Archive for the 'Things to remember' Category



Institutional blogs

Published on November 15, 2022

Way, way back, when I first found out about blogs and I was debating where to put the blog for my academic life, there was a debate about whether these blogs should go on institutional sites, or whether they should go on an external provider. WordPress wasn’t as big back then  – there were numerous […]


Literature reviews

Published on May 19, 2015

Link to a useful article by the Thesis Whisperer, aimed at doctoral students beginning to work on their literature review. How to become a literature searching ninja


Scrum management framework

Published on December 11, 2014

With its scrums, sprints and stories, Scrum Management always sounds intriguing. I’ve been involved with several teams who have either used this system knowingly, or have employed elements from it. However, I’ve never seen the process formalised until I spotted it in the January 2015 edition of Wired magazine (where they had compressed a version […]


I’m back!

Published on November 25, 2014

I managed to lock myself out of this blog for over a year. First I forgot my password – then I forgot that I had created an in-box rule in Outlook that automatically junked any messages from my blog (I kept getting messages about moderating spam). So my password resets have all been vanishing into […]


Approaches to pedagogy

Published on April 25, 2013

Great infographic summarising approaches to pedagogy, making connections with key thinkers in the field. http://cmapspublic3.ihmc.us/rid=1LGVGJY66-CCD5CZ-12G3/Learning%20Theory.cmap


Gaming and learning

Published on October 30, 2011

Games are important when building communities. They help to develop trust and an understanding of each other’s skills and personalities. In terms of language, wordplay helps us to establish register – to work out what we mean and double mean when we use language. Can we create online community without the use of word games? […]


Resurrection

Published on September 29, 2011

I thought it made sense to end this blog about being a research student with my graduation ceremony. And I started other blogs. Lots of other blogs. (Partly because I was working on a blogging project that involved setting up lots of blogs for other people.) But the official blog is too official, and the […]


Why reviewers/editors reject articles

Published on December 8, 2009

Notes from a workshop on ‘Writing for peer-reviewed journals’ run by Pat Thomson. Reasons why reviewers and editors say they reject articles: Lack of focus – saying everything, focusing on nothing, cramming too much in one article Not locating the contribution and the position – for a particular audience, in relation to wider debates. the […]


The Bad Supervision Guide

Published on

(Originally from Tony Winefield, University of South Australia. Came to me via an OU research degree supervisor workshop.) Bad supervision, like any other skill can be acquired and developed with practice. Here are six simple rules to follow: Be inaccessible. Don’t return written work because you are ‘too busy’ to read it. Humiliate and belittle […]


Journal impact

Published on December 7, 2009

I’ve spent the day looking at the impact factor of various journals. The ISI Web of Knowledge lists 1985 social science journals (according to a workshop I attended recently, only about 15% of education journals are in ISI). The ‘Annual Review of Psychology’ comes in top for 2008, with an annual impact factor of 16.217. […]