I had a great first meeting with my doctoral committee today and am in that rare antsy can’t-wait-to-get-to-work mood, but I have to wait because my mother-in-law isn’t here to sit with the toddler yet.
Dissertating in the Open: Designing a Comprehensive Literature Review
I think every doctoral program is different in what they expect from students for qualifying comprehensive examinations, but in my program, there are two components: a literature review of about 50-60 single-spaced pages that offers an overview of the student’s research interests and addresses theoretical, methodological, and topical literature related to the expected dissertation, and a brief prospectus for the dissertation.
I wrote the prospectus first. Honestly, I think everybody should. Then my advisor and I met and discussed what should be in the comprehensive literature review. We wanted to have five areas to propose to my committee, with the understanding that these might change after our first meeting with my committee. Based on the prospectus, we settled on the following five areas:
Information literacy. As my central research question is about information literacy practices, I need to have a thorough definition of information literacy as a concept and an understanding of the historical development of that concept.
Cosplay. Since the cosplay affinity space is the locus of my research, this was an obvious choice.
Theory. It’s expected that all comps packages in my department will have a theory section. I chose to focus on theories Martin (2012) used in her dissertation:Ā earlier models of information literacy, Sonnenwaldās (2005) framework of human information behavior, James Paul Geeās (2004) concept of affinity spaces, Levyās (1997) concept of collective intelligence, and Jenkinsās (2009) concept of participatory culture. There are other theories that may come into play, but I haven’t identified them yet. Theories I’ve researched in the past include possible selves, situated learning and communities of practice, and cultural-historical activity theory (especially horizontal learning). None of these are necessarily going to show up in my comps, but each of them has the potential to be useful for my dissertation work, so depending on how thorough I end up being with the theories mentioned earlier, they may end up in there.
Methods and Data Analysis. This is another section that is expected by the department. My proposed methods are primarily qualitative, involving interviews and qualitative coding, so this section will focus on those. It does have one quantitative element, however: analytic description, “an analysis method to illustrate transforming qualitative data into numbers and coupling that with qualitative description” (Martin, 2012, p. 78), so I included mixed methods in here as well.
Connected Learning. Finally, although it isn’t mentioned explicitly in my prospectus, my advisor and I decided to include Connected Learning in my comps package. Connected learning in libraries is my central research interest, and cosplay definitely has all of the characteristics of connected learning, so this is a good fit for my fifth area.
I hope this has been helpful as you think about your own qualifying exams and which areas you should be reviewing to prepare for your dissertation.
Next on Dissertating in the Open: Contacting Potential Committee Members!
References
Martin, C. A. (2012). Information literacy in interest-driven learning communities: Navigating the sea of information of an online affinity space. The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Retrieved from search.proquest.com/docview/1…
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Yesterday I received my first order from Whisper Sisters, purveyors of fine perfume oils. I found out about it from Gothic Charm School. I ordered a scent called Goth Club 89, which is described as
Goth Club '89Ā - if you were there, you know the smell. Heavy resins, candle smoke, nicotine, clove, incense, absinthe, with a hint of intoxicating florals and vintage dark patchouli to balance everything out.
The Lady of the Manners said it delivers on exactly what it promises, so I thought I’d try it.
(Sidebar: This was a late night impulse buy. Occasionally I do those. They’re always under $20 and always silly. Others have included a Krang t-shirt and movies including Hot Rod, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and all of the Librarian movies.)
First, the Whisper Sisters packaging is beautiful: a little sheer black fabric bag with a business card, tiny plastic skeleton and spider and bat toys, and the perfume bottle plus a little sample vial. When I put the scent on, I wasn’t sure about it. It was a bit strong and medicinal.
But once it settled in and my body chemistry modified it, I loved it.
Specifically, I felt as this was how I should have been smelling my whole life.
Adulting achievements
After yesterday’s musings on adulting, I found myself looking for various resources that indicate what some components of adulting are. I found my way to the syllabus for Adulting: Coming of Age in 21st Century America at Georgia Tech, which assigned some videos from the YouTube channel How to Adult. As I started to skim the video titles, I realized that there are, in fact, many things I am quite adult enough to handle. I thought I’d make a list, just to help me remember how very grown up I am on the days when I eat cake for breakfast and my child is the only person who I can manage to dress appropriately for the occasion and weather.
I can:
- do my taxes
- do laundry
- furnish a kitchen
- cook
- write a resume
- succeed in a job interview
- open a bank account
- bake
- declutter & organize
- quit a job
- write a cover letter
- open a retirement account
- write thank you notes (though of course I don't as often as baby boomers and their parents would like)
- buy a house
- get a new car insurance policy
- start a new job
- make coffee (three different ways!)
- meal plan
- party plan
- host a party
- manage a pregnancy
- care for a child (including feeding, changing, bathing, clothing, entertaining)
- choose a doctor
- enroll in health insurance
- use a library
- send mail
- take out a loan
- repay a loan
- use public transportation
- use a slow cooker
- unclog a toilet (including using a toilet snake/auger!)
And this is just a small sampling, based on the How to Adult video channel! I can also:
- take my own measurements
- purchase clothes that fit and make me feel confident
- get a mortgage
- connect utilities
- pay bills
- buy a car
- make tea (in a bag or loose leaf!)
- assert myself in interactions with a doctor
- replace the items from a stolen wallet
- drive
- put gas in a car
- buy a plane ticket
- navigate an airport
- use a pressure cooker
- use a microwave
- use a toaster oven
- use an oven
- handwash dishes
- load and run a dishwasher
And of course there are many more things I can do!
Probably we each need to cut ourselves a break sometimes and recognize how awesome we are and all the stuff we can do.
The reboot?s soundtrack was considered before animating began, says composer Sunna Wehrmeijer
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“Big and epic but also sparkly” is my new personal tagline.
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I had a feeling this morning that I needed to revisit Zen Habits and it turned out that I did, for this article.
On adulting
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There's a whole cottage industry devoted to teaching Millennials basic life skills. Are young adults that hapless, or is being a grown-up really harder now?
Pocket suggests things for me to read, and a few weeks ago, it suggested I read this piece about adulting. As I lay in bed, my toddler sleeping peacefully beside me, I thought, “I really need adulting help.” Which in one sense is ridiculous, because I have been doing some adulting basics, like holding a steady job, or paying rent or utilities, for almost 18 years. My adult self is, in fact, an adult.
But then I look at my immensely dirty car, or think about the extreme level of disrepair my home has fallen into over the past six years of home ownership, or remember that W. is the one who does the laundry and the dishes and the cleaning and the yardwork and I think…
Yeah. I could use some help.
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I had a revelation a couple weeks ago while driving and noticing that my windshield wipers need to be replaced. I’m really good at projects. In one sense, it’s completely correct that my personal brand could be KIMBERLY: SHE GETS THE JOB DONE. If the job has a clear objective and a defined endpoint. I can manage human and material resources to make magic happen.
If, on the other hand, the job is a repetitive task directed at maintenance that will need to be done over and over again (like laundry or dishes or toothbrushing), then I’ll have to work harder to create a system to make sure it happens.
I’m trying to figure out what those systems look like.
Maybe acknowledging that all of life is a process of incrementally improving and coming up with ways to hack your brain is the real adulting.
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#100DaysOfCode 2/100 Completed @freeCodeCamp Applied Accessibility, Responsive Web Design Principles, CSS Flexbox, CSS Grid, and Build a Tribute Page project.
Dissertating in the Open: Identifying a Research Question & Writing a Prospectus
First, huge thanks to Dr. Laura Gogia for the descriptive phrase “Dissertating in the Open.”
Early on in my PhD program, I decided that I wanted to be as transparent about my dissertation process as is ethically possible. Since I’m focused on studying Connected Learning, and openly-networked products are a key part of that framework, I wanted to share my own process. This blog post is the first step in that direction.
Grad school was like the part of Great British Bake-off where the recipe only says ānow make frangipaneā and people just stare at the camera. ?āNow make research.ā ?
ā Ian M. Hartshorn (@imhartshorn) November 11, 2018
When I came into this program, several of my cohort-mates already had clear ideas not just about their area of research interest, but about their specific dissertation projects. Others took a hard turn and completely shifted their research interests. I’ve followed a middle route; while I wasn’t zeroed in enough to turn every assignment into a chapter in my dissertation (or even my literature review), everything I did was somehow focused on interest-driven learning. But I was never clear on how it all would come together in a culminating research project.
Over the past three and a half years, I’ve probably floated almost 10 different dissertationĀ topics orĀ themes past my very understanding advisor, but none of them quite coalesced into a question. I should have known that the question would come out of the literature. My best research always comes from someone else’s “Possibilities for future research” section.
A few weeks ago, I was reading Dr. Crystle Martin’s (2012) dissertation. She investigated the information literacy practices of players in the World of Warcraft affinity space and, based on previous prescriptive models of information literacy and her own results, generated a new, descriptive model of information literacy for digital youth.
And then in her conclusion, she said:
āThe more affinity spaces which are studied, the more stable the model will become, until eventually it will be a powerful predictive model that can approximate outcomes when parameters are changedā (p. 108).
I physically actually got chills. But I wasn’t sure how I would tie this into my own work.
Then I went to the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert and saw the cosplayers.
Then I re-read Dr. Martin’s dissertation.
Then I realizedĀ cosplay is an affinity space.
I have really great professors, but I find it really frustrating that I have to google āhow to write a prospectusā because they give no official teaching on how to do it.
ā Caris Adel (@CarisAdel) November 11, 2018
Then I sat down and over the course of a few hours banged out a dissertation prospectus to send to my advisor. It’s just a first draft. But I wanted to share it for those of you who are inexperienced in writing them. I’m lucky that my professor Dr. Barbara Wildemuth really walked my cohort through this process. Comments are open, so feel free to annotate it up and ask questions.
Next time, on Dissertating in the Open: building a comps package based on your prospectus!
#100DaysOfCode 1/100 Completed @freeCodeCamp Basic HTML & HTML5, Basic CSS, & Applied Visual Design.
Got excited about things that are more widely used than the last time I worked with CSS: border-radius, variables.
Had some trouble wrapping my head around HTML5 forms, since I’m a dinosaur and still have CGI code in my head… But I finally understood that label encompasses, you know, the label for the actual input element, and that name tells you, when you receive the submission, what the submitted input actually is answering… I think that in my own code, though, I’ll be commenting a LOT to keep all of these bits straight in my own head.
Drawing with CSS is blowing my mind. CSS interactions… I think if you couldn’t do it with CSS in 2002, I probably don’t know how to do it. Exciting to learn new stuff!