THREE MINUTE THESIS® CHALLENGESGCU’s 3MT® GCU’S
CA S E S T U D I E S O F 2 0 1 9 - 2 0 C P E P ROJ ECTS
THREE MINUTE
THESIS 2020
GCU’s 2020 3MT online final hosts, presenters and judges.
The Graduate School in collaboration
with GCU Community and Public
Engagement have run a local Three
Minute Thesis competition at GCU
since 2015. It is one of a number of
collaborative projects between the two
professional support departments as part
of the Vitae Researcher Development
Framework commitment .“Our partnership delivers something
richer and more relevant for our
research community than we could
achieve on our own.”
Dr Amy Cartwright, Deputy Director,
Graduate School.
WHAT: Three Minute Thesis was
developed by The University of
Queensland to celebrate the exciting
research conducted by PhD students,
fnalists have one slide and three minutes
to present their research in language
appropriate to a non-specialist audience.
WHERE & WHEN: After our original
face-face training sessions and fnal
as part of GCU Research Day were
cancelled for April and May 2020 and
following consultation with members
of the executive, the GCU Three Minute
Thesis team and an online poll on Twitter,
a decision was made in April, to run the
competition online.
WHY: The aim of this year’s competition
was to bring people together at a difcult
time during COVID-19 lockdown to
celebrate the research going on
at GCU, ensure GCU remained one of the
200+ universities who take part in the
Vitae UK National competition in
the UK each year and to ensure this
year’s GCU cohort did not miss out on
the chance to raise their profle and
share their research. It was important
that the competition was fexible to
acknowledge the diferent time zones
and pressures people were under
at the time so this was built into the
design. Live sessions were recorded
so that they could be viewed in
people’s own time and an online
frequently asked questions guide
was produced. In previous years,
the competition has inspired participants
who have been part of the process
to continue to communicate their
important research to the world
beyond academia.
CPE 2019-20 21