Work-integrated learning for working life in academia – experiences from online learning activities with PhD students

The PhD period needs to provide work-integrated learning (WIL) in academia to enable the development of academic skills and handling situations of failure as well as success. During the Covid-19 pandemic there was increased risk for PhD students of losing pace in PhD projects, disconnectedness from academia and decreased well-being, while digitalisation in PhD education increased. The purpose was to test and explore the experienced value of group-based online learning activities for PhD students, and how they relate to WIL in PhD education. The two tested online learning activities were online monthly meetings and online writing retreats. The project was performed with Plan-Do-Study-Act. Evaluation data included the number of participants, types of spin-offs from the learning activities, and participants’ feedback. The data were analysed from the perspective of the experienced value of the learning activities and how they can relate to WIL in PhD education. The PhD students acquired increased academic and leadership skills, experienced less stress, enhanced self-efficacy, decreased dependency on supervisors and a safe social environment important for their well-being. In addition, there was good progress of the participants’ projects and joy at work.


Introduction
There is a changing landscape of employment and career paths for PhD graduates (Hnatkova et al. 2022), which emphasises the need learning for a changing work life also for PhD students.There is a need to ensure comprehensive training for PhD students and workintegrated learning (WIL) can support employability after PhD, both in academia and in other fields (O'Connor, Denejkina, and Arvanitakis 2023) as well as inspire PhD students for future careers (Govender and Wait 2017).The PhD period also needs to provide WIL in academia to enable the development of academic skills and handling situations of failure as well as success (Bernery et al. 2022).As the concept of WIL has developed over time, WIL is now seen as an umbrella term encompassing education, collaboration, and research (Billett 2014;Olsson et al. 2021;Bernhard and Olsson 2023).WIL intends to bridge theory and practice, to support the transition from education to working life, and also create synergy between theory and practice (Jackson and Rowe 2023).For PhD students this can be seen as learning and preparing for a working life in academia but also learning within the working context of academia.Enculturation to academia as a future workplace is a key feature for PhD students aiming for an academic career (Glorieux et al.) Developing a scholarly identity can be seen as enabled through a collaborative and collegial relationship with the supervisor, characterised by reciprocity (Buirski 2022).This reciprocity could probably also occur among fellow PhD students, and collaboration and collegial relationships should be nurtured in this context to create supportive and valuable academic networks for the future.Facilitating collaboration with fellow PhD students and senior researchers in academia, can also assist PhD students in developing as a scholar and foster academic independence from the supervisor.
A major work task for PhD students and when working in academia, is academic writing.Academic writing can be especially problematic when performed in a foreign language and PhD students experience several emotional and competence barriers when working with academic writing (Hawari, Al-Shboul, and Huwari 2021).Therefore, academic writing is an important task to focus on in WIL in academia, where strategies for handling emotions and experiences of failure related to academic writing are important to acknowledge as they will be part of future academic working life.Failure in academia is rarely spoken of officially, even if there is a lot of learning from failure in academia as well (Gaillard et al. 2022), for example how to handle rejection of funding applications and manuscripts.Sharing experiences can help handle issues connected with failure in academia (Bernery et al. 2022;Cvitanovic et al. 2022).Fear of failure can also be connected to academic jealousy, which can be based on emotions and behaviour caused by the fact that a person sees themself as inadequate and in inferior positions due to a comparison related to their work (Bayar and Koca 2021;Gaillard et al. 2022).
Most PhD students are positive towards doing a PhD (Bernery et al. 2022), but there are risks of low well-being and high levels of stress among PhD students, together with feelings of isolation and impostor syndrome (Levecque et al. 2017;Schmidt and Hansson 2018;Seeber and Horta 2021;Massyn 2023;Vigil Avilés, Jang, and Urban 2024).This can be due to publication and progress demands of their PhD projects (Seeber and Horta 2021;Glorieux et al. 2024).However, such demands will persist in an academic career, and therefore the PhD students need to find strategies to handle such issues.During the Covid-19 pandemic both project progress and well-being were decreased for PhD students, due to for example erosion of scholarly support networks, limited access to institutional resources and poor work-life balance (Pyhältö, Tikkanen, and Anttila 2022).In post-Covid society working life is more hybrid, which further motivates learning skills of and participation related in online work and collaboration.
As well-being in academia also is connected to professional outcome (Vigil Avilés, Jang, and Urban 2024) finding strategies for a healthy working life is part of essential work-life skills.Thus, the PhD period needs to provide different ways of WIL in academia to provide skills for working life, but also strategies for enabling well-being at work.Research concerning PhD students' well-being and academic progress shows that the supervisor has an extremely important role for completion of the PhD, for the wellbeing of the PhD student and for providing support in emotional and intellectual difficulties (Areskoug Josefsson et al. 2016;Buirski 2022;Glorieux et al. 2024).Support from peer PhD students is also valuable in handling negative experiences or feelings of failure in academia (Gaillard et al. 2022).There are limited resources set up for PhD supervision and mentoring, which can create stress and a mismatch in needs and capacities between the supervisor and the PhD-student (Massyn 2023).Therefore, changing the ways supervision is performed can have positive impacts both during the PhD period and for future working life, both for supervisors and PhD students.

Purpose
The purpose was to test and explore the experienced value of group-based online learning activities for PhD students, and how they relate to WIL in PhD education.This is specified in the following research questions: Which perspectives of experienced value are found from PhD students testing group-based online learning activities?How are the tested learning activities relating to WIL in PhD education?

Setting and sample
The project was conducted at a smaller Swedish University.The project was initiated by a supervisor during the Covid-19 pandemic as a response to the changed working conditions during this time.
The sample for the monthly meetings consisted of four part-time PhD students, who had separate PhD projects and supervisory teams, but shared the same main supervisor.
The sample for the online writing retreats started with the same sample as for the monthly meetings, but were thereafter open to any PhD student who considered themselves in need of learning better academic writing structure, master students who wanted to become PhD students, other supervisors who wanted to see how an online writing retreat worked.Invitations were spread by word of mouth, and suggested participants got an invitation link from the facilitating supervisor.Therefore, the participants varied in PhD education phase (4-12 PhD students), country, discipline and language, however no personal data of participants was collected.

Data collection
There were no additional resources allocated for the project, instead the project was a collaborative engagement aiming to enhance productivity for all participants, including the facilitating supervisor.The project has been performed with Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) in biannual evaluation cycles.The PDSA is a quality improvement tool focusing on the translation of ideas and intentions into action (Reed and Card 2016).The iterative structure of PDSA is well suited to promote learning of a tested change and help shape organisational culture for the better (Reed and Card 2016).Evaluation data included number of participants in the online writing retreats, types of spin-offs from the learning activities, and participants' oral and written feedback on the learning activities.Data were collected continuously during the project.The collected data were analysed from the perspective of the experienced value of the learning activities, and how they can relate to WIL in PhD education.

Online monthly meetings for PhD students supervised by the same supervisor
The first meeting was only a convenient decision to meet up with two PhD students and the main supervisor as both experienced the same difficulties in their different projects.The positive experience from this meeting, both in shared learning and socially led to an invitation to monthly meetings for a six-month period and an invitation to participate to two additional PhD students.The meetings were co-designed by the PhD students, depending on the experienced needs of the PhD students.The meetings were booked for six months in a row, and when being booked the responsibility for each meeting was assigned to the participants by themselves.The person in charge of the meeting decided the structure of the meeting, but the content was often decided in consensus with the group and concerned topics of importance to the group.The participating supervisor had an equal role to others in the meeting and had responsibility for meetings on the same criteria as the other participants.The meetings were strict concerning time and set as morning meetings (8.00-9.00) to not interfere with other work tasks.The PhD students were in different phases of their PhD-process; thus, they could bring in varied perspectives and share learning with each other on the academic processes.They could also discuss issues that they considered important, such as being asked to review for a journal or being asked to teach at bachelor or master programmes.Such collaborative working discussions across projects and disciplines are important in academia and the meetings were used to solve problems in academic practice and to test scientific ideas.As the meetings also were led in turn by the participating PhD students, academic leadership skills were practiced in this setting.The participating supervisor had a more passive role than in traditional supervision meetings, as the meetings were intended to be inspirational and provide opportunities for shared learning.

Online structured online writing retreats
The used online writing retreat structure was previously used in other contexts (Guccione 2020), and the facilitating supervisor e-mailed a group of PhD students asking if they would like to test an online writing retreat.Four PhD students were willing to try and got invited to the first retreat.Each retreat was performed in Zoom and started with a short PowerPoint presentation of the structure and aims of the retreat.In the structure there are explanations of the importance of setting writing goals, analysing how the goals are being met, but also why it is essential to have breaks during the writing sessions.The online writing retreats contain a short presentation, followed by a 5 min task of free writing on the topic 'The writing I need to do today is … ', which formed the base for the goalsetting of the day.The goals for the day were shared among the participants, by a 1-2 min presentation from each participant.Each day had three writing sessions, where the first two were divided by a 15 min coffee break, followed by a 45 min lunch break before the final writing session.After the two first sessions, the participants did a 1-2 min presentation of how they were doing in reaching their goals and their feelings relating to their writing of the day.Before starting the last session, each participant presented their refined goals for the final writing session.After the final writing session, each participant shared their progress and feelings from the day.As a final task for the writing retreat, each participant wrote in the meeting chat when they had planned their next two two-hour writing sessions in the coming two-week period.
The broad variety of participants showed the importance and diversity of academic writing.The participants chose their writing tasks, report on their progress, and plan for their next step -but being their own controller and thus actively practicing self-leadership and time management.At the same time the participants shared their feelings of participating in the writing retreat when reporting their writing progress -thus creating a social, international, and interdisciplinary forum, increasing their networks, and enhancing feelings of belonging.This in turn ignited cross-project collaboration, thematic discussions and sharing of scientific literature of importance.The facilitating supervisor, participated on the same level as other participants, planning personal writing tasks for retreats, sharing writing progress and feelings related to academic writing.

Ethics
The participants of the online writing retreats were asked via email if they were willing to share their experiences of the online writing retreats with the facilitating supervisor, which nine participants opted to do.When being asked they were informed that their experiences were to be included in reporting experienced outcomes of the online writing retreats.Ethical approval is not needed for this type of study according to the Swedish Ethical review Act, however all participants sharing data gave informed consent to participate in the research.The described experiences were not anonymous, but the quotes have been translated into English and personal data were removed from quotes to ensure confidentiality.

Data analysis
The analysis was performed with a pragmatic, iterative narrative analysis approach (Clark et al. 2021) and the researcher engaged actively with the participants throughout the project.The collected data from the two learning activities were analysed first separately before summarising the findings from both activities.The analysis focused on experienced value of the tested learning activities and those experiences can relate to WIL in PhD education.

Results
The results are presented first for the online monthly meetings, thereafter for the online writing retreats and finally a summary of results for both activities.

Results from monthly meetings
There have been 28 online monthly meetings from May 2020 until October 2022.The meetings consisted of four PhD students and their main supervisor.An external international supervisor participated in one meeting to explore the activity.
The first couple of meetings were continued by the monthly meetings being planned for six-month periods.As the PhD students have decided to continue with the meetings it is presumable that they value the activity.The evaluation of the monthly meetings has been carried out by reflection of the value of each meeting at the end of the meeting, and by short discussions biannually when deciding on continuance of the meetings.There have not been structured changes in the setting of the monthly meetings, instead there has been a continuous development of the meetings as they have proceeded.
The first four monthly meetings included tasks of reading articles before to the meetings, inviting external senior researchers and were often quite strictly planned.
We will continue to discuss psychometrics at our next meeting (date).Presentation is attached, so you can read and prepare questions.
This was followed by a period of more open meetings, with a focus on reflection and discussions about being a PhD-student.Thereafter the monthly meetings have developed to cover both types of meetings and have an openness in the meetings for needs of knowledge and support, as well as using each other as discussants for methodological and conceptual reflections.
I have reflected a lot about those methodological questions the last week, specifically how to be able to adhere to the method when also considering power structures.What are your thoughts?
The meetings seem to be prioritised by the participants as most meetings have had full participation, and the PhD students are continuously active in planning and carrying out the meetings after more than 2 years of meetings.The experiences expressed in the meetings are that the meetings fill another role than supervision meetings, as they have a more general than project-specific focus and provide a safe social context to share reflections.To plan and lead meetings in an academic online environment provides possibilities to practice academic leadership, a skill important in academia.
The monthly meetings have also shown the journey of PhD studies, as the participating PhD students have started their PhD studies in different years, and their progression also depends on their level of study (none of them study full-time).To be able to closely follow the progress of other PhD students and listen to their stories of different milestones, like the first rejection of a paper, handling of revisions of texts, conference participation preparation, practicing midway seminar presentations and planning for dissertation -all of which provides invaluable collaborative learning opportunities both during the PhD period as well as for future work in academia.
It is time for our monthly meeting on Thursday.I was thinking that I can talk about my experiences from peer review of my manuscript and from the international conference and listen to your experiences.I learnt some lessons … When invitations for each monthly meeting are sent out, the participants respond with cheerful replies to each other, as well as comments on the topic and suggestions for relevant additional material.This behaviour fosters a positive work environment, knowledge exchange and collaboration, and can also be seen as the PhD students being positive towards the monthly meetings and collaboratively working to ensure that they are valuable for them.From the supervisor´s perspective, participating in the monthly meetings has been time-efficient, as the experience is that there are fewer requests for individual time-consuming supervision meetings and the administrative tasks related to the PhD-process have been more easily managed after the introduction of the monthly meetings.These changes may indicate increased independence among the participating PhD students.

Results of online writing retreats
There have been 20 online writing retreats from May 2020 to October 2022 with 24 participating PhD students from four countries and nine universities.There has also been participation by two supervisors representing Norway and South Africa aiming to experience the activity.Each retreat has had between 5 and 13 participants (including facilitating supervisor).
The PDSA was used by the facilitating supervisor for each retreat, with each retreat being evaluated at the end of each retreat by discussion by the participants regarding the value of the retreat.The facilitator noted what worked well during each retreat and if there were things that should be changed to improve the experiences and outcomes of the online writing retreats.An example of a structural change was the time allocated for writing retreats.During the first 6 months, there were online retreats for both full days and half-days, but the experience was that this was more stressful, as the task for the second part of the day interfered with concentration during the writing retreat.Therefore, the following retreats have been full days from 9.00 to 15.00.
In the first 6 months, each online writing retreat ended with the question of whether we should do this again.If the participants said 'yes' a new date was booked together.After the first six months, the group decided on wanting to keep the online writing retreats as a prioritised activity and therefore wanted them to be booked in longer for the coming 6 months.Therefore, the facilitating supervisor booked the writing retreats for six months ahead, after this decision.As there was no longer consensus of suitable dates for the participating PhD students, there was a risk that fewer PhD students would be able to participate.However, it became clear that the PhD students prioritised to be able to participate.
Already in the early online writing retreats there were PhD students who came late or wanted to join in when convenient for them.This has not been encouraged, and if there has been a wish to join in later, they had to inform the facilitator in advance so that others in the group were aware of another person joining in later.The reason for this was both not to disturb the writing sessions, but also as the writing retreats are to learn to prioritise writing.Therefore, if someone were to join in late, they could only join when there was a break.From the feedback at the writing retreats, PhD students who did join late explained that they had more trouble getting started in their writing and staying concentrated on their set tasks, than those who took part in the whole retreat.At the same time, there have been many online sessions and meetings during the pandemic, where the possibility to join in and take part based on your own schedule, has been allowed.Therefore this 'closed' attitude seemed to be slightly surprising for the participants at first, and then it added to relaxation during the writing sessions as everyone knew who was in the online room, and what they were working towards.
The feeling of being together in a group (even if I write alone in my room).
It was important to minimise disturbance in the online setting, and participants were asked to turn off notices of emails, and mobile phones.The camera was expected to be on during the writing sessions, which could be experienced as a disturbance or as support.
I get distracted if someone forgets to turn off their microphone while writing and by my camera being on while I write.
I think what has been most valuable to me by joining writing retreats is first, learning how much I can write in short periods when I am concentrated and make goals and have a commitment (to the others, and with the camera on).
During the first six months of online writing retreats, the facilitator's role was more active.It can be due to wanting to make sure that everyone understood the tasks and to ensure that the online writing retreats were experienced as valuable to the participants.
In the first six months, the facilitator actively invited who should be the next presenter in each of the presenting tasks, but this was changed to each participant inviting the next speaker.This gave a more social sharing experience among participants.As each writing retreat included new or different participants, this was an important step in adding to the feeling of 'being seen' in the online room.This was especially important as there have come new participants and others have left as they have completed their PhD.The participants of the writing retreats have thus not been a static group, but a group where participants freely choose if they want to participate.However, the link to be able to join the online writing retreats has been shared by invitation only.In the first months, the invitation went to the PhD students who had the facilitator as supervisor, then the invitations were also shared more broadly.PhD students asked if they could invite other PhD students, whom they thought would benefit from participating, and the facilitator got requests also from supervisors at other universities of being able to invite other external participants.This process led to further internationalisation of the group, from a Swedish starting group to including Norwegian, Russian and South African PhD students.This in turn brought about a linguistic change.In the beginning, the participants could use Swedish as their language of presentation, and when including Norwegian students, it was still possible to use Scandinavian languages.However, with more international participation, the language in the writing retreats changed to English.The language change was experienced as a barrier to some participants, but by others seen as a possibility to practice presenting short and unprepared live online in English.
My challenge is that the online writing retreats are in English.I don't feel comfortable talking English yet that is a barrier for me.But I just have to practice even more … .
As the participants come from different countries and write in more than one language at the retreats, there have also been dialogues concerning writing speed and writing expectations when setting goals depending on which language the participant is writing in.This added learning not only of writing in different languages, but also in opportunities to present research for different audiences depending on the language.
In the goalsetting at each retreat, it has become evident that participants who have participated at several retreats have started to talk about their writing in more ways, for example describing their writing tasks as 'free writing', 'detailed writing', 'writing by adding references to the text' and 'read and revise writing'.This use of various ways to describe their writing seems to have helped them to organise writing tasks, but also to use all those ways of writing in a structured way.Instead of comparing writing days and being stressed about not producing enough text, or too much text of low quality, they reflect upon their reason for writing in the way they do for their set task.As the writing retreats first became focused on production, and therefore risking increasing feelings of pressure, the facilitator tested ways of adding positive names to each writing retreat.This was by giving each retreat a theme, including a cheerful subtitle and connected pictures to the presentation of each retreat, such as 'Busy season, keep working & smiling while doing it!' or 'Sun will shine, but I will write -Staying focused!' I think it is very motivating and engaging to work like this, and more productive.For me it works best to be prepared in advance.For example, I have worked on the discussion of my article.That I had read and planned beforehand about concepts that I wanted to include was very helpful.I felt like I was very productive at the retreat.
I experienced that the fellowship and the structure helped me to get motivated and find focus on those days when this was lacking for me.
As the online writing retreats proceeded, the introduction became shorter, for example the writing goals were no longer asked to be presented according to SMART goals, but instead in a freer format.This was experienced as increasing the value of the writing retreats, as even more time was spent on writing.In this period there were also sent out emails encouraging participants to plan what they were going to write during the writing retreat before the retreat.It has been clear that the participants plan, and sometimes 'save' writing tasks for the retreat, when they know that they will have time to focus on a specific task.When inviting new PhD students, they were informed that they should plan what to write before the retreat.The final task of each online writing retreat is to schedule the next planned writing time.This task is intended to encourage participants to set up and prioritise writing time.As the retreats have progressed, it is evident that the participants are well prepared in their planning as this task takes much less time than it did in the beginning.It seems like the participants now already have set up dates in their calendars, and therefore not have to search for timeslots.
My impression was that the online writing retreat created value by scheduling time for writing, and having to think in advance about what to write -topic, references, how much text to produce, etc.This made me more ready for the writing itself.
Participants being new to the concept, often have too high expectations of what to accomplish during the writing retreats, while those who have participated in more online writing retreats have a more realistic view of what can be accomplished in the set sessions.
Learning what is realistic to expect in writing, is not only a useful skill, but can help in structuring needed time for writing tasks, and feeling content with what has been achieved, thus increasing well-being by having realistic expectations.The sharing of goals and achievements of each retreat can create feelings of being part of academia and understanding the shared struggle of wanting to write with excellence.Sharing can also unravel topics that participants have in common and thus enable possibilities for collaboration and networking outside the retreats.
I have had great use of being able to listen to how others work, that others also have challenges and how they handle them … Writing retreats have given me the opportunity to reflect on my own and others' writing, methods and goals … To me it has enhanced the joy of writing.
… to be a part of a community that is not my usual community, that has been inspiring for me.Daily I tend to see the same people, hear about the same projects (and problems).Also, in lockdown hearing about others was good for me, I think.
In the second year of writing retreats, participants were asked if they were willing to act as a critical friend on a manuscript.Two participants volunteered and commentated on the manuscript.At the next online retreat, they were informed that the paper had been submitted after their comments had helped adjustments of the paper.In a later retreat they were informed of acceptance of the paper.This type of showing examples or storytelling on how to support each other in academic writing, was intended to serve as an ignition to the participants to reach out and support each other, and there have been other participants asking and getting critical friends after this.
I also learned that learning from each other does not necessarily mean a lot of interventiontogetherness also is a way of support, even if everyone is busy with their work.The collegiality and support are wonderful.
The online reflection retreat gave good insights.I think all retreats have increased my ability to reflect on my work.Where am I, where am I going, how will I get there and what are my goals (both for my paper and me as a professional).
Spin-offs from the online writing retreat were an online reflective retreat held in spring 2022 and arranged by one PhD student in collaboration with a supervisor, critical friends for manuscript reading, PhD students supporting each other in scientific methodology, expanding international networks by sharing scientific articles and material outside of the retreat setting and a collaboration in international and interdisciplinary funding application.
In addition, former participants are aiming to start online writing retreats with new groups of students, which is seen as the online writing retreats have given value to the participants.
That was an amazing experience.We got to know each other from around the world.I feel extremely glad that I could join the retreats.I have already thoughts of starting similar retreats with other students.
From a supervisor's perspective, the online writing retreats have provided scheduled time for academic writing, while at the same time sharing and teaching about academic writing.This has been time efficient, providing learning of the writing process and progress from each of the PhD students that the supervisor had a supervision relationship with, while at the same time getting influences and learning from other participants regarding their strategies for academic writing.The online writing retreats did therefore both contribute to progress in academic writing tasks, shared learning, and joy at work.These things put together have made the retreats something I look forward to and prioritize.It's not magic, I am still behind in my work, however it feels helpful anyway.
Summary of results: What can be learnt from testing online learning activities regarding contribution to PhD students' academic leadership skills, academic working skills and promotion of well-being for PhD students?
Both learning activities have worked well and sustained as attractive learning activities over time for the participants.The learning activities did work to promote academic leadership and academic working skills, as well as well-being for the participating PhD students.
Being an active participant in learning activities can support the facilitating supervisor's learning and serve as a storyteller, if the facilitator talks about their testing and positive results of an action, then the same action can be tried by other participants or other participants can create and tell a new story which can be learned from by the group.
The intended learning outcomes were achieved, and the tested learning activities will proceed.Additional outcomes are unexpected positive spinoffs from the learning activities.The tested activities can therefore be of use in PhD-supervision but should be evaluated if tested in other contexts.

Discussion
The positive findings from testing two online learning activities in PhD education provide learning of how those activities can be considered as WIL in the PhD period, and support well-being in academia Some academics perceive an increase in workload if implementing WIL (Govender and Wait 2017), however this was not shown in this case.The results show that the tested online learning activities have promoted engagement, joy at work and productivity.The positive outcomes of the tested activities in PhD education have previously been acknowledged from the supervisor's perspective (Areskoug Josefsson 2023).
The online and open format of the tested writing retreats enabled continuity, and enough participants to form a learning community, despite being a full-time or part-time PhD student, geographic location, and changes in PhD student group due to completion, new acceptances to PhD education, or sick leave.The online format is recommended as parttime PhD students and distance students often have fewer opportunities to participate in often struggle to feel as part of the academic community (Papen and Thériault 2018).Face-to face writing retreats for PhD students have also shown positive results, but the critique is that these face-to-face writing retreats seldom are regular, continuous activities but instead being singular events (Papen and Thériault 2018).
The experienced value of the tested learning activities are important findings as they can promote WIL, skills training, and enculturation to academia as a workplace for PhD students.Positive experiences of WIL in an organisation increase the possibility of choosing to work for this organisation after having finalised the studies (Govender and Wait 2017).Enculturation to academia as a potential future workplace may be especially important for part-time PhD students, who do their PhD project in another organisation (Bernhard and Olsson 2023).To enable PhD student to learn for working life for work both inside and outside of academia, WIL during the PhD period should cover both contexts.Even if fewer PhDs are being employed in academia than before (O'Connor, Denejkina, and Arvanitakis 2023), academic skills are essential as research is also conducted outside of academia.
The positive 'group feeling' that is shown by the results of the tested learning activities can support both learning and well-being.This is in line with the suggestions by Gaillard et al. (2022) regarding support from fellow PhD students in handling feelings of failure in academia.The PhD period should also foster academic collegiality rather than rivalry which can be promoted by lessening anxiety, increasing self-esteem, and encouraging socialising in the academic environment (Bayar and Koca 2021).
The use of strategies that promote participation in authentic activities, like academic writing and collaborative problem-solving that occur in the tested learning activities, are part of WIL in the academic context, especially as the supervisor participates equally as the PhD students, thus sharing the authentic work tasks that the supervisor is currently working with.To improve the skill of academic writing, it is recommended to test different practices to improve writing output and overcome barriers to academic writing (Grogan 2021).Mechanisms that can support academic writing skills are part of the tested learning activities, such as setting goals, peer pressure and getting support from others (Grogan 2021; Vigil Avilés, Jang, and Urban 2024).There is not one academic writing strategy that works for all, therefore stories of what works well or not and how this was experienced can provide learning useful for others (Grogan 2021).The focus on learning the skill of academic writing and scheduling time for writing, can be seen as a resource for prioritising writing in future academic work.As academic writing and publication of research are key skills for researchers, and crucial for an academic career, this skill is essential for PhD students.
There are several strategies to test to promote working skills for future work and wellbeing in academia, and the presented online learning activities are just two examples.There is a need to actively engage in finding, testing, and evaluating potential strategies to ensure their value in various contexts.To share learnings from such tests are therefore valuable to guide others in similar situations in finding useful strategies to encourage ways of WIL in academia.The tested online learning activities involve elements of storytelling.Storytelling seeks to support higher cognitive thinking skills and storytelling can serve as an engaging and complementary approach to developing reflective thinking skills in higher education (McKillop 2005).Sharing stories about their experiences in the monthly meetings and the online writing retreats, even if it is only unstructured short stories related to performed tasks, can be beneficial in advancing their academic reflectivity, especially if the stories continue overtime and in several activities.
The frequency of meetings with the supervisor are important for satisfaction of PhD students (Seeber and Horta 2021) and for completion of their projects (Gray and Crosta 2019;Skopek, Triventi, and Blossfeld 2022).The added monthly meetings will not be sufficient to reach the highest levels of satisfaction in PhD supervision, which occur at daily meetings or meetings several times per week (Seeber and Horta 2021).In online supervision the frequency of monthly online meetings has been recommended (Gray and Crosta 2019) and going from monthly meetings in individual supervision, to also having monthly group meetings, doubles the meeting opportunities.The monthly meetings may have been extra important during the Covid-19-pandemic, as other PhD students experienced a lowered frequency of supervision meetings during this period (Pyhältö, Tikkanen, and Anttila 2022).The importance of balancing the number of PhD students to ensure sufficient time for meetings with the PhD students are important (Seeber and Horta 2021).Group meetings together with other PhD students can increase the frequency of supervision meetings, and still be possible to handle for the supervisor.Adding more individual meetings, may not be possible to the same extent as supervisor resources are limited and supervisors' well-being and workload must be taken into account (Massyn 2023).The increased interaction with academia through the monthly meetings can support socialisation and enculturation with academia for PhD students, and the design of the monthly meetings may also increase equality.There is a hierarchical tradition in supervision, which can be mitigated by active interventions to promote equality in the relationship (Buirski 2022).To change the setting from having only meetings where the PhD student is outnumbered by the team of supervisors, to including meetings where the supervisor is outnumbered by the PhD students, together with letting the PhD students lead and plan the meeting, can promote equality, while at the same time teach necessary academic leadership skills and WIL in academia.It may be difficult for the supervisor to meet all demands of PhD students (Massyn 2023), and the use of online group meetings may provide other ways of meeting the needs of PhD students, while at the same time providing opportunities for WIL.The value of group supervision has been acknowledged previously, with outcomes such as decreased feelings of isolation of PhD students, increased progress of their work and providing work culture training (O'Connor, Denejkina, and Arvanitakis 2023).
The internationalisation which occurred through the open format of the online writing retreats, may assist in PhD-student satisfaction even if it is not directly connected to the sought for engagement of supervisors in international research as described by Seeber and Horta (2021).There are also differences in support connected to PhD-supervision between countries and universities regarding expectations, regulations and organisational support which adds to the complexity of supervision (Wichmann-Hansen, Godskesen, and Kiley 2020).By participating in online learning activities with PhD students from other universities, learning of diversity and strategies to handle this diversity that can occur within this forum.The important academic values of collegiality, collaboration and reciprocity (Buirski 2022) were seen in the tested online learning activities.Thus, useful learning for future collaboration in research and education with other universities both nationally and internationally were developed within the online learning activities.
The positive findings from the presented tests were encouraging, through those easily administered learning activities, WIL was experienced -together with joy at work.There is a need to bring forward the positive aspects of work in academia and of being a PhDstudent (Bernery et al. 2022), considering the risks of decreased well-being and experienced negative stress among PhD students (Schmidt and Hansson 2018).

Methodological discussion
There were participating PhD students having thorough experience and education in quality improvement work, which may have been beneficial for the project as PDSA demands an understanding of the concept.In addition, the project was led by a supervisor with extensive experience in quality improvement work, which is also a success factor for learning from PDSA (Reed and Card 2016).The written evaluations from the participants concerning the online writing retreats can be positively biased as they were not anonymous, but they were considered useful to highlight experiences.

Conclusion
Both online learning activities worked well, promoted WIL, related to an academic career and sustained as attractive learning activities over time.The PhD students themselves describe how they have both acquired increased academic skills, experienced decreased negative stress, created a safe social environment important for their well-being.The online learning activities also presented a view of how to work together in academia, which may support the PhD students when considering a future career in academia.The findings imply that the tested online learning activities enhanced self-efficacy, leadership skills, cross-disciplinary collaboration, national and international networks, and decreased dependency on supervisors.In addition, there has been good progress in the participants' projects and joy at work.