for Individual Development Plan.

Using these templates, I am thinking of making up one myself and enforce starting this Spring semester.

They did not mention about the frequency of the plan... I am thinking of using it as a semester plan  instead of annual plan  and implement it semester by semester (Spring, Summer, Fall)

Please advise your thoughts/experiences on using IDP on a semester basis instead of annual basis.

The frequency of milestones is dependent on:
- nature of the field
- stage the student is on
- quality of individual student: less able/motivated require more frequent input (though, less able, but very motivated may be worse)

Again, you can easily test its applicability by filling it using your own grad school progression:
can you make a meaningful plan for your own PhD at a given frequency?

[Puget]

I attended research mentoring workshop couple of weeks back...

In that workshop, there was a discussion on having regularly scheduled "Writing Circle" and "Reading Circle", where the PhD/MS Thesis students get together for research related writing and reading research related papers over Zoom or in person on a regular basis.

Please advise your thoughts/experiences on this?

These are all the rage now-a-days. There are various formats, from those that include peer review of work in progress to those that are merely accountability groups. They work best when the participants are voluntary. So, you could organize such sessions for all of the grad students in your program (i.e., not just for your own students). If you do this successfully for some time, you should be able to hand it off to an ambitious (and organized!) graduate student for them to organize their peers in future terms.

I run a writing group for my department-- my students are expected to attend, others join voluntarily. It's been quite useful I think, and several graduated students have told me it was really helpful when they were dissertating. I highly recommend this book: https://osf.io/n8pc3/

Thanks for the reference book... It looks useful resource.

What is the frequency of these writing group meetings... Is it weekly or daily or bi-weekly or monthly...

Does the meeting happen in person or over online (say Zoom)...   What time slot the group meets ? Is that a challenge in finding a time slot that will work for everyone..

We meet weekly. In the Before Times in person, during the pandemic it has been a mix, currently hybrid.
We use a scheduling poll to find the time that works for the most people, it is really no different than scheduling anything else.

[fizzycist]

Agree with hegemony. Doing all of the things you mentioned sounds like too much and you may get burnt out if you try it all at once.

If you are new to working with 5+ grad students simultaneously, here is what I would suggest:
Start with weekly group meeting and short weekly 1:1s. Treat the 1:1s as casual meetings where students get to choose what they want to talk about and it can be about career stuff, life events, or details of their projects.

Then you can add in some of the more sophisticated stuff (journal clubs, project management, nonstandard IDP schedule, etc) as you see fit and can drop the frequency of 1:1s if they are taking up too much of your schedule.

Something I wish I did better: pay attention to the morale of the broader group. Try to encourage teamwork, journal clubs, and social interactions that don't revolve around you. Do your best to make things fun and keep people happy.