Setting Up Your Own TTT

⭐️ Ten Best Practices for Workshop Facilitators and Organizers ⭐️

~ Developed by Toby Erik Wikström 2026 ~

For Facilitators

1. Create a coherent, effective workshop structure

To ensure an effective, coherent workshop tailored to participants’ needs and practices, trainers should design a coherent training with a pre-event/event/post-event structure.

Typical pre-event activities could include:

  • Reading well-chosen, research-based articles on supervision.
  • Writing a short reflection on their own experience of supervision as PhD students.
  • Reflecting upon their own potential strengths and weaknesses as supervisors or prospective supervisors.

The workshop event itself should move from wider to narrower topics.

Depending on the number of days allotted, typical general topics could include:

  • Defining good research supervision.
  • Managing expectations.
  • Managing research progress.
  • Active listening and questioning skills.
  • Feedback on writing.

More specialized topics (ideal for a follow-up workshop on advanced issues) could comprise:

  • PhD student professional development.
  • PhD student and supervisor wellbeing.
  • Conflict management.
  • Research ethics.
  • AI in doctoral research.
  • Generation Z.

The post-event activity can take place online, one to two months after the workshop. Here attendees can share their experience of implementing best practices they learned at the workshop and obtain advice from their peers.

2. Realize where workshop participants are coming from

The more you know ahead of time about the participants´ own experience being supervised and of supervising PhD students themselves, the better. 

Also, the more you know about their institutional culture, the better. If participants seem disengaged, fatigued or hostile, do not take it personally. Their comportment most likely has more to do with their institutional context and working conditions than it does with the quality of your facilitation.

3. Act as a facilitator, not as a sage on the stage

The more participants get to discuss PhD supervision and share experiences with peers, the more effective and enjoyable the training will be. You should see yourself as a facilitator or orchestrator of interactivity rather than as a lecturer with knowledge to impart. Of course, many instructors in different teaching contexts play lip service to interactive, active learning but do not actually dedicate enough time to it and fall back on long presentations. It´s a good idea, however, to limit the length of your own presentations and afford most of the time to peer reflection.

Be aware, however, that there are limits to peer discussion, especially if researchers are asked to discuss areas which are undeniably important but which they may see as falling outside their expertise, including mental health and careers outside academia.

4. Establish your own credibility with, and obtain goodwill from, participants

Ways of doing this include transmitting a three-pronged message to participants at the beginning of the session:

  • Declaring your independence from university administration at the outset („I am not here to enforce university standards „);
  • Giving a short, preferably quantified, overview of your own involvement with PhD education, whether as a student, supervisor, committee member or in another role;
  • Explaining clearly that you see yourself as a fellow learner and facilitator („I am not here to lecture at you. Rather I am eager to learn from your own experiences of supervision and facilitate a peer exchange from which we can all learn.“).

 

Another way of establishing credibility is by inserting citations from relevant literature on PhD supervision in the footers of your slides.

5. Use gamification and problem-based learning

If discussing arguably dry topics such as the university rules on doctoral education, resist lecturing. Instead, gamify the situation through an inductive, problem-based approach. For instance, have participants roleplay doctoral committees who adjudicate complex, verisimilar cases of PhD student behavior or performance based on the rules.  In that manner, participants explore the rules concretely, becoming more familiar with them in the process.

For Organizers

1. Do a needs assessment to determine which workshop topics PhD supervisors deem most relevant and which workshop times are preferable.

2. Put interactive peer learning at the heart of the training program:

  • Choose outgoing facilitators who can enable interactive discussion and involve as many participants in workshop discussions (see above).
  • Label workshops carefully to signal that participants will indeed engage in peer discussions. Instead „course“, use „workshop“, „forum“ or „community of practice“, instead of „instructor“, use „facilitator“.

3. Make attendance inclusive

Include groups who have not supervised PhD students but who might do so in the future (postdocs, assistant professors) and administrative staff who support PhD students (career advisors, wellbeing counsellors, PhD coordinators, Graduate School administrators). Make them feel welcome and explain to them that their perspective is invaluable as members of the university village that raises each PhD.

4. Guarantee a diversity of perspectives

Alternate between both external and internal facilitators. Outside trainers bring an invaluable international perspective, whilst local ones know the institutional culture well. Harness local researcher experience even more by bringing in guest commentators from your campus with extensive supervisory experience to lead short segments of the workshop.

5. Incentivize faculty participation

Integrate workshop participation into your local incentive system, for instance by making it count toward tenure and/or promotion.

For more best practices:

Wichmann-Hansen, Gitte, Mirjam Godskesen, and Margaret Kiley. 2020. “Successful Development Programs for Experienced Doctoral Supervisors – What Does It Take?”

International Journal for Academic Development 25 (2): 176–88.

doi:10.1080/1360144X.2019.1663352