Fin de la nuit

I finished reading the first two chapters from Koshy's AR book yesterday, and used the rest of the day to set out ideas based around this text, to start drafting the RF2 submission (or whatever the number is). I thought at first that I would write only about the paradigm section, but ended up with all sorts of notes about the intro, the LR and the data chapters - as well with a long list of texts to read. So it was a really useful session. I will get Koshy's book as it is turning out much better than I first thought: the vignettes are of interest, but mostly it's her presentation of 'key features' that is spurring me to consider all sorts of things within and beyond AR.

I can see some positivies and negatives about writing up my first experience with Ning. It was a practical attempt to understand the platform and to see whether it would appropriate for teaching and learning. So in terms of usability I learnt something (which included recognising how powerful Bb is in terms of forum management, even it is not very user-friendly). There was no actual research goal. But who says that action research can reflect back as well as forward? The contributors were not 'representative' in the sense that they did not look like a normal cohort. They were representative in another way: they include past, current and prospective students. The activities were not traditional learning activities (ie no learning outcome planned), but a gathering of views on the level of interest in social media for organisational purposes. The experience made me aware of the need for a social media policy for universities. It's all very well to have uni policy (not at ...

A new book to add to the pile for the Methodology chapter...

Last night in on the train, I had an idea about my PhD work. Since it is an action research project, there will be different cycles. Who says where the cycle starts? So I thought I'd include my experiences with the online focus group that I held last June. In many ways, this was 'square one' since the group discusssed the potential and possible issues for the then proposed SMUO module. Obviously it wasn't set up to be part of the PhD work, so it was a 'naturally occurring event', but still, it is was gave me the PhD idea in the medium term. Here's what I wrote in the SHU CoLab Ning by way of analysis of this first Ning experience. I used Ning last summer as a platform for an online focus groups that brought together a group of past, current and prospective students. The point was to find out their views on a proposed DL pg module, which with their help, ended up being named 'social media uses in organisations'. I hadn't done that kind of on...

I just found this blog site (via llane's delicious list) which is used to support students on a Philo 'course' (ie US for module). A quick scan and it certainly seems an interesting idea, though it probably requires quite a lot of tech tweaking in the background (so is it for me?). There's some background info at: http://www.andrewcullison.com/2009/09/wordpress-as-a-replacement-course-management-system/comment-page-1/ I'd like to explore this a bit - as part of my action research - as a possible platform for my SMUO module. This seems to suggest that there will be quite a few cycles in the research: this initial tool review has to be part of it (even if it's just be involved). Reflexivity, reflexivity...

Some quick notes on CMM chapter on action research. different takes on the AR process (diagram) Several approaches to AR (> link to article about AR project in Israel: Arieli, Friedman & Agbaria 2009 'paradox of participation in AR', AR 7(3):263-290) Critique of AR (esp. Habermas and critical theory stance) Some key refs for me to follow up.