New Year's resolution...

Happy new year to all!

I thought I would start my new year with a little (PhD) humor...


While I don't think I'll be graduating by the end of 2017 (wouldn't that be nice?) I would like to make considerable headway with my dissertation.  This coming term (in 8 days, in-fact!) my spring semester (or as they call it in Canada "winter term") will begin.  This coming winter term I am doing my final (final! and I mean it!) course/seminar/structured thinking time for my doctoral work.  EDDE 806.  The overview of the course is a little outdated (although I won't ding the web folks for that because I find some outdated verbiage on my work's website too!  Sometime's it's like a game a whack-a-mole).

In any case, EDDE 806 is described as:

This Doctoral seminar course is designed to provide informal support and opportunities for presentation and peer review of activities associated with completion of the doctoral dissertation.  Completion of the course is required prior to graduation for all doctoral students. Students may register in the course only after passing the candidacy exam. The course is seminar based and will consist of registered students who are actively working on their dissertation.  Other EdD students may participate in the course as guests on a voluntary basis and are encouraged to do so. The format is real time web conferencing seminars held every two weeks during the fall and winter terms. Besides student presentations, faculty and guest presentations will be scheduled. The seminar is designed to allow participation and build networks among all EdD cohorts and graduates.
I have not yet passed my candidacy exam (which at Athabasca means passing your dissertation proposal defense), but due to recent regulation changes I am able to be in the seminar even if I am not done with that part.  

Hence my goal, to be achieved by December 30th 2017 is this: Complete my dissertation proposal to a degree that is passable and successfully defend it.  

Ideally I'd like to have this thing wrapped up by September so I can begin working on data collection and analysis, but I don't know how feasible that is given that I am scheduled to teach 2 courses in the summer (June-August) and the spring semester is looking busy with collaborations.  Still, I expect to be making some meaningful headway with this project during the spring and the summer.  Having organized my collected readings today I can say that I have 205 academic articles download and ready to read (excluding duplicates), some dozen or so blogs and news stories (background info), and 5 books on research methods and ethics. I think the articles will lead me to more articles that I will need to look up.  So... 205 articles - does that sound doable between now and July? ;-)

In addition to EDDE 806, I am also auditing MDDE 701.  That course  is more about quantitative research. While I don't really expect my dissertation to go the quantitative route, I am keeping the mixed methods approach open, and quantitative knowledge is good to have anyway. 

When I started this degree I was hoping for a 4 year end-to-end, but increasingly it's looking like it's going to take me 5 years. That said, I'd prefer to take a little longer but take the time to smell the metaphorical roses on the way and take part in interesting collaborations.

So, what are your learning or academic goals for 2017?

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