Category: Research

PhD Chat as #phdchat

I often find it easier to study the experience and process of doctoral studies (from both student and faculty perspectives) than to speak with people about my own doctoral work. One reason for this is that I often feel I am working alone, without a community of people who are doing similar or related work.

With this background shared, I am thrilled with the recent synchronous (on Wednesdays at 2:30 EST / 7:30 GMT) and ongoing asynchronous (it is Twitter, after all) phd-related chats using the tag #phdchat that have recently started to attract more attention. Do I hear interdisciplinary community of practice, anyone?

Support. Sharing. Ideas. Potential collaboration. New applications. Calls for papers. Conferences. Community. I suppose many people may be involved in this loose collaboration for many reasons (thank you @NSRiazat for getting this started), though I now feel I have more colleagues (and know more about some of these colleagues who I knew before) as a result of this experience. No, I have no idea where it will lead, how it will develop, and who else may or may not become involved for whatever period of time. This is somehow fitting that while so much of my research is from a distance, my community should be like that as well.

Nice to know that I am not alone on this road and others on this path are only a Tweet away.

How to Access Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) & Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

I have been working in the areas of educational research, sociology / communications / cultural studies, and the social sciences for some time now, and while I prefer to use databases such as ProQuest, EBSCO, Sage, and Informaworld for my research, I recently learned how to access and use the rather important Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and look up Journal Citation Reports (JCR) for the Social Sciences (by subject, such as Education & Educational Research or Communication).

Yes, this does require access to the ISI Web of Knowledge database via Thomson Reuters, and while I have access to this through my university teaching work, I was never able to locate SSCI and JCR buried within it before. Interesting how just knowing a bit more about how to access information can change our entire approach to it.  

I am a Mentor in the Foundations of CoP Course

I am very happy to share that I am one of the 4 mentors in the Fall 2010 Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop that is sponsored by CPsquare. In this capacity, I will work with workshop leaders Etienne Wenger, John Smith, and Bronwyn Stuckey and fellow mentors Joost Robben, Monique Léger, and Paul Lowe.

I have worked with all of these colleagues before, though never in the capacity of a mentor. While I will have a lot to share and explore in my own work, I will keep this brief as I have not yet posted my own introduction to the workshop. Ahh, the busy life of one who is interested in so many things related to teaching and learning from a distance!

Research Process and Methodology Course Begins Tonight

I am teaching a new graduate course at New York University that begins tonight, Research Process and Methodology. This is a required, core course in the M.S. in Management and Systems degree program. I am making my syllabus freely available for anybody who is interested in viewing it; feedback is always appreciated!

Facilitating Focus Groups

I am beginning to work with and facilitate focus groups at my work, and wanted to share a resource I found to be rather helpful. While the book Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research is probably the best text on the logistical practices of preparing for, facilitating, and analyzing focus groups, it can be a bit tough to use for a quick, need-to-know reference.

Enter the Richard Krueger, the author of the above-mentioned book, who also freely makes his Focus Group Interviewing website information freely available. While the website materials are bare-bones, they are an excellent primer and ready-reference for those involved in focus group work. While this often includes market researchers, those of us within organizations who are trying to better understand the “whats” and “whys”  behind the numbers can make wonderful use of this form of data gathering and organizational feedback.