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MyPhD user guides for PhD students

How your PhD plan is assessed - step-by-step

Your PhD plan goes through a number of steps when it is assessed. Below shows the workflow for all 3 evaluations for PhD students at Health - and all assessment cycles for Arts, BSS, Nat and Tech - exept the initial plan (Plan 0). To read about the workflow for the initial plan - please see the explanation further down on this page.

Step 1: PhD Student

Fill in or update your plan. Use the template and add more elements as needed. Assess your plan – will it be timely completed or not? Write a shot text about what has changed since last evaluation and why – and send the plan for assessment and approval.


Step 2: Supervisor

Your supervisor will review and assess your plan and either:

  • Approve it with no adjustments necessary – in which case the plan will go back to you for 14 days locked for editing but with an option for commenting or
  •  Send the plan back to you unlocked for adjustments.

Step 3: PhD student comment (voluntary)

Your supervisor has approved your PhD Plan – and you now have 14 days to comment and then send the plan on for assessment with your programme chair. However, a comment is not mandatory – so you can either add a comment or not and send it on to your programme chair – or do nothing and the plan will automatically go to the programme chair after 14 days.


Step 4: Programme chair

The programme chair will review and access the evaluation and either send it on to the head of school or return it to the supervisor (return to Step 2).


Step 5: Head of Grad School and final approval

Head of school is the final step before you have a fully approved PhD Plan. They will review and asses the evaluations and either:

  • Approve
  • Approve with adjustments (suggest adjustments to be done by the next evaluation cycle)
  • Return to programme chair (return to Step 4)
  • Return to supervisor (return to Step 2)
  • If any of the assessments from supervisor, programme chair or the school head deem it necessary to begin a three-month trial period, the school head may choose ‘Start trial period’.

If the Head of School approves the plan - or approves with adjustments - then a pdf of the plan including all comments and assessments will be generated and saved under the Assessment tab. 


PhD student tasks in MyPhD

As a PhD student, your main tasks in MyPhD are to:

  1. Create the initial PhD plan and submit it to your supervisor. The PhD plan must be approved within three months after you start your PhD study programme (Note: This does not apply to PhD students at Graduate School of Health).
  2. Update the PhD plan in connection with the intermediate evaluations and submit the plan to your supervisor on time.
  3. Close the PhD plan in connection with the submission of your dissertation.

Legal requirements to your PhD plan

Under the Danish PhD Order you must complete a research and education plan (a PhD plan) outlining how you intend to complete your PhD project including your dissertation within the prescribed duration of your study programme.

The PhD plan must be completed as quickly as possible after registration (not applicable to PhD students at Graduate Schoolt of Health), and it must be approved no later than three months after the start of your study programme (i.e. the PhD plan must be approved by all participants in the workflow by this deadline). PhD students at Graduate School of Health should fill out the PhD plan in accordance with the initial PhD plan they submitted in their application for admission.

Your graduate school has created a template in MyPhD so you can see, the mandatory parts of your PhD Plan. The template has mandatory PhD Courses, Research Environment Change an overall PhD Plan and other elements required by the Danish PhD Order and your graduate school. You must update each element with correct dates, names, titles etc.

The PhD plan must, as a minimum, contain the following:

  1. A schedule.
  2. An agreement on the type of supervision provided.
  3. A plan for the PhD project.
  4. A plan for PhD courses etc.
  5. A plan for participation in active research environments.
  6. A plan for teaching activities or other types of knowledge dissemination.
  7. Any agreements on intellectual property rights.
  8. A financing plan (budget). Please note that financing is the responsibility of the PhD Administration and might not necessarily be part of your plan in MyPhD.

Quick intro to MyPhD for students

Short introduction to MyPhD for PhD students:

How to update the plan template

Status of plan elements

The following statuses can be assigned to an element:

  • ‘Planned’ – an activity you are planning as part of your PhD programme – for example study abroad.
  • ‘In Progress’ – an activity that is in progress – for example getting an article published.
  • ‘Completed’ – an activity that is finished – for example a PhD course you have participated in.
  • ‘Discarded’ – an activity you were planning but which you have discarded for various reasons – for example a PhD course that has been cancelled or a change of plans regarding a research environment change. When you discard an activity, the element is removed from your plan. The discarded element can still be seen by the administration – and if it has previously been approved in an assessment cycle you can find it under the ‘Assessment tab’ under ‘Previously approved plans’.  You are welcome to discard planned activities as long as your PhD study programme contains the relevant elements required under the PhD Order.

How to update your PhD plan with courses

The mandatory PhD courses are already in your plan - but must be updated with correct start and end date, ECTS etc. When you are taking PhD courses that are not mandatory (but part of the required 30 ECTS) you must add it yourself to the plan. Here is how to do both:

Financing

Please note that financing is the responsibility of the PhD Administration and might not necessarily be part of your plan in MyPhD. Some graduate schools have choosen to make it part of the plan template - while others havn't. In any case the financing plan is not a plan element that you can edit or need to worry about.

How to add a new element to your PhD plan

How to register one or more recearch environment change(s)

How to assess your PhD plan and send it to your supervisor

Where is my plan and why is it locked for editing?

When you send your plan to your supervisor or programme chair for assessment it is locked for editing. This is to assure that the plan that your supervisor, programme chair and head of school are assessing is the same as the one you sent and not an edited version/different versions. The plan will be editable again when either you get it back from your supervisor because they or the programme chair or school head have asked for adjustments - or when the plan is finally approved and a new assessment cycle starts.

Workflow - incl. the initial plan

This section outlines the workflow of a PhD plan/evaluation. The workflow does not necessarily progress in a linear fashion from you to the school head. In fact, the evaluation must be returned from the supervisor to you before it is passed on to the programme chair. This is to allow you to see the assessment and any comments from the supervisor and to give you a chance to make your own comments on these, cf. the PhD Order.

Also, there are several other steps where the PhD plan/evaluation may be returned to a previous step in the workflow for further comments or adjustments.

The initial plan (not applicable to PhD students at Health)

Step 1: You create the PhD plan and submit it to your supervisor.

Step 2: The supervisor reviews and assesses the PhD plan and sends it to the programme chair or back to you for adjustments (return to Step 1).

Step 3: The programme chair reviews and assesses the plan and then either sends it to the school head (Step 4) or, if the programme chair deems adjustments to be necessary, returns it to the supervisor (return to Step 2).

Step 4: The school head reviews and assesses the PhD plan. He or she then has several options. The PhD plan can be:

  • Approved
  • Approved with adjustments
  • Returned to programme chair (return to Step 3)
  • Returned to supervisor (return to Step 2).

If the school head approves the PhD plan with or without adjustments, the PhD plan has made it through the workflow successfully and it is returned to you for further work prior to the next evaluation.

Intermediate evaluations

Step 1: You adjust the PhD plan and make the evaluation and send it to the supervisor.

Step 2: The supervisor reviews and assesses the evaluation and returns it to you, either for comments prior to the evaluation being sent to the programme chair (Step 3) or back to you for adjustments (return to Step 1). (Please note that you are not able to edit your PhD plan when it is send to you for comments.)

Step 3: You add comments to the supervisor’s assessment and pass the evaluation on to the programme chair (Step 4). You have a two-week window to make any comments and pass on the evaluation. If you do not do so, the evaluation is automatically sent to the programme chair after the two weeks.

Step 4: The programme chair reviews and assesses the evaluation and then either sends it to the school head (Step 5) or, if the programme chair deems adjustments to be necessary, returns it to the supervisor (return to Step 2).

Step 5: The school head reviews and assesses the evaluation. He or she then has several options. The evaluation may be:

  • Approved
  • Approved with adjustments
  • Returned to programme chair (return to Step 4)
  • Returned to supervisor (return to Step 2)
  • Finally, if the supervisor, the programme chair or the school head deems a three-month trial period necessary, the school head may choose ‘Start trial period’.

If the school head approves the evaluation with or without adjustments, the evaluation has made it through the workflow successfully and it is returned to you for further work prior to the next evaluation.

 


Specifically for PhD students at Graduate School, Arts


PhD courses - Arts

Besides the mandatory courses already listed in the plan template you must also list any other activities that generate ECTS credits, i.e. participation in seminars. However, participation in seminars/conferences/workshops cannot in itself be regarded as the equivalent of a course unless your supervisor deems that the academic activities involved correspond to a PhD course in terms of their content (for instance a project presentation with your own papers, conferences combined with PhD workshops, and PhD summer schools). The number of ECTS credits allocated to the activity in question by the main supervisor must be stated.


Dissimination - Arts

In this plan element, you must describe the type of task and state the total number of working hours involved (find the form here). This applies to all PhD students whether or not they are covered by the working regulations at their department.


Supervision agreement - Arts

  • The agreement regarding PhD supervision (find the form here) is part of your PhD plan and must have been approved no later than three months after registration.
  • If you change your supervisor or if additional supervisors are appointed, a new supervisor agreement must be drawn up and attached to the next biannual evaluation.
  • If the school head has approved a change of supervisor between two evaluations, this must be stated and the approved agreement must be attached.

Specifically for PhD students at Graduate School, Health


Contents of your PhD Plan - Health

For the first assessment cycle (6 months after enrollement start) fill out the PhD plan in accordance with the initial PhD plan you submitted in your application for admission to the PhD programme.


Courses - Health

Please list all PhD courses taken during your PhD programme, e.g. scientific courses, generic courses, elective courses and mandatory courses. If you have attended PhD courses during your Research Year, these can also be included in your PhD plan.

Other activities that should be listed as ‘PhD Course’:

  • Course activities that do not generate ECTS, e.g. the mandatory introductory course “Welcome to the PhD day” (0 ECTS).
  • Written report based on a stay abroad
  • PhD Day attendance with submission of abstract

Dissimination - Health

List the total number of teaching hours including preparation.