Multilitteratus Incognitus

From PhD Comics It's been a while since I've had the bandwidth to think about something other than my dissertation proposal.  When I started this process four years ago (starting with matriculation in March 2014) I thought I'd be the first or second person in my cohort to be done (ha!), but like most marathoners I guess I am part of the pack looking at the fast folks ahead of me 😏.  Being part of the pack does have its benefits, such as getting an idea of how long the process takes (having friends in other cohorts also helps with this).  I thought, initially, when someone submitted their draft (be it proposal or final dissertation) that you would get feedback and signs of life from your various committees soonish, but seeing Lisa's journey (currently at 5 weeks and counting) gave me a reality check. Waiting isn't bad per se (we wait for a ton of things in life), but I think it is the expectation of things to come that makes this type waiting much more anxiou...

Trying to get back to blogging, and I'm going back through my backlog - so here is a quick post, documentation post really - from a recent Virtually Connecting session I sat in on on Open Dissertations.

Well, the semester is rockin' and rollin'.  Thanks to @merryspaniel, and the fact that AU posts their syllabi on the web, I knew that I had an assignment early on where I had to critique a couple of dissertations that were already published.  This was also a perfect opportunity to read a dissertation the colleague George M. had send me a while back as an exemplar of a good dissertation in corpus linguistics. Since I had a head start, and I was lucky enough to be able to get one of the two slots in the first presentation week (this week) one assignment is done! Woohoo! Now onward and upward toward the literature review of my dissertation proposal. I've included the presentation componen t (which doesn't seem to want to embed well...) and the brief write-up. The write-up was a little constraining in terms of number of words. It's hard to do a critique in 1 page single space of a dissertation (wonder if this is preparation for doing book reviews).  My main take-...

And so, this week, another school season kicks off!  This week  we had both the kick-off for EDDE 805 (dissertation seminar I) and EDDE 806 (dissertation seminar II). I decided that last to start attending EDDE 806 regularly (or as regularly as I can) so that my final class-based semester (next spring) can be focused more on getting my dissertation proposal done. In this first session of EDDE 806 we mostly had a bit of a check-in (which is sort of what we did in 805 as well). There seemed to be some interesting strands that came came out of 806 last night.  First, Peggy Lynn (Cohort 6) is working on a project to translate the term OER (Open Eaducational Resources) into a variety of languages for a variety of reasons, but one of them is to make it easier to label, and search for, OERs that are in languages other than English.  If you want to help out please check out this page .  I did actually try to coin a term in Greek a number of years ago.  A few co...

I must be the only weirdo who inquires about "taking" a seminar before the 'logical' or programmed sequence of the seminar.  That said, for my doctoral program the final seminar (EDDE 806) is actually open to all EdD students (and alumni) so I have been on-and-off in this seminar since I started two years ago.  When I was in 801 it was easier to attend, so I probably attended 3-4 sessions.  The next two semesters, with 802 and 803 were more challenging, so I dropped from weekly sessions.  Now, with 804 on tap (formally) for this semester, it seems easier (and more conducive) to participate in 806 again.  My goal (even though it hasn't formally been approved yet) is to get as many of these reflections done and "out of the way" as possible so that I can focus on more organic community efforts later on.  So, without further ado, the reflection for last  evening's session.  The main presentation last evening was by Dr. Marguerite Koole of the U...

I am finally catching up with my Pocket reading list, again!  This seems to be a fool's errand since it just keeps filling up again with interesting things to read and ponder ;-).  In any case, Rebecca recently was pondering on her blog if Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE) is an appropriate method for a dissertation.   Rebecca, as far as I know, is currently ABD and looking at wrapping up her degree - I have no doubt that soon she will be Dr. Rebecca :-). I think that there are many reasons why CAE is a good approach to researching certain things. I am introducing my own bias here when I say that I prefer working with others on research projects and on publishing.  I've written some things myself, and there is a benefit to the lone researcher with his readings, literature reviews, data crunching, and data analysis.  It's sort of like going to the gym on your own and working out on your own.  It has its place.  That said, despite the fact that ...

Alright! Here we are! I am continuing the exploration [and one-sided dialogue] with Latour and I have reached the fifth [and final] source of uncertainty. This first part of the book has tried to describe Actor-Network Theory by describing the negative space around it, by offering up metaphors and examples, and by giving some small snippets into what ANT is (or tries to accomplish).  As with the previous posts, I have picked out quotes that resonated with me (3 weeks ago) when I read the chapter. Now I am re-reading them and responding to them [if needed]. This introduction to ANT begins to look like another instance of Zeno’s paradox, as if every segment was split up by a host of mediators each claiming to be taken into account. ‘We will never get there! How can we absorb so many controversies?’ Having reached this point, the temptation is great to quit in despair and to fall back on more reasonable social theories that would prove their stolid common sense by ignoring most ...

It seems like the cosmos is back on another round on beating down on the venerable dissertation as final exercise for a doctoral degree. Stephen Downes posted yesterday this article from Times Higher Education which is asking the question as to whether or not the Doctoral Dissertation is obsolete .† The article quotes Jeremy Farrar of Imperial College London: “An awful lot is going unused and unread,” he says. “Is this really appropriate for the modern world? Communication within the science world and with the public is becoming shorter and snappier, yet our PhDs still seem to be stuck in the 1960s.” Another strand here is a recent post from Maha who writes : What’s a PhD got to do with…. Writing 6,000 word articles? My PhD was over 100,000 Words. That prepared me for writing books but not articles. Some PhDs are composed of articles but most aren’t so…  Working collaboratively – you work alone and you learn to manage. Then in real life your research can be so much ...

Derby Wharf, Salem, MA - Jan 2015 (Storm: Juno) I am sure that last one is a word I just made up on the spot. It's been a slow week in 802.  I was reading Lisa's reflection on Lurking in 802 (she is in last year's cohort, so she is two courses ahead of us in Cohort 7), and how she viewed 802 at the time as a make or break experience for the Ed.D. program.  While 801 last semester was a whirlwind tour of Online and Distance Education , this semester is a whirlwind tour (or boot-camp perhaps) on the topic of Research and how to go about doing it.  The textbook, by Cohen and the gang , is something that I have read before (a few year ago), but this doesn't help a ton ;-)  There is a lot to unpack, and this book is dense.  Even if one could memorize everything (not a good way to learn, by the way), it's like going to philosophy course - you are there essentially to argue for and support your stance. You are also called upon to explain your underlying fra...

Week 1 of 15, of semester 2 of 8, of doctoral work is about to end!  The course that my cohort is focusing on this semester is a research methods course . Luckily neither I, nor it seems many of my classmates, are that new to research methods.  It's nice to have the group (or at least quite a few members of the group) exposed to the basics so that we can spend some time in critiquing and going deeper (and that's something we did on our cohort's facebook group this week anyway).  I also appreciate the fact the course isn't setup to only allow for one path through the course.  There are certainly foundational materials that we are expected to read and know, but for presentations it seems like we have a ton of choices in terms of what research methods we choose to present. I've been thinking about the assignments and I think I will spend some time exploring research methods that I haven't had a ton of exposure in, or methods that I've been meaning to go muc...

It's been a while since Rhizo14 ended, but the community is going strong! Facebook may not be as active (or maybe facebook is  hiding most Rhizo posts from my timeline...that could be it...anyway), but we are still chugging along with the collaborative *graphy. I can't call it an ethnography, or autoethnography because variables have changed.  Some of us decided to get together and write an article for Hybrid Pedagogy on why the Collaborative *graphy article is taking so long (a meta-article if you will) but we got stuck there too (or it seems as though we are stuck).  I think others have written about their own personal views on this on their own blogs, so I've been working out what my own stumbling blocks are with this project. I think I have a way to explain things now! So, when working collaboratively in previous collaborative work situations your final product feel unified.  The main analogy that I can give give is the main root of one plant which looks like ...