I was not satisfied with the quality of the work I submitted, but with the commitments I have, I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it and had to hand it in as it was. Judging by the tone of the lecturer’s comments, he was disappointed that I didn’t earn myself a distinction. I read his feedback to my 15 year old son who summed them up beautifully by saying “You wrote a little about a lot, and you should have written a lot about a little.” That was it, in a nutshell. I tried to cover 20 years of experience and insight in 3000 words. Mistake.

One point that was made, however, was that it read like the start of a promising dissertation. Just as well, because my plan was to do a dissertation along rather similar lines, so I’m happy for the serendipitous vote of confidence!

Then I learnt that I was going to have to adopt a research methodology of my own for my dissertation. Oh pants! How was I going to do that when I didn’t know what the blooming things are, let alone how they work? Well, gradually, things are becoming clearer. We do not yet have crystal, but we have moved away from mud!

We have spent time looking at each of a few different methodologies and exploring the extent to which they are practical (and even practicable) within the context of our situations. So I have diligently taken notes on positivism, interpretativism, case studies, interviews, personal construct psychology, experimental and quasi experimental design and observation. There are a few more methodologies to follow.

My current hot favourite thing at the moment, though, is Judith Bell’s book Doing your Research Project. I swear this book is going to save my hide. Not only does it have a lot to say about action research, it also has a lot of very accessible information about methodologies. I took the book with me on holiday recently (yeah, I know – it’s got sand in it, now!) and I found the section that will be the making of my dissertation, I reckon: Narrative inquiry and stories. I kid you not. Narrative. Stories. I can do that. I can so do that. I have done that all my life. I think in analogies and allegories. I have used them for 20 years as a teaching tool. I used to have my learners in stitches teaching absolute references in Excel by means of a story about ballet dancing toddlers. I am an (unpublished) author of several children’s stories and poems. My children used to beg me, “Read us a story out of your head, Mom!” Bell says: “narrative enquiry can involve reflective autobiography, life story or the inclusion of exerpts from participants’ stories.” I am a born story teller. And telling my own story, as I strive to improve my practice as a learning professional through the use of social media? Bring it on!

I read that section of Bell’s book on the plane going to Spain. The light went on for me. I read it again on the beach. The light stayed on. I know at least one person whose hair will stand on end if he has anything to do with a research project like this. I will just have to make sure that he doesn’t, I guess.

Rats! Although I realise the practical issues would have been difficult, because I have not yet had any direct involvement with a blend that includes these delivery media. Quizzes and the like are the closest I have come. So far….

What she suggested however, was that I opt for an action research project. This makes sense. I am constantly seeking to drive my practice forward, but I don’t work within the education system or an organisation that gives me access to information about a cohort of learners. She recommended the Action Research website, which has proved interesting, if counterintuitive in terms of navigation.

Some useful things I have found on the site have been:

• Jean McNiff’s booklet: Action research for professional development: concise advice for new action researchers. The document is free to download – isn’t it wonderful that some researchers are so generous with their stuff? But then, as she says in the introduction to the third edition “I have learnt from Jack (Whitehead) the power of sharing ideas to generate new ones”
• A whole raft of action research theses, which, even if they don’t help me with the content of my own dissertation, will certainly inspire me towards a title and help me get a clearer idea of how to tackle things.
• Margaret Farren’s many publications around action research as well as around the sort of areas that interest me.
• Jack Whitehead’s writings - wow, this guy is prolific!
• A list of living theory theses. It’s fascinating to see the sort of topics that make acceptable PhD theses. I was tickled pink by Eleanor Lohr’s thesis title: Love at Work: What is my lived experience of love, and how may I become an instrument of love’s purpose? I haven’t actually read the thesis yet, but wow! Just wow! It fills me with hope that this can be regarded as academic writing.
• Action Research expeditions, which uses “the expedition as a metaphor for the processes of action research”

I have been delighted with the level of enthusiasm and passion evident in the materials. I was so afraid of having to translate my labrador-puppy-with-oversized-paws type enthusiasm and lack of panache into something erudite and urbane and, well, dry and dusty.

What I haven’t been able to establish is whether any of these folks blog. I shall have to ask. Of course, I am now brimming with enthusiasm and keen to meet them all in person.

We were given a hands-on demonstration of a product developed by the host organisation, while another showed us the use they have been making of Secondlife as a space for delivering learning.

It was very interesting. However, I am increasingly concerned that the learning design of serious games has taken a backward step, with the control being in the hands of the designer, and the learner having reduced ability to target specific learning requirements that he has identified for himself. This is against the flow of developments in online learning.

However, the opportunities within Second Life or similar environments are enormous. I will post more on this another day when I have more time.

My field is adult learning, in the corporate/workplace context. I have an interest in JIT learning, but I also have an interest in games and simulations in learning. So here’s me thinking that the steady move towards JIT learning in the corporate environment increasingly places the control in the hands of the learner. The learner identifies a gap in his knowledge base and uses available resources to address that lack at a time that suits him.

So how does this fit with games and simulations where the learning is often serendipitous? By playing the game or entering the simulated environment, the learner will plot a path through a series of scenarios which may or may not relate to his current learning need.

Hmm. So how do I get a starting question out of this to launch my research for my dissertation? And what will the research look like?

I also recently encountered this game (I wish I could remember who gave me the link!) which allows players to take charge of a country and re-enact WWII. The outcome is not predetermined as the defeat of the axis powers by the allies, and players have the opportunity to explore alternative courses of action through to their conclusion.

Now this is history as a study of decisions taken by people, decisions with alternatives. I once read a book called Fatherland by Robert Harris, set in the 60s and written from the perspective of a detective in a victorious Germany. It is a thought-provoking read, and one I would recommend to a high school student studying second world war history, since it serves the same purpose as these games in that it allows the exploration of alternative hypotheses. What if…?

I have lost count of the number of British people who have told me that, if it hadn’t been for their grandfather/father/uncle, we would have been speaking German today. This shows a groan-inducingly unimaginative approach to the possible outcomes of the war. Let’s face it, speaking German is hardly the worst fate that could befall a person – it doesn’t seem to have hindered people in Germany a great deal! I am always tempted to respond, “Is that the best you can come up with?”

But of course, a book presents only one view. A game allows the user to explore several different alternatives. What if the assassination plot against Hitler (or indeed Churchill) had succeeded? What if the Americans had not joined the war? What if Switzerland and/or Sweden had not remained neutral? What if? What if?

The possibilities are endless.

I hadn’t expected to find myself back in this situation at postgraduate level, and yet, here I am!

I struggled to get approval to submit a paper on Connectivism recently, because there is little or no peer reviewed writing on it in any of the recognised journals. I’m obviously not built for this world, because my immediate response is “So what?” I don’t understand why someone else needs to have written about something before I can write about it!

During a lecture (essentially) on the art of getting published last night, emphasis was placed on citing appropriate references in appropriate journals, to which I responded with the retort that this presupposes that someone has already written on the same subject, meaning you are prevented from doing anything new. The Prof responded with “I defy you to come up with anything completely new.” I understood from what he had to say that originality is the provinceof the doctoral student, whereas criticality is the province of the masters’ student. I am only too aware of my limitations as an orignal thinker, but I resent the assumptions and the ceilings that appear to be set in place, simply because one doesn’t have the right letters behind one’s name. How flimsy is that?!

At another point he also cautioned us to be patient. In the social science journals, there is apparently a 2-3 year delay between acceptance of an article and its actual publication in the journal.

Since one of my driving interests is the use of the affordances of technology in learning, I can’t be sticking around for two years – by that time the technology will be obsolete, Web 2.0 will have been superseded by Web 3.0 and maybe even web 4.0. Things seldom stand still long enough for a significant body of writing appear in any of the “respected journals”.

I guess I will just have to accept that I am not going to get published in any “respected journals”. I  will stick to publishing on this blog and this one and possibly explore some professional journals if it seems appropriate further down the line.

But it leaves me with a huge question mark around my dissertation. How can I possibly write about something that matters to me if I’m restricted to a topic with an adequacy of been-there-done-that from recognised luminaries?

These were his suggestions:

1. Stick to a field you’re interested in – you’re going to be steeped in it for some time
2. Keep a record of references from the outset, keeping extracts from interesting articles, and possibly photocopying front covers (copyright??)
3. Have a tutor/critical friend/proofreader
4. Set aside a time and a place
5. Indentify key authors in your field of research
6. Start and finish each chapter with a review
7. Create a thread through the project
8. Edit and proofread
9. Make sure all the chapters relate to one another and to the theme
10. DO something  – get started!!

He gave us some ideas about a process of tightening up the question:

1. Record initial thoughts: what, why and how
2. Find an article/publication to serve as your core and build around it
3. Define the terms of the question and create a rationale to form the basis of the question for the dissertation (perhaps use a mindmap to link ideas)
4. The ER assignment is a narrowing process which feeds into the dissertation, which in turn feeds into the wider subject as a whole.
5. Pilot the research methodology to make sure it’s going to work before going live with it
6. Find the faults in your own work and be transparent about them

We then had a guest lecturer in the form of Gareth Alcott M.A. Having recently completed his MA, he came to discuss his approach to his ER assignment and, by extension, his dissertation. It became abundantly clear that it is essential to get the ER assignment absolutely right, since it is pivotal to the dissertation. If, for example, I finally home in on a question at the end of my ER assignment and then later have an epiphany about what I really want to write about for my dissertation, I will have to redo the work done in the ER phase. Not a prospect I relish.

Gareth gave us some very helpful guidelines, which I will record in more detail in a separate post. Two that stand out however, are:

• Start keeping track now of material that will be used and the references
• Find a core article

I have been doing the former with my Learning and Teaching assignment – an approach I adopted some time ago. It was, therefore, encouraging to find that the approach had worked for someone else.

With regard to the latter – one of my classmates was complaining to me just last week that she had found an article for her L&T assignment that said exactly what she wanted to say. Last night we both realised that she had inadvertently found her core material, and were able to look at her predicament more positively as a consequence.

The main message I took away from the session was that it is essential to find a subject I am passionate about, since I will be spending a great deal of time and effort on the subject. So I asked myself, what am I passionate about?

Since it is unlikely that I will be able to find a way to work chocolate into the material, the alternatives are:

• Adult learning
• Informal learning
• Lifelong learning
• Social media – especially blogs
• Relevance – do schools teach kids what they need to know when they go to work?

Of these, I am most passionate about the final topic, but this is very much on a personal level. Bearing in mind that I am not a school teacher, my passion is entirely related to the future of my own sons. It is difficult to imagine myself being able to adopt a sufficiently professional detatchment.

I foresee a fair amount of time spent in discussion with a tutor!

Learning about research and setting out on the journey towards my dissertation is a scary underatking. The fact that I have no direct contact with my learners at the moment is going to be a bit of a hurdle, I suspect. Nevertheless, I suspect I would like to do something about the changing nature of learning materials under the influence of technology. I guess I could research that without access to learners. I do have access to learning providers, which is a start.

I suspect research into learning is a bit vague at best. Until the day we can put a drop of nailpolish onto a packet of information and track it through a person’s brain and beyond to their network, I don’t think we can say with any certainty how learning actually takes place and whether it takes place in the same manner in everyone’s head. It’s all informed (to varying degrees) conjecture. There, I’ve said it.