I’m just reading through the epistolary interviews which I carried out last year. This technical problem still makes me laugh 😀 “I am unfortunately unable to use the letter next to q and e on the computer(keyboard problems!) (that means the letter after ‘v’ in the alphabet is going to be typed as *!! if […]
The amount of times I change my research questions is verging on the ridiculous. Still, I will get there. I know they’re out there somewhere, waiting for me to find them. I think these ones are pretty close: Main question How is asynchronous dialogue used to build shared knowledge over time? Sub-questions How do tutors […]
I must admit, I couldn’t see much point to Google Books. After all, who’s going to read an entire book online? But now I’m a convert. So many of the relevant books in my field are now online that it’s really speeding up my work. For example, I’ve got Neil Mercer’s ‘Words and Minds’ by […]
In the last month my entire thesis has undergone a radical rethink, as I have moved completely away from community, to consideration of temporality in the context of asynchronous dialogue. I think this is the right move to make – I’ve got excellent data to support a study of temporality, and it fits in with […]
I came to my data from the point of view of communities. How do communities learn together? Why is it valuable to learn as a member of a community? However, on closer examination, I’m not studying a community. My data comes from task-based groups (thanks for that insight, Etienne). True, they have been structured to […]
When I was studying English, or history, I could curl up in bed with a textbook and feel relaxed and cheerful. It’s never been like that in IET. Apart from the odd easy read – like Howard Rheingold on virtual communities – it all feels like work. Interesting, but work. I’ve just read Walter Ong’s […]
One day I will achieve the ultimate research question – I will look at it and know it is right. Until then… How do task-based groups of learners identify and use the resources of asynchronous conferences to support their learning? What constrains their identification and utilisation of these resources? Look, I’ve taken ‘communities’ out of […]
Well, I’m working on my literature review, so I’m bound to tinker with my research questions, aren’t I? Also, an initial pass over my data showed me that if I just look at the skills and resources that people use to learn together online, I’m going to end up with a list. And not a […]
I have knocked my 21 interviews into more-or-less usable form. I now have about 27,000 words of interview response data which is a fair amount to work my way through. To give me some initial pointers, I have made it all into tag clouds using the very user-friendly site tagcrowd.com The picture below shows a […]