 students from across campus who apply to join this group. And each group, it's like 25 students, those students break off into smaller groups. So I had a focus group of about six students at all stages of the thesis process, some very new, some who are getting ready to graduate, some in between. And from all, some were joining from overseas because they were, you know, doing field work. And so I got to bring together this focus group of students to look at what we've got on our website, look at what materials we have. So workshops, events, things online suggest, and they suggested revisions or ways that we could rethink or reimagine some of these things, these resources. And then they helped us brainstorm new ideas of things that might appeal to students now. So some of the questions we explored, you can see them here and I probably won't read them all. But the big one was what do I wish I had known when I started working on my thesis? This was a huge question that we talked a lot about. And they were able to give feedback to each other and helped guide me through what we were going to do to help support students. How can we work with students remotely or how can we get them connected with other students? A big one we talked about is how can we normalize the challenges that students face because writing a thesis is not all happy days. There are some rough times that happen. There are some challenges that happen. So how can we help students see that that happens? It's normal. It's nothing that they did. It's just part of the process a lot of times. And then how can we get them connected with people to support them and guide them through next steps? And that kind of goes along here. And also building problems, building or identifying problems, building momentum, project management, I think was a big thing that we talked about here. Okay. So what was our idea? First the idea that they had was to create a course that students had to enroll in and that I would be teaching. And I said, no, thank you. That seems really problematic. We have so many students and when do they enroll and how is that going to solve the issue of needing to come at different times, different places, different time zones? So what we ended up thinking is creating a Canvas site that gives students access on demand to thesis writing resources that might be helpful to them as they're starting the process and then also builds community that they can then talk to other students, get advice, share things and just build out, you know, the community, not just of things on campus but also of people. Okay. So what we call it is the thesis workspace. We workshop this a lot, but this is kind of our logo. This is our Canvas card that students will see when they sign up for our site. And they can get to it on our homepage, so grad.illinois.edu backslash thesis. If you go to development, this is the landing page that students will see and then they can click this orange button to join our Canvas workspace or a thesis workspace. Our landing page looks like this. And so this is the top part. You see I use the announcements section like Kristin and Lily do. This is the introduction to what the site is about. And then when you scroll down, students get these buttons where they can click on whatever button they're interested in and then it takes them to a module that then has more information about different things. So things like getting started, what are tools that you need to get off to a good start? What does a thesis look like in your field? How can you find them so that you can get an idea of what you're working with? Campus community has some modules or has some pages on the different resources across campus that are here to support students. There's also a lot of Q&As that I've done with people across campus that I'll show in a little bit. Work-life balance is a section that we're still developing, but it's thinking about well-being and wellness and taking breaks while you're working on the thesis process. How can you manage things like that and manage some of these feelings that you have such as procrastination, perfectionism, imposter syndrome? Building momentum is a section that gives them tools for project management. Strategies for time management, strategies for working with maybe if you only have 15 minutes that you can devote to your thesis today, what can you do in that time? Things like that and things like prioritizing. Sharing your work is a section that our students really wanted to have in there. Talking about how can I take what I'm working on and share it with the general public. This is a section I'm continuing to build. I've kind of expanded modules, so this site is very living. It changes a little bit all the time. I've got this section on finishing touches, which has information about formatting and proofreading. Thinking ahead goes into things like careers and thinking about publishing your thesis in a book or in a journal. Support and share takes us to the discussion boards. Then feedback is just a nice thing for me so that if you see something on the site that you don't see something on the site that you'd like to, you can send me a message and I'll get it on there. These links take you to external things, so you can get to our thesis office website. You can get to ideals, which is our institutional repository. This help and support button will take you to a link where you can set up an appointment with me to go over whatever you might like to talk about. Like Kristen mentioned, all of these, one thing that's great about Canvas is that there is the accessibility checker. All of these have alt text and students. It's passed the accessibility check as per Canvas. That's been very helpful in making sure that things are accessible to all of our students. This is an example of a landing page. If I click this getting started button, it will take me to this page. It gives a little bit of an introduction to what's going to happen in this section and then gives a little bit of text on how to navigate from section to section. So students can just hit next and just keep going or they can click any of these different links. So this is our getting started manual. You'll see things like what does the thesis look like in my field? How to create a roadmap for your thesis. So what do you want this to look like? What is your timeline that you want to think about? And so this gives them something to take to their advisor to say, hey, I've thought about this. This is what I think I want to do. What do you think? Do you think this plan is doable? Are there any changes that you'd like to make? We talk about, you know, prewriting strategies and I'll show that page in a second, but then also six tools to help you get started. So what are six things that you can, like quick and easy decisions you can make right now that are going to make the whole process easier? That's kind of the way I pitched this section. An example of a page would be this one that's choosing a citation manager. So this gives a little bit about what a citation manager is. Very brief text and then some links to other resources on campus that can help students better understand this. This is a video put together by our library that I was able to embed in there. And so one of the things when I was talking to students was that they didn't want so my focus group played around with the site. They didn't want lots and lots and lots of text. They just want quick things. And so that's sort of the mentality that I've taken a couple paragraphs as I'm able, you know, depending on what the topic is and then links to other things so that if they want to know more, they can just go there and get the information. But the idea of a citation manager is in their head and they know to be thinking about it. The videos have been really great too, to be able to just give that extra information if that's something that students want to see. All right, there are several things that I did when I was looking into this and I'll go through them a little bit. So resources and ideas that I tapped into. The first is making use of campus personnel and online tools. I didn't do this alone. I went to others, other experts and said, hey, I have this idea. Can you help me with this? And honestly, the answer was a resounding yes from everybody that I reached out to. It was yes. And it was a lot of excitement in thinking about the possibilities. They saw this too, like I did, as a way to help get students acclimated and ready to go and so that there may be fewer problems later on. So if we start thinking about IRB really early or thinking about copyright or formatting early, it's less likely that there's going to be problems later on because we've already talked about it. We already know about it and they already know who to go to. These are some of the specialists across campus that I reached out to to help me with this, to help create content, to help, you know. And I think a lot of it was that they already had content. It was just a way of putting it in this place and organizing it in this place. It's kind of like a one-stop shop and that they can go in. The students can go in and say, oh, yeah, I should go look at that. And here's how I get there. So these are some of the places that I did reach out to and they all definitely partnered with us and got me information in different ways that worked best for them. I'm constantly getting back in touch with them. I'm working with one of our data specialist librarians right now on some really cool stuff. And so there's constantly new thought going around with this. One example is that I did Q&As with different people in offices. So I did a Q&A with our copyright librarian. So I just made up some questions, sent them to her. She answered them and I put it into a post. I have a post, Getting to Know Your Subject Specialist from the library, Getting to Know a Metadata Specialist, Getting to Know the University of Illinois Press, you know, Getting to Know These Different People. And it's nice because it gives a face to an office. It humanizes, you know, the library or the copyright topic and gives them some information to help them be thinking about this and then also, you know, make use of these different services. Another way that I collaborated was actually here with our writer's workshop. The director of the writer's workshop had some tips for how to start prewriting your thesis. So this is a tab page so students can click on the different tabs and it brings up the different content that aligns with this. I also went in-house. So one of my coworkers at the grad college graduated very recently and he's really into different tools, online tools that you can use. And so he provided some links here of different things that students might try out. So I was able to work with a couple people in creating this content. I didn't write anything here except the content written and provided by line and the links of tools line. Everything else was provided to me by Carolyn and John. The next piece is project management tools. I think we've all worked with students enough to know that they get stuck sometimes. And why do they get stuck? That's sort of the thing we're thinking about. When do they get stuck when they're writing their thesis? And how can we help them get unstuck? So we were really thinking about the thesis as a big project in you as a project manager. What are some things that happen that you need to be thinking about so that you can make the progress that you need or recognize that you need help and then be able to ask for it? So some of the tools that we include are options. We don't say there's just one way to do something. There are a bunch of different ways. Here, go explore them and see what's going to work best for you. For some of them, sample questions to ask. So that was a thing that our students pointed out is that they needed to have a meeting with their advisor, but they didn't really know what questions to ask when they wanted to get started. Besides, like, how do I write a thesis? So it's helping them coach through some questions that they might ask their advisor or ask themselves in reflection. I created some handouts, too, using, like, in design so that we could upload those handouts. They could print them out and use them as they wish. And then there were also guided assessments that we were able to provide for them. So this is a section that I've been working on. And it's really the one that looks into project management. So making the most of your time, how to create a routine, these different time batching or task batching and time blocking, a promodero technique, and then these different prioritization strategies. This is a section that I am continuing to build out, but it helps get students some options for what they might do or what tools might work for them and then also helps connect them to to different resources that will support them. This is an example of one of the pages that I have. This is about the Ivy Lee method, which is a prioritization method. I used just headings, three quick things to know about in the bulleted list. And then I made this handout that they can print out and then they can fill out. The handout was kind of a bonus sort of thing. But so you wouldn't necessarily have to do this in order to have a successful site. This could be plenty. One of the things that came from this is that I was doing a lot of time management or we called it thesis time management workshops. So how to, you know, do this this project management when you're working on this huge project called your thesis. And so that's where this kind of came from. And I had already built some of these handouts and just decided to repurpose them here. This was another thing that we got very lucky about. So we had someone who worked at the University of Illinois, who is a clinical counselor at our counseling center. He used to do this dissertation writing retreat, which was like a half day retreat where he came and talked about procrastination, perfectionism, that sort of thing. He talked about it from a very clinical way. So like thinking about what's happening in your brain when you're feeling like this. And then he gave some of these assessments here and then suggestions for how to manage this. So I am not a licensed clinical counselor. I couldn't provide this information. He actually was so passionate about this that he gave us this this information. He wrote it up for us, gave it to us and said, use it. And so this is where we were able to put it in this place where students can can access it should they need it. We also wanted to make use of interactive resources just for fun for students and to see, you know, how successful they were. You know, I wasn't sure how much students wanted to poke and prod in here, but I made some quizzes just for fun. The so we have a data management quiz. This was a resource that our writing center provided to me. And I thought, well, it doesn't make sense. It's just a static page. So I made it a quiz or a survey kind of activity that then they can use. There's also a selection or a section for reflection so students can just write down some of their thoughts and ideas as they're reflecting on writing their work. And it's there. It's not something I'm ever going to look at. And I tell them that I'm not going to look at this. This is totally for you. You can do it as many times as you want to. But we like to think of it as a place where, you know, if you're going for a meeting with your advisor, you have your computer. You can just type down some notes or you can pull this up with the notes that you have that you want to share with them. The next one are assignments. So again, these are not things that I'm going to grade. It's just a place for them to reflect and put information. So topics to discuss with your advisor, some tips on setting goals and a place where you can write down your goals for each semester. And then this one is editing exercises, which was also something provided by our Writing Center. The other piece is Ask Emily. So there is a discussion thread that's just called Ask Emily. You can ask me whatever you want. And it, you know, I'm able to answer the questions in there and it archives them. So the other students have those questions. They can go back and see what what I said and what the answer was. There's also links to one-on-one support. So thesis office hours are just appointments that students can make to talk about formatting. They're usually like 15 minutes and it's usually like, did I do this? Okay. And then, you know, we have a conversation about that. But with creating the thesis workspace, one of the things that I wanted to do is then offer thesis coaching, which is a half an hour appointment that students can schedule with me to talk about anything that they might need help with. A lot of it relating from the website, the Canvas site. So we talk about setting goals. We talk about prioritizing. We talk about whatever the students wanna talk about. A lot of them use me for accountability. So they'll come every other week and say, hey, I did this thing and I'm gonna do this thing next time. And so then when I see them again, it's like, had you do, did you do that? You know, what happened? You know, if it didn't go well, what can we do about that? You know, and so I'm like helping them with project management, but I'm also a big cheerleader for them. And so they're getting that sort of support, hopefully from me as well. We also wanted to build a community of peers. And so we have discussion boards that are meant to share resources. So if a student sees something, the tool that they wanna share with others, they can do it in the discussion board. They can leave advice, they can ask questions. They can have fun too. And I'll show you a couple of our discussion boards. So passing it on, sharing lessons learned, advice and encouragement. I actually linked to this in the last module so that they can, as they're finishing up their thesis, what would you like to tell those who come after you? What would you like them to know? How have you battled the blank page? And then this one is a lot of fun. So sharing the pets that make the thesis possible. I'm sure you all have seen this too. In the acknowledgement section, there's always like dedications and acknowledgements for pets. And sometimes there's pictures of pets. And so I wanted to share, I wanted them to be able to share their pets here because that's such a cool part of the process. And so there's even actually a dissertation with a chapter about acknowledging animal companions. This is a book now, but it was a thesis about people citing pets in their acknowledgement section. So I linked to that here and then it was a lot of fun to see the cats and dogs that are now, or in the plant, one student put a plant because they don't have a cat or a dog. And so that was a lot of fun to see them use. Okay, our communication plan. How do we get the word out about this? It's been kind of tricky to kind of figure out. So what we decided to do was create customized emails to doctoral students who have passed their preliminary exam. And then we continue communication throughout the semester. So what I do is at the start of the semester, I have a report pulled for all the students who took prelims in the previous semester. I then send them an email that looks like this that congratulates them, says that we're proud of them, that we wanna support them and gives them access, a link to the workspace. This has been really helpful for our doctoral students. They all have to take preliminary exams. So we just pull that list and then we were able to send them this. For a master's students, it's trickier. A lot of times we don't know if they're writing a thesis. A lot of times they don't know if they're writing a thesis. Things happen a lot. They'll be in 599 classes and we're like, okay, they're writing a thesis. And then at the end, they'll just drop those 599 classes and do something else. So departments also get an email that says, hey, we have this resource. Can you share it with your students? And so that's how we're reaching our master's students. It's not perfect. We're still thinking, but this is the best that we've figured out for the moment. I also, we have a newsletter that goes out to grad students once a week. And I've been able to post links in here. Not just join the thesis workspace, but it's also teasing some of the stuff that you can find if you join the thesis workspace. And so these are some of the tools that I've used to help pull students in. I also send out announcements occasionally, especially if there are upcoming events or opportunities that students should be aware of or changes to the site. If I've added some cool stuff, I might send them a message to let them know. So our results, so far so good. Here are some of the logistics. Users opt in. So I don't batch upload people into that. I let them choose if they want to be in this space or if they don't wanna be in this space. The site is also not publicly available. So if you try to go in and access it, you won't be able to. It is blocked by the net ID and password. I wanted that, you know, because there are these discussion boards and things I wanted the students to have as much privacy as possible. Assignments and quizzes are not graded. They're just for the student to do. I don't look at them, but comments are moderated. So if a student leaves a comment, I will look at it to make sure that it's okay. And we can talk about logistics of that in a second. And then announcements are occasionally sent to notify students of opportunities or events they might wanna know about. So we launched the site, February 15th, 2023. And we already have over 441 users, which I'm very proud of. I'm really excited that we've gotten this much interest in this site. According to our statistics, we have an average weekly page views of 211. And average page views per student is 40. One of the things that I've been able to see is that students are returning users. So there are the chunk of students who, you know, impulse sign up and then they don't necessarily come back very frequently, but I do have students that are coming back once a month to see more things or at least interacting quite frequently to get that information, which I think is really, really good to see. We have right now 515 discussion board posts. So not very many discussion board posts. So it doesn't take a lot of my time to moderate them. It's a learning process. And you saw the message I sent out. I actually sent out that message a couple of days ago. Join the discussion, you know, send posts. And then we'll see if that brings more people. We also had 22 completed assignments and quizzes, which I thought was fascinating because I'm not requiring it. I don't care if they do it, but they are. And so that was really, I was really excited about that. It doesn't seem like too many given how many users we have, but I don't know, I was excited. So our plans, where will we go next? Like I said, this is a living site. It's something I'm constantly tinkering on my own with and playing with. So we're gonna expand modules on wellbeing communication and looking ahead. So wellbeing, we just hired a community and wellbeing coordinator at the grad college. And so she's putting together some content dealing with, you know, how to take a break. What does a break look like? When do you do this? And things like that, that we'll be adding to that section that kind of parallels the information given by the clinical counselor. The communication page is something I'm building too. And you know, things like 3MT and other bachakacha and that sort of thing is put in here. Looking ahead, I'm working with the career office to think about how, you know, you can think about your dissertation in terms of looking for careers. How does it go on your CV? How can you link it? Like what sorts of things you can use for that? I'm gonna be creating videos on formatting and then other deposit considerations. We're thinking about these being kinda, you know, the formatting ones are gonna be a little bit more professional with like, well, they're all gonna be professional, but it's gonna be like me showing my screen and doing that sort of thing. But the deposit considerations and other things like talking about release options and embargoes, that's gonna be a little bit more of a casual conversation that I'm gonna have with our videographer about to make that a really approachable sort of thing. I'm gonna continue to build campus partnerships, dig deeper into issues, including ADA accessibility and new form thesis. I have a whole bunch of notes from today's sessions that I'm gonna be putting into this site to help students think about ADA, why it matters, what they should do and how to prepare for this. Another piece that's not related to the website or not related to the Canvas site, but is related to our website is to think about the language that we're using, making sure it's clear. When I got the job, I inherited terms like stage one, stage two, stage three, and that's not something that students understand or really know about or respond to. And so that's something that I'm sort of thinking about in the way that we're framing this process and how we're talking about it. How can you get started? Don't worry, you can do it. I can do it, Emily. Thank you. Okay, so some questions to consider. Who are your students and what do they need? Are there any gaps in the support that they receive? What do your students want to know and can you build campus partnerships to provide support? I recommend thinking about what do you want your site to be? What kind of information do you want to give students? Do you want it to be at the beginning of the process? Do you want to be at the end of a process? Kind of like what Kristen and Lily were talking about. I think figuring out what kinds of services you want to give students, what information you want to share with them is a really good start. My site has been something that I've been working on for two years and so there's a lot of content in there. I didn't do it overnight. I had been working on it for a long time and I also didn't do it all. I asked other people to help and so I was able to just put the information in there especially in the campus support unit section. Lots of information that they gave me from their website and that was done. So thinking about some of these things can be helpful. My advice is that the site doesn't have to be done in order to launch. That was a sticking point for me. I wanted it to be done and perfect and lovely so that my students could see it immediately and my boss is just like, no, just get it out there. You can continue to build and you'll change things but just giving something out there to help get the word out so that they know it's there and that departments know it's there and that becomes part of the culture of our institution. Partner with campus experts. You don't need to know or say everything. They can help and they want to help. A lot of times I was like, I know I was talking to the writer's workshop lady and she was like, just copy and paste from our website. That's how we want you to talk about us and then give some links. And so I was like, okay, let's do it. And so I just put a couple of sentences on there and gave the links so that then they have that repository of things that they could potentially use and then if they want to know more, there's links to take them there and they can get help from the experts there.