Inspired by a Tweet I read recently about the distinction between a thesis and a PhD, I have been thinking about the difference between the two. The university really focuses on the thesis, which must : be of good presentation and style be a significant contribution to knowledge and/or to understanding demonstrate capacity to pursue […]
My husband and I at my graduation ceremony in Milton Keynes: 22 June 2010. You can download my thesis ‘The Construction of Shared Knowledge through Asynchronous Dialogue’ at http://oro.open.ac.uk/19908/ Or just read the abstract… This thesis investigates how groups of learners use asynchronous dialogue to build shared knowledge together over time. To do this, it […]
Sometimes it seems there is no endpoint to a doctorate, it just slowly runs into the sand. Now that the university has approved the award of my degree, I have to wait until next month to have the degree and title conferred, and then another couple of months until the ceremony…
Information from a recent course on being a PhD supervisor, run by John Wakeford. Of the 1996-7 cohort of full-time PhD students (excluding those not upgraded from MPhil and those not continuing into the second year): 30-36% had a doctorate after four years 50-70% had a doctorate after five years 72% had a doctorate after […]
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. […]
Researchers write all the time, writing is the means through which we work on and work out our ideas. We don’t just write up – we have not found a transparent truth which we then just put into words. Writing is a representation – we make choices and what we choose to write is a […]
I have a thesis title 🙂 ‘The construction of shared knowledge through asynchronous dialogue’. And I’m giving notice of intention to submit. Yay! 23 January – that’s my submission date.
Just watched a Ted Talk by David S Rose on producing a business pitch. Thought I could apply it to writing my thesis introduction. So the intro should start like a rocket, grabbing readers’ attention, and then it should take a solid, steady upward path. Start with a title, and then an attention-grabbing introduction. Give […]
I’m thinking about the conclusion to my PhD, so I’ve returned to the literature on what examiners are looking for. Stephen Potter’s book ‘Doing Postgraduate Research’ contains a list of potential viva questions, so I’m going to think about how I could answer those, and then see which elements of my answers will fit comfortably […]