February 11, 2015, by Deepa Kumari Veerasingam
Reflection on a U21 Trip
This blog is contributed by Wei Lin Poh, a PhD student from the School of Psychology.
Placement: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Campus, UK
Period: 22nd September, 2014 to 23rd October, 2014
Supervisor: Dr Andrew Olson (School of Psychology)
I arrived at Birmingham at a perfect time in September; the locals would say it was nice and warm for autumn. The red-brick campus was covered with autumn leaves thus providing a quaint atmosphere and great place to sit and reflect on one’s work. Dr Olson’s (my host supervisor) research project compares eye movements in reading sentences between normal and dyslexia readers by measuring how often they would back track to previous words and how long they would fixate on specific words. Manuela Sanny (a visiting researcher from Italy) and I both worked on that project and we had to learn new eye-tracking programme and software for data collection and analysis. This gave me a chance to expand my skill sets and knowledge in a new research area. Working with Dr Olson and interacting with his research students was beneficial as I had the opportunity to be around like-minded peers and to exchange different ideas and approaches to analysis. I had the opportunity to attend research talks and networking with other faculty members of Linguistic Research Group at the University of Birmingham which gave me different perspectives and focus on analyzing my PhD. These new encounters and experiences has provided me with various avenues to grow as a research student. I lived in a community home with a great group of friendly international students. The house is 30 minutes walking distance away from the university and close to green hills and parks, providing a calm place to consolidate my thoughts about work. I am very grateful for this opportunity which U21 scholarship has given me and the unique English experience.
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