As I just received ethical approval for my research study (for one of the modules in my doctoral program at Lancaster University), I want to list the specifics here and begin to look for potential participants. Please let me know if you are wish to volunteer to be a potential interviewee or want to speak about this / get more information. I have a formal research consent form with some additional information. 

I hope to have 3 participants, and will hope to have the interview by the second week of January.

Name of Project:

Public Transformations: Adult Learners Who Use Social Media to Express and Understand Their Identities as Developing Researchers

Dear Potential Participant:

I want to invite you to take part in a research study which is part of my doctoral studies in the Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology (CSALT), Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University. You should understand why the research is being done, and what it will involve for you. Please read the following carefully and decide if you wish to take part. Ask me if there is anything that is not clear or if you want more information.

What is the Purpose of the Study?

The purpose of this study is to explore how people develop as researchers while using social media tools to engage in reflexivity, self-expression, feedback, and collaboration. I am especially interested in knowing how learners make sense of their experiences when they believe they learn something significant that helps them see things in a different way.

Why have I been Invited?

You are invited to participate in this research because you are (or were) an adult learner who communicated with others about your graduate or doctoral research experiences via social media (e.g., via a blog, microblog such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

What will Taking Part Involve for Me?

I will conduct one interview, on the phone or via an online conference service, for approximately 60 minutes. The interview will be recorded and the transcript sent to you for your review and edits. The audio recording and transcript of our discussion will be safely stored on my password-protected computer, as will your contact information. The data from this study will be used in the completion of course work in my doctoral programme, and it may also be included in my doctoral thesis, published, or presented at conferences. To safeguard your confidentiality and anonymity, you will be given a pseudonym, and all identifying information, such as the institution or department to which you belong, will be removed. You may withdraw from the study for any reason and at any time. If you withdraw from the study, any data that you have contributed will be destroyed.

Tags: Lancaster University, Research

Here is my (very rough) working (initial) research design. None of the elements are clear or tight enough yet; this is primarily shared here for proof of concept. I expect this to be refined and cleaned up / developed after initial feedback and my ongoing processing this week. Any feedback is appreciated.

Title (Working)
Public Transformations: Adult Learners Who Use Social Media to Express and Understand Their Experiences

Abstract
TBD

Introduction
With the rise of social media, more of what used to be learned, thought, and experienced in private is now engaged in publicly. As blogging and microblogging, to name only 2 of the countless forms of social media and social networking, increase, educators need to better understand how these are being used by learners, especially in regard to the more challenging content areas and concepts within the various social sciences.

Research Problem

Literature Review
Litertatures to be reviewed include threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (especially Meyer and Land), transformative learning (especially Mezirow, Brookfield, and Cranton), and how these may relate to blogging or social media.

Research Design

1. Describe an experience you had while engaging in your academic studies where you experienced a transformed way of understanding, interpreting, or viewing something.
2. How did you express or share this using social media?
3. Describe your experience and what you learned during this process.

Data Collection
Data will be collected via recorded phone interviews

Analysis and Interpretation
The interviews will be transcribed and coded to develop and categorize the experiences of the participants

Findings

• TBD

Next steps

• TBD

Conclusion / Learnings

• TBD

Tags: Lancaster University, research design

I received a direct email reply to my research design work, and there was an interesting question regarding a shift that was identified in my work from a focus on autoethnography (a/e) toward qualitative interviewing.

I do want to focus on autoethnography. However, I think more people are using this method (or some form of this method) in their doctoral / research blog postings than realize it. Some of the people whose work I read are basically doing this without naming it, and I think that for some of them to name it would become more of a legitimacy issue for them than not (my speculation), though in fact that seems to be what they are doing. I am thinking about trying to look at their experiences without trying to explicitly determine if that is what is happening. By focusing on their experiences and seeing what I can learn, I may in the process exploring if there is instead some unconscious use of a/e.

I wonder if autoethnography is used unconsciously quite often?

Tags: Autoethnography, Lancaster University

I am starting to be a little restless with my blog byline recently; perhaps it no longer fits me or I have outgrown it. The wonderful thing about websites is that they can grow and develop with us.

My current one is:

Research and Practice in Postmodern Learning

This combines my educational research focus with my need to integrate my learning with practice, coupled with a worldview that is increasingly postmodern. Now, almost a year into my doctoral studies, with my professional practice filled with project management, teaching, conferences, and publishing; it may be time for a change.

I want something that will integrate my degree focus, E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning, into this, while still allowing for my academic interests in qualitative research designs, autoethnography and narrative inquiry, and transformative learning as an experience in critical identity formation. Having recently been influenced by the term postmodernity in the text Identity in Question, I am considering:

(Online) Identity in Postmodernity

This feels right to me; what do you think?

Tags: Lancaster University, online, postmodernism, postmodernity, Research, transformative learning

I started considering some of the things I learned in yesterday’s posting, and want to continue this work a little more today, this time considering our guiding question, “What really matters in my professional practice?” from a different perspective. I want to consider a bit about what I learned that has changed the way I approach my practice, mindful that my practice involves educational research, adult learning, and project management.

Word and Meaning (Transcription)

I recorded and transcribed my interviews. What I learned in the process is that what people say and what they mean may at times be different. Related, of course, but often what we begin to say and where we ultimately end up may in fact be different. To record and work only with the literal means that the result may appear clunky, awkward, and at times confusing. This then requires some interpretation, or polishing, not so much to push my own desire, but armed with strategies for trustworthiness and those methods that seek to support believability will enhance the findings and make them not only useful, but an interesting read as well.

New Methods to Stretch the Boundaries

Why always do the same forms of research? Comfort and continual improvement for sure, but that fire that excites me as I seek to study similar issues from different perspectives means that I have to stretch and use methods that are new to me. Using other methods to expand my research horizons, I find that I can gather, understand, and expand upon my findings in ways that help me enlarge my worldview. I see some issues in a more complicated and comprehensive way, so that those things I initially saw as monolithic, I now see more in the light of their own complexities. I definately want to expand on my toolkit of methods. If some aspects of life were sufficiently understandable, we would no longer need to research them!  

Reliance on Community (CoP)

I have learned that I am not struggling alone on my doctoral studies, as there are others out there engaged in the same process who are often quite helpful in offering feedback and encouragement. Likewise, there are those who seem interested in my research who are also very supportive of my work. The more I share what I am doing with my online community, and the more I offer feedback and suggestions to other colleagues who share and engage in their own work, the more my own online community of practice around some of these research issues is formed and strengthened.

Transparency

The more I share my research, perspectives, and struggles with colleagues, the more I get great suggestions and useful insights. Nothing surprising here, but the difference that I am learning is that I do not have to pretend I understand it all, give the impression that I have a handle on my work, or wait to post until everything is clearly formed and finished. Since I am enjoying the process itself, I find that sharing that along the way is most valuable. Being transparent with my own research and meaning-making process often provides as much learning as the formal research itself.

With all this, I am interested to read what my small learning set (a subset of my cohort) has to offer when they comment on these concepts when I share them within our university Moodle Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Now that I think of it, the learning that occurs within there, just as the learning that occurs within the Foundations workshop VLE, ultimately finds its way into everything else I do.

Interesting how my life and my research are somewhat connected.

Tags: Community of Practice (CoP), cpsquare, Lancaster University, PhD, Research

While I am busily revising my paper to meet my deadline on Wednesday, there is another assignment that begins on Thursday, one that has been an undercurrent through my work over the past 2 months — my Learning Journal. We were invited to begin consiering the question ”What really matters in my professional practice?” by spending 5-10 minutes a day writing about it.

I journaled and reflected on this question with everything I write here on my blog, my public journal I share with a few colleagues and friends who are king enough to stop by and offering some thoughts from time to time.

So, after working through this paper, and thinking about our readings, I will try to draw some of these things together hereas the first step in pulling together some of what I will discuss with my cohort colleagues:

• the excerpts we read of Donald Schon’s work were not terribly helpful for me–it seems that either people refer to Schon in ways he did not discuss, or I really need to read him more thoroughly and closely.
• Wenger’s work with communities of practice seem to be a theoretical framework that can be applicable in a wide variety of works. I wonder, though, how organizations really use these without being manipulative (to get more work from people without more expenditures). I suppose I am wondering how these can be used and cultivated within organizations, since I have not really seen many that are organic, rather than organizationally-sponsored.
• Laurel Richardson’s work really surprised me with how rich it is. It seems that some of my colleagues also found it and Ellis / Bochner’s work valuable, while others did not seem to be able to make heads or tails out of it. I am finding that my thesis (the UK term for dissertation) seems headed down that direction . . .
• I am beginning to find more value in sharing and collaborating online than I ever have before. It seems my slowly-growing informal network of doctoral support is becoming increasingly valuable to me. As our current module is entitled The Development of Professional Practice, this seems ironically (and completely unexpectedly) fitting.

I am going to review some of our readings, and comment on this a bit more throughout this week.

Tags: Art Bochner, Carolyn Ellis, Community of Practice (CoP), Etienne Wenger, Lancaster University, Laurel Richardson, learning journal, reflective practice

So, tonight begins CPsquare’s Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop. I have thought about taking this before, but neither the time nor the funding was flowing easily, so what better time than the present?!

I will be in the capable hands of Etienne Wenger, the CoP (Communities of Practice) guru, John D. Smith, a community coach and technologist with whom I have worked before, and Bronwyn Stuckey, an educational researcher and online facilitator whose navigation of time and space amazes me. I have read about and studied CoP for some time now, though really like the idea of focusing on it as an experience in itself.

As my doctoral program at Lancaster University is focused around the CoP (network learning) model, and as my recent research uses CoPs as the theoretical framework, I thought that spending some time with colleagues who have related interests may be a good experience.

Wonder what I will learn over the seven weeks, and how my own learning framework may develop . . .

Tags: Bronwyn Stuckey, Community of Practice (CoP), CoP, cpsquare, Etienne Wenger, John D. Smith, Lancaster University

The fundamental ideas in my outline for my Autoethnographer Communities of Practice research design was approved yesterday from my faculty tutor at Lancaster University. Next steps for this week include:

1. Specifying the interview questions
2. Writing the consent form
3. Submitting them both (with a tweaked overview) for ethical approval (I was told this should be a quick process as my research design is low risk)

I am still excited about this research outline, as I have not seen much research in this area.

Tags: Autoethnography, Lancaster University, qualitative research, research design

Here I am in the middle of my residential in the northwest of England, where I have recently started as a doctoral student studying toward a PhD in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL or ERTEL). 

After teaching and learning for so many years, why not focus on the PhD? After all, while I work full-time as a project manager, I also teach doctoral students, MBA and other graduate students, undergraduates, and continuing education students. I already have four earned masters degrees, review countless academic and peer-reviewed presentations, papers, and journal articles. Why not get the credential I have already worked long and hard to achieve (not to mention my own countless papers, international presentation, and articles of some sort or another)?

While I have held off thus far discussing my studies which began two months ago (I have been busy, even by my own standards!), they will become more a part of my life and thus my blog postings.

Nothing like more opportunities for reflective practice to improve my teaching and learning.

Tags: Lancaster University, PhD, reflectice practice