Adrian Miles :: Blog

We all need to start preparing, and even beginning, our projects and theses. To get this happening we are going to spend some time planning. So, for next week, have a look at your bar chart of what you're good and not so good at. If you haven't done so, also do a pie chart (where the whole pie is 100% of your time) and divide it up for the comm revolution essay into: research, reading, planning, writing, revision, finishing.

Now, use these to think about your project/thesis. Break it down into smaller steps. Each step is not a theoretical statement or idea, but an action you need to do. Keep breaking these down into sub steps. To begin with it would be useful to think about a step as something you could do in, say 3 hours.

Each step should be a 'next step' that would need to be done, so you'd have key tasks or goals, broken down into sub tasks or goals. It does NOT have to be a timeline, just a list. With sublists.

Please bring this (yes, you too Ash) to class next week. 

Last week we made bar charts about how much we enjoyed, or how good we were, at all the bits and pieces involved in doing research or a project. This chart is to help externalise and make visible your strengths and weaknesses, what you're good at and not.

Why? Well, it can be used to flag for you and your supervisor where extra care and attention is needed as you work together. What you're good at probably doesn't need a lot of checking over, but what you don't like, what you defer, avoid, dodge, that's where you'll need some help with discipline and strategies or skills.

It can also help you to recognise what you actually do want to do, so that when you graduate you have a clearer idea about what sorts of jobs/career would suit you.

Now, the task is to write a blog post that identifies what you least like doing, or are simply poorest at. Now, pause and think about this for a moment. This will have certainly got in the way throughout your previous study, and possibly even in your job. You'll have excuses ("oh, I only work best under pressure", or "near enough will be good enough") for why this isn't important, but you will also acknowledge, when pushed, that yes if you actually did do that thing properly it would make a difference. In fact, the thing you least like doing, if you did that properly, it will probably make the single biggest contribution to improving what you do.

Simple, isn't it? Except there are reasons (very deep patterns of behaviour) that account for this, so being able to do this thing you don't like well is very, very hard. But the rewards are significant.

So, write about what your achilles heel is. Tease it out, what don't you like about it? And if you really did do this thing properly, just once, what impact do you think it would have on your finished work? Why?  

The blog assessment task. We are using blogs to:

• allow you to document what you do (so there is a record for you, and others)
• insert yourselves into the 'information economy'
• to have an identity online
• to become reflective practitioners
• to make a contribution to your own field of study

So, when writing a blog entry that will form the basis of your assessment for your blog these are all things to consider.

You should write a single entry that contextualises for you, and me, what you've been doing through the semester. More importantly it would be very good to indicate what has changed and why for you, or even what has not changed, and why. In other words the assessment task, and our work about process based learning, reflective methodologies and the like, is not about how much you know about something (eg "here are my 65 annotated references") but being able to see and show what sorts of changes you've achieved. About what you know, about how you work.

A good way to do this would be to reread all your entries. What do you think about what you wrote at the beginning? Would you write the same thing now? Why? Why not? Why do you think that difference is there?

Your blog should have links out to other things, so that you are participating in this particular 'economy', there should be evidence that you are reading each others blogs, possibly even other ones, and that you are using RSS. The easiest way is to tell me about these things, and to provide links (for example to your public bloglines subscriptions) which would then show me these things.

A high distinction blog would have regular posts, they would be thoughtful, considered, would connect to other things, and would cover a range of ideas, topics, things. The more monolingual (about just one thing), insular (no links) a blog is, the less it is doing what it should.

Why is this being assessed now? It is to help 'force' or 'seed' your use of the blog, without this incentive (25% of your final mark) you won't have a decent go at using your blog, and without having a decent go you won't get over the 'hump' - when you're on the other side you realise your blog is valuable to you. Please leave comments if you have questions - to hand in email me the url of the blog post, or leave the url in the comments to this post.  

At the end of Semester One a progress report must be completed. Supervisors and students are required to write it, sign it, and then a copy is submitted. This is one small step to make sure that you are progressing satisfactorily, what problems may exist, and what is being (or could be) done about them.

A second progress report will be completed midway through Semester Two.

The document is a pdf. | Progress Report One |

This is a document that you, and your supervisor, complete. You can do it separately, or collaboratively. It is to help each of you to determine what your expectations are, and to negotiate those things where there are significant (and meaningful) differences and expectations. Remember, if there are differences it does not mean that you and your supervisor are not 'suited' (or whatever the term ought to be). It is an opportunity to find these differences now, and to resolve them successfully - after all it is much better for this to be known at the beginning than when it really does matter.

The document's a pdf. | [File does not exist] |

Supervisors, like domestic pets, should be registered (don't show your supervisor this post!). There is a form that you should take to your supervisor, there are parts of it yoiu need to complete, they do the rest, you both sign it and a copy comes back to us. Once I've got them all I can then contact your supervisors directly to provide them with the other documents needed.

Here's the document, it's a PDF. | [You do not have permission to access this file] |

Well, we are half way through the semester, so if you are a full time student a quarter way through your Honours year. From here on for the semester we are going to start to put the flesh onto the bones of your theses/projects so that by the end of semester you will all have made substantial beginnings to your work.

In the class this week we are going to:

• see where the action research research is up to 
• revisit the charts you made
• identify strategies on the basis of the chart
• break down our projects into tasks 
• do a preliminary consideration of what you want from a supervisor (using a form that we can edit) 

I have added a list of the audiovisual equipment that labsome students have access to. This document is a pdf that is available to labsome students, from the administration folder in my files area.

This list does not include the labs that are available. These include (subject to availability) the radio production suites in building 6, and the high end digital edit suite in building 24. 

The RMIT Info Tech Services help page for wireless is where you go to:

• get a pdf describing how to do it (mac and pc)
• and any clients you might need
  

You usually need to be logged in (use your usual novell login) to be able to download software. I think (but am not certain) that on Macintosh if you have the latest operating system then you can use the wireless network without needing to install software.

Also keep in mind that you can visit some of the general computer labs (as in Kay House) to get help configuring your laptop if that is needed. 

We are going to share what we find out about Action Research by posting things to our blogs and tagging it with action research. That way you will be able to click the tag to see a list of others interested, and find each others content. Keep in mind we might also find other people in elgg interested in action research too!

As we talked about today in class. We are using an action research methodology (to some extent) ourselves. We are the group where an 'intervention' as an outcome of our research is to take place. We are doing this reconnaissance, evaluating the outcomes and then using that to frame further action.