hi i'm casey i'm a professor in an information science department and i love giving advice
to graduate students i recently asked what kinds of topics might be useful
and one that rose to the top was how to make the most out of classes in grad school now especially
if you've seen some of my other videos in particular reasons to pursue a phd etc you
might have heard me say before that particularly when you're a phd student classes aren't the most
important thing and that is still true but they can still be really great particularly in terms
of learning the things that you need to know to do your research and even pushing forward your
research directly so with that in mind a lot of the things that i'm talking about here are most
applicable to phd students however i think a lot of these tips would also be helpful if you're for
example pursuing a master's degree so first of all what classes should you even take of course
keep in mind that you're going to have specific requirements of your program often this is some
combination of things directly in your discipline and in your department and things outside
for example when i was a master's student studying human computer interaction i took a lot of classes
on things like usability and experimental design and some programming classes but also i took a
class on interactive fiction you're not going gen ed like you do in an undergrad degree but you're
also not typically taking exactly only things that are directly in your discipline because it's good
to have some breath too of course this will vary from department to department for example in our
phd program there are only three required classes that every single phd student takes
those exact three classes then we have some sort of competencies that you have to fulfill
a class that checks this box and this box but a lot of these classes can be taken anywhere at the
university my phd advisees for example have taken classes in education in media studies in computer
science even at the law school but in general the way to think about it is what are the things
that you need to learn and sometimes these are domain based things and sometimes they're methods
i have to tell you something that i regret from when i was a phd student is i wish i
had taken a class on information visualization that's both a domain and a skill that is so
useful and i didn't take it in part because i thought it was going to be hard that's not a good
reason plus you can always reach out to a faculty member to ask about the class do you think i have
the requisite knowledge to be able to do what's in this class here are some things i'm hoping to
get out of it but this be the case and especially if you're a phd student a great question to ask is
will i be able to choose the project that i do in this class or the paper that i write in this class
because one important thing for classes especially if you're a phd student is always try to make the
bulk of the work that you're doing in that class be directly related to your research
maybe it's writing a paper maybe it's doing a project that could be directly related to
your dissertation or if not a project that could turn into a publishable paper i'm teaching a class
right now in online communities there are a couple of phd students in this class and one of them just
proposed a project that is really related to what she wants to do for her dissertation work
it might not end up being like a chapter in her dissertation the thing that she does for this
one class but it is going to be useful work that i think is going to guide the next project that she
does similarly i teach a tech ethics class and several phd students who have taken that class
have started projects that turned into papers that they wrote for class that they then built
out into papers that have now been published now this isn't always possible but when it is it's
really good as a professor if i teach a class that has phd students in it i try to give them as much
freedom as possible for whatever they're doing in that class so they can make it work for them
so honestly that's probably my biggest piece of advice for a phd student is can you make
this class work for your research or can this class result in a publishable paper and this is
also something that can be really good to talk to your advisor about you should be talking to them
about what classes you're choosing anyway even when you start taking the class you might want
to have a chat with them about the constraints of the project in the class and see if they can help
you figure out something that would be useful for your research and something else that is
useful for your research is take advantage of the opportunity to do readings in classes
treat it the same way as when you're doing reading to write a lit review for a paper
take notes about the important points you can remember them later keep them nicely organized
in your citation manager remember that's one of my first tips about being a phd student is
pick a citation manager do it well because when it's 10 years later you'll really wish that you
had done that it's also very possible that you'll be reading things in classes that might be part
of your preliminary exams or qualifying exams if you're thinking about a phd and you don't know
what that is check out my video about the parts of a phd but it often involves a very long reading
list the ability to read things and apply them to the things that you care about is actually really
important and classes give you a great chance to practice that skill even if it doesn't seem like
it's that relevant there's probably some nugget of insight in it that might be useful for you someday
classes also give you a great opportunity to connect with other students who
are interested in the same kinds of things that you are take the opportunity to work with other
graduate students when you can maybe make a study group it'll help you make friends it'll help you
draw connections between your work and other students who are interested in similar things
even or maybe especially if they're in a different discipline that can be so valuable and
i would actually really encourage you to use your classes to try to draw these cross-disciplinary
connections if you can and of course classes also give you the opportunity to connect with faculty
especially early in your phd you should be constantly on the lookout for committee members
who are the faculty who are going to be able to help me push my dissertation forward and in fact
that's something that you should be considering when choosing your classes who are the faculty
that you want to get to know better that can even be an entire reason to choose a class and when
you're in those classes make a good impression this means participating in class discussions
doing good work in terms of reflecting on readings or writing papers etc talking to professors in
office hours often talking to a professor in your class about how you see your research
as related to that class can actually be really nice and i love having these conversations with
students it's so exciting in fact one of the very first phd students who took my technology ethics
class ended up writing such a great paper that i asked her if she wanted to join my research lab
we ended up writing two papers together and i was on her committee and it was initially just because
she took my class and also remember that the writing that you do in this class even if you're
not fortunate enough to have it directly relate to your research or turn into something publishable
you're still getting really important practice in academic writing and so i would encourage you
to take that opportunity to get feedback from a professor and if you write something
in a class that doesn't seem like a full paper yet etc but you had a really interesting idea
why don't you put it in a blog post tweet about it or turn it into a nugget of something that you can
explore later sometimes the papers that you write in classes can turn into a segment of a lit review
and something that you do as part of your research and notice that none of the things i'm talking
about here are advice for getting a good grade in a class honestly by the time you're a phd student
especially that's just not the most important goal anymore and honestly even for master's
students like sure you want to have a high gpa it might help you get a job but really you should be
thinking of classes as an opportunity once you're done with school you often don't have this luxury
anymore to just learn things to just have time that is completely devoted to learning things
i wish i had that time i have to make the time to like read papers right oh my gosh
if someone told me i had to spend five hours a week working on learning um such a nice idea
so i'm sure you could find lots of other advice about how to succeed in grad school classes but
what i want you to do is make the most out of them make them work for you learn things practice
things make connections and even push forward your research or make brand new research and if you are
working on your graduate school classes now i hope this was a useful way to think about it and i hope
that your next class is everything that you could hope it would be i'm casey thanks for watching