My name is Paul Thompson. I'm the Admissions
Tutor for research programmes at the Department
of English Language and Applied Linguistics.
My area of expertise is corpus linguistics
but I'm also interested in applications of
technology in language teaching.
The distance programme in English Language
and Applied Linguistics is aimed at applicants
who for whatever reason find it difficult
to move from their present situation to come
to Birmingham to study. A large proportion
of the current students who are doing a distance
programme are in full time employment in different
parts of the world and they have access to
good library facilities in the city or town
that they live in and they will be able to
communicate with their supervisor once every
six weeks or so by Skype or telephone or whatever
but they are able to continue their full-time
position and do a phd at the same time.
We don't only look for people who are in full-time
employment but it tends to be that people
who are in full-time employment have the best
environment in which to do a phd. We do also
have students who are bringing out families,
who choose distance programmes because again
it makes it easier to manage the workload,
the research load, in amongst all their other
life duties, let's say.
Right we have two options for doing a distance
phd. The first one is a traditional type of/standard
type of phd in which you study for a period
of years in the case of a distance phd this
is treated as a part-time mode of study therefore
it takes at least four years and maximum six
years. And the mode of assessment is by one
single 80,000 word thesis.
The modular phd on the other hand is broken
into three parts. And the first part of it
is a 12000 word assessment. That's followed
by module two which is a 20,000 word assessment.
And the final piece of work is 50,000 words.
So in effect it ends up at roughly the same
length - 82,000 words - but this works nicely
we find for people who are in full-time employment
and who want to do a phd but find it easier
to get a sense of progress by doing the work
in stages leading up to the final phd.
The distance programme is delivered as it
were through the internet. There are materials
which are available on the virtual learning
environment - Canvas - but the majority of
the work is done by Skype or some equivalent
means of communicating with your supervisor.
And this is delivered through supervision
sessions which take place roughly every six
weeks. And for those sessions the student
is expected to do some writing, to prepare
some documents, send them to the supervisor
ahead of the meeting and then they form the
basis, the focus, for the discussion in the
supervision.
