Multilitteratus Incognitus

If you've ever seen the movie Shaun of the Dead , a humorous take on the surviving the zombie apocalypse, you are familiar with the Winchester plan.  The Winchester is a local (to the protagonist) pub, and it key to surviving the zombie apocalypse - according to the protagonist, is taking a short skip-and-a-hop to the local pub (after doing a couple of short tasks) and waiting for help to arrive while imbibing their drink of choice. Surviving the zombie apocalypse is a breeze!  Well, it's not that simple to survive the zombie apocalypse - as the protagonist finds out! The past semester has been a little difficult (mostly due to over-committing on my part) and that has affected my own desired progress through my doctoral program.  The classes and the seminars are done (yay!). The next step is the dissertation proposal (which is in draft form).  In the past few days I've been thinking about my progress in all its wonderful variety which includes slow progress, lack ...

I guess this is my "806 is dead, long live 806!" post ;-)  One of the final requirements for EDDE 806 is to: Create a final blog post linking to the 6 earlier posts and providing a final reflection, feedback and any recommendations on the course as a whole. For those who are keeping score at home, other course requirements included the following: Present a 30-45 minute presentation on their proposal or dissertation work and progress and respond to comments and questions. Post reactions and reflections on at least 6 of the presentations (over one or more semesters) using a response template created by the instructor, to their blog in the Athabasca Landing (tagged with EDD 806) Attend and participate in discussion in at least 6 sessions over one or two semesters of the course I am not really sure what a final reflection really looks like for 806, especially considering that I will most likely attend quite a few sessions next fall when the remainder of my co...

Alright folks!  That's a wrap for EDDE 806 for this semester!  The semester went out with a bang with three members of my cohort presenting their dissertation proposal work in progress (and for those on the east coast the session was a little long - after a long day - but well worth it!). The three proposed research projects are  Kim's, titled " Student Satisfaction Levels among Canadian Armed Forces Members toward their distance learning experiences " which deals with Canadian armed forces training and distance education; Rosemarri's , titled " Transforming Learning in Higher Education: Implementing UDL in Higher Education "; and Scott's, titled  " College Leadership and Distance Learning " There were some common themes between these three presentations, and presentations that have been done previously in the semester, be it underlying reasons for the research, methodologies employed, or potential timelines.  Having seen the timel...

Last evening we had our penultimate EDDE 806 session for this season. On tap for the evening we had Neera's presentation (originally of Cohort 6, but now firmly "one of our own" in cohort 7), and a presentation by Stephanie. One question that came to mind, outside of the context of these presentations, was how long do EdD students stick around in 806 after they have met the requirements of the course?  If they don't come back, why is that?  If they do return, why do they return, and what influences their regularity of participation?  I guess this could be a dissertation topic in and of itself, but it's a question that came to mind as I saw some very familiar names in the guest list on Adobe connect last night, and noticed the absence of other names that I've seen over the last year or so of my 'informal' 806 participation.  Of course, a dissertation topic like this would most likely add 2-3 years to my studies, and that doesn't seem like an a...

Statler & Woldorf, muppet critics This past week the presenter of the week was Angie Parkes of Cohort 3, who is a fellow instructional designer!  Angie was presenting to us  her (potential?) dissertation proposal which as to do  with testing the hypothesis that the DACUM process can be done effectively online.  More specifically, her three hypotheses are that (1) an online asynchronous DACUM can produce a comprehensive and rigorous competency analysis; (2) the online asynchronous DACUM can be completed in less than 6 months (2 financial quarters); and (3) the online asynchronous DACUM can be completed for less than $1000. Angie is coming at this problem from a corporate instructional design lens, where a lot of money is spent in corporate environments for training, however 50%-90% of this training is deemed ineffective.  Because of this training departments are one of the first things that get cut when a company needs to tighten the budget (explains...

This past Thursday we had our official EDDE 806 session (on Monday, Norine did a mock proposal defense, which I wasn't able to attend, but luckily it's archived for later viewing). In any case, in this session we heard from Renate who reported in on her ideas for a dissertation topic, and there were a ton of interesting things about process that were shared by Susan and others. Renate is looking to do a study in order to understand the lived experience of pre-licensure (nursing?) students, attending their final clinical practicum, after they have been exposed to an IPE (interprofessional education) didactic curriculum. To do this she will use a qualitative, phenomenological, approach to her research design.  Phenomenology seems to be quite popular between the current cohorts (wonder why). She aims to get about 15 participants from a variety of healthcare professions (in Canada) who will be her research participants.  I am looking forward to reading this research when it'...

Yesterday evening I presented where I currently am in my dissertation proposal.  I am not sure if Susan was joking or not about 2, 3, 4 years being the 'in process' time to get a dissertation done and defended, but I certainly hope that it's not that long!  I am aiming for May 2019 at the latest for mine. That said, earlier this week I did a few dry runs for the presentation I did last evening, and one of them I recorded.  From a timing perspective it's in the ballpark of what I was aiming for (23 minutes).  I have heard that dissertation proposal defenses and dissertation defenses (the presentation portion) are about 20-30 minutes so I wanted to keep that in mind.  This recorded version is a little rough (it was a try out after all), but it gives you an idea of what my current thoughts are on the matter. What do you think?  I know it's just a window into the mind of this project, but any thoughts would be helpful as I am drafting this beast :) As an...

Young Spock at school And we're off! The semester has begun, and this time I am "official" in EDDE 806, which means this is my last credit-bearing semester (after that I guess I will be an academic vagabond looking for completion of my own research). Last night none of our cohort presented (although that would have been an achievement if someone brave enough wanted to do it!).  Instead, a more seasoned EdD student, Lynne Rabak (Cohort 6?) presented on what she is working on as part of her dissertation proposal. The title of Lynne's presentation was " Cognitive and emotional presence: learning effects ," and she is looking (or proposing to look) at the interaction and interplay between cognitive presence and emotional presence. I have to say that I am skeptical of the foundation of the research because I don't fully buy into emotional presence.  I think that affect is an aspect that goes into learning, but I don't know if it warrants its ...

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 ...

Happy winter break to everyone!  Classes are over and I guess I am supposed to start working on my candidacy exam...  This comic seems like it applies ;-)

Last evening I joined 806 (which seemed to have a very small group of people attending) for their bi-weekly meetup.  I think that for this post I will write more about my 2 take-aways from the session in general, rather than recap both presentations.: Take-away #1: Small sample sizes aren't necessarily a problem.  Both Tracy and Leslie (presenters of the evening) were taking about their work (well, the work they are gearing up to do), and they both have between 6 and 12 participants for their research.  I am thinking about my own dissertation process, my own "problem" (which isn't a problem, so I hate using that term, but whatever), and how many people can be my informants (at most 16, but most likely 10 or so will agree to be part of it).   I've been thinking that AU might have issues with such small sample sizes. However, considering that I am not aiming at generalization (and neither are the presenters from last night's session), I am encouraged to co...

OK, I am almost 'caught up' with the stuff I missed while I was on vacation (at least as far as 806 goes).  I remember receiving an email from Pearl indicating that Sir John Daniel would be presenting. Too bad the internet wasn't that reliable :-/  Oh well, thank goodness for recordings ;-) Sir John Daniel seemed like a pretty interesting  person, and very knowledgeable (with over 300 publications to his name) and he must be a respectable human being because he wouldn't hold 32 honorary degrees from 17 different countries if people only liked him for his scholarship.  I guess the bar has been set for me (haha! :-) ). The only area where I surpass him is in the amount of MOOCs I've taken vs how many he's taken.  Even as a recording it was great to get to 'meet' such a distance education heavyweight (maybe I can email him and we can go for some coffee and discuss the future of DE next time I am around his neck of the woods in Canada ;-)  ). In any ...

Now that I am back from vacation (was off to Spain, but spent a little time in Istanbul on the way to and from), it's time to catch up a bit on EDDE 806. On the day that I was flying out to begin my vacation A lec Couros was presenting....D'oh!  I missed the opportunity to be live in that 806.  Not only was Alec on, but there was also a fellow EDDE student who is also Greek.  It would have been glorious to have so many Greeks on on 806 session. Oh well - maybe next time :p In any case, Alec's presentation was titled "The Making of an Open & Connected Educator" which was really interesting.  Parts of what he presented on were familiar to me because I've been following Alec since 2011 when I got into MOOCs, and I learned more about ED&C 831 (his open course). Parts of what he presented were new to me.  For instance I didn't know he was a school teacher before he got into his current career.  Props to anyone who is a school teacher - I don...

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...

It feels like forever ago that I actually posted something by text on the blog. This summer has been much more action packed than I had anticipated.  Between teaching, virtually connecting, and taking my own course, MDDE 702, there hasn't been a dull moment! I am actually quite happy that I ended up taking the refresher course on qualitative research methods. While the concepts weren't new to me, I did love the opportunity to actually work on part of my dissertation proposal and receive some feedback before I actually start the seminar in which I develop the first good draft of my proposal (EDDE 805). I also liked being the same course as members of other cohorts. This gives me both an opportunity to see what's a little down the road for me, by observing and talking to people in the cohorts ahead of me, and it gives me an opportunity to relive some of the things that I already went through these past few years, via cohorts that started after my own cohort started....

A couple of weeks after the last session of 806 for this spring aired  I had an opportunity to observe the proceedings from across time and space (aren't recordings grand?).  Looking at the (small) crowd that attended the live session maybe I should have attended!  Anyway! It does should like next fall, or perhaps next spring once I am formally in 806, there might be a ton of people attending, so the check-ins might only be for people who are done with 805.  I like the check-ins as it provides me with a sense of what others are going through (the whole "suffering together" bit), but I also don't want an 806 session that goes on for 2 hours (or more).  I would almost prefer to have more sessions but  have them seriously capped at 90 minutes rather than have marathon sessions.  Something for pedagogical planning I guess :-)  I plan on attending 806 sessions (at least some of them) while I am in 805, so we'll see how that goes. In any case, this s...

Last week my goal of attending all 806 sessions this semester got derailed by fatigue.  For those keeping score at home, I've attended 3, and written about 4 (including this post) this semester - still ahead of the game ;-).  Thank heavens for recorded sessions! As the sole member of Cohort 7 representing in 806 I feel like I should be more on top of things ;-) In any case, the presentation this past week included a presentation by Robyn Gorham (cohort ?),  an interlude by Lisa and Peggy (Cohort 6), and a presentation by Djenana Jalovcic (cohrot 5), who I met briefly in one of the virtually connecting sessions where I was a virtual buddy for a conference she was presenting in. The nice news (that I would have missed had I not viewed this recording) is that for our 806 presentation we don't need to limit ourselves to the traditional 20-minute presentation, we could do something new, innovative, experimental, (insert other adjectives here) where we can experiment ...

Some nice artwork, no doubt by @merryspaniel :-) Time just seems to fly by this semester.  I don't know if it's because I am busy, or if (as the old saying goes) time flies when you're having fun! This past week we skipped the usual introductions and check-ins in 806, affectionately known by some as the therapy portion to the live session.  I actually didn't mind it considering that this is the 3rd session and I've started to recognize some familiar names in the chatbox of Adobe Connect.  Some introductions and check-ins are fine, however sometimes they span 45 minutes and it makes the presentation portion seem longer.  I think the balance point is this:  If you have one presentation then you do check-ins, if you have multiple you skip them. This past week we had two presentations.  One by Mary McNabb (not sure which cohort), and one by Joanne Buckland (also not sure which cohort).  In addition we had a research interlude presented by cohort ...

Yesterday evening I attended my second formal  EDDE 806 session (formal in the sense that I am doing blog posts for it, as opposed to just attending and being a fly on the wall).  In any case, the session was pretty interesting, and Viviane Vladimirsky, a fellow EdD student, on her work on her dissertation. Just prior to Viviane's presentation, as we were going around introducing ourselves there were two interesting pieces of information shared (and reinforced).  First, when we're working on our dissertation when in doubt ask our committee members what they want to see addressed.  Asking people outside of your committee will just muddy the waters, because in the end, in order to graduate, you only need to satisfy your committee and no one else.  I think this is sage advice because if you ask 10 scholars to give you feedback they will all come back with different points of view (based on their own backgrounds, epistemologies, and biases). The other piece o...