Top 12 Reasons To Use Grad Tools
12. USE CHECKLIST
to track your progress to degree and official status at
Rackham. Checking off these items can help to keep you motivated and help mark
your progress. You can add custom items to the list.
11. USE GRAD TOOLS
to manage your dissertation committee and keep them informed and engaged with
your work.
10. USE GRAD TOOLS
as a master site for your entire graduate career, archiving final versions of
all seminar papers, pdfs of influential readings, professional correspondence,
grant applications, etc.
9. USE RESOURCES FOLDERS
as a remote archive for dissertation word processing and research files that
are safe backups and accessible from any computer via the Web. You can also
catalog important research links or upload primary documents.
8. USE EMAIL ARCHIVE or ANNOUNCEMENTS
as a record of official correspondence with your committee.
7. USE SCHEDULE
as a time management tool to track dissertation related deadlines and share
these targets with your committee. (Avoid putting personal items in schedule.
Use worksite schedule for this and merge GradTools schedule into your master
calendar.) This scheduling process also helps you to set goals and priorities.
Think beyond the dissertation to the job search by planning to present chapters
at conferences or to publish work as journal articles where appropriate.
6. USE THE HOMEPAGE
to keep your contact information current and available for your committee, especially
when you are traveling for research.
5. USE THE DISCUSSIONS
feature to create a research diary, dissertation blog, new ideas, big questions,
or freewriting area in which you explore your original thoughts and ideas.
4. USE DISCUSSIONS
to invite feedback and comments from committee members of drafts stored in the
RESOURCES folders.
3. USE RESOURCES
as a professional tool to store recent résumés and links to your
activities, so that your advisors have the ammunition they need immediately
at hand when writing recommendations.
2. USE GRAD TOOLS
as part of a Dissertation Support Group Project Site that connects you to a
group of 3-4 graduate student colleagues for social support and safe intellectual
feedback. The project site can be a powerful collaboration tool.
1. USE GRAD TOOLS
as a thought structure to consider and challenge your own working methods. Its
flexibility demands that you customize it to work best for your own style. To
do that, you need to know your working style.
THREE REASONS NOT TO USE GRAD TOOLS
3. Because it’s there.
2. To force your committee chair to do things your way.
1. Because you’d rather goof around with technology than write something.
by Mark Clague, musicology <claguem@umich.edu>