At the monthly meetings, immediate feedback opportunities via “one-minute papers” serve as a reflective learning tool for the participants, as a vehicle for posing further questions to the presenters, and allow the MGK team to promptly address wishes and suggestions given by the Ph.D. candidates. With the aid of this feedback, the concept of the MGK monthly events was repeatedly fine-tuned to better serve the needs of the participants.

A small group of three Ph.D. candidates volunteered on joining the MGK board to represent the opinion of all Ph.D. candidates towards the MGK team, and to mediate in possible problematic cases.

Apart from presentations at international conferences, the MGK team exchanges ideas about Ph.D. education with colleagues of other Ph.D. programs, for example at the following conferences:

• Qualitätsmanagement in der Graduiertenförderung, UniWiND, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, November 2013
• The Future of Doctoral Education - were do we go from here?, 8th EUA-CDE Annual Meeting, Technische Universität München, June 2015
• Professionals in Doctoral Education: Supporting skills development to better contribute to the European knowledge society, Final Conference of the PRIDE project, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, September 2016
• 3rd International Conference on Developments in Doctoral Education & Training, UK Council for Graduate Education, The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon (UK), April 2017