The Onderwijs Research Dagen (ORD) took place in Rotterdam from Wednesday May 25th until Friday May 27th. I have made some progress towards graduation since the beginnings of my project in 2013 (time is flying!). I still feel that this national conference is a great learning experience for me as a PhD. Generally speaking, national conferences have some advantages for novice researchers in comparison with the larger ones abroad. Here’s why I’m enthusiastic about national conferences.
The very beginning: attend the preconference
The ORD (as other conferences) has preconference workshops tailored towards learning needs of PhD’s in Belgium and the Netherlands. Topics include academic writing, managing your supervisors, writing grant proposals and preparing your defense. I’ve visited similar sessions at international conferences as well. However, preconference workshops in a national conference pay specific attention to the Dutch and Flemish contexts, which directly apply to our educational context. Where else would you learn to avoid writing Dunglish with your peers?
Opportunities to close a gap with educational practice
Some might feel that educational research has a strong focus on theory. This may not always resonate with teaching experiences in practice. My experiences are that at a national conference you’ll meet more teachers, policy makers or educational managers than you would at a large conference. This means you could further discuss the practical relevance of your work. It also might help you to explore perspectives for your life after PhD.
Share the good stuff
When you’re designing your studies it can be very helpful to join a national conference, even without presenting. Chances are that presentations inspire you to use instruments and methods which are developed to suit the Dutch educational context. This makes it easy for you to join discussions during the conference, since you’re familiar with education in the Netherlands (sometimes I find it hard to immediately understand studies in foreign contexts) and to relate this to your own project. This could also provide opportunities to work together with colleagues relatively nearby.
Prevent yourself from being thrown in at the deep end
Besides a limited travel time to a national conference, it is nice to hear about topics being investigated in other institutes. This helped me, as a novice, to grasp the width of the field (here: higher education) without being overwhelmed by the amount of presentations. My studies are about research integrated into teaching at university which is also emphasized in Dutch universities of applied sciences. I’ve learned a lot about this at conferences as the ORD. Moreover, it is very likely that you’re able to go to a national conference annually within your PhD. This enables you to keep up with each other over a longer period of time.
For these reasons I would say that ‘the larger the party, the better’ has nothing to do with the number of people invited! Here you can read about Saskia’s experiences attending an international conference. Thank you for reading this blog!
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