FA13 - Dossier #2 Review Presentation Experience (2)

FA13-Dossier#2-Oct. 11th 

Last friday was the second part of the Fall 13' dossier #2 review presentation. After the second week of dossier#2, I realized that we have a wide range of research study topics in our field. For me, it was a good experience to know and see how senior IST students connecting their own research interests and expertise to IST field. However, sometimes I feel like once I have decided to focus on one main research topic and start digging deeper, it's not easy for me to have deep understanding in other areas and communicate with other students who have different focuses. For example, when Muruvvet was doing her presentation with me and Yahuei, she kept trying to explain what design judgement is and trying to tell us the big names in that field. Yet I know little about design judgement, so I could not give her helpful feedback and I would just take whatever she said instead.


Based on faculty's questions in the first week dossier, I recognized the importance of having comprehensive and deep understanding about the field I am studying in. But, currently I am still a bit confused whether it is better for young scholars to have understanding of different research areas or just keep focusing and digging into one specific area and be an expert of that area.


Here are the questions generated from the first week dossier:

1. In your focused research area, who are the authors you're drawing from? 
2. Why is your research/teaching/service related to our field? 
3. How do you characterize yourself as a researcher? 
4. So what? Why is it important? Why should others be interested to your topic? 
5. How do the authors you cited influence in your research and teaching?

This week, I think some faculty members still asked the same questions to dossier #2 participants. However, participants were also asked some other important questions as follows:

6. Are you trying to generalized your findings? 
7. Can you talk more about your data collection and data analysis? 
8. Can you give us examples from your teaching, service, and/or research experiences to support 
    what you said? 
9. How do you define ____? 
10. How is your minor sharing your research studies?

After the two weeks dossier review presentation, II came up with some plans and strategies for my dossier#2:

[Research]

  - Always keep in touch with my advisors and constantly update the status and progress of my research studies, especially the first author studies. Make sure my advisors agree with what I do and the ways i do it.

  - Establish a framework for my central topic first and then make teaching, research, and service experiences fit into the big framework.

  - While doing the first author study, always keep in mind the dossier#2 questions above. Ask myself these questions at any points in the process of my first author study and see whether I can have a strong answers for those questions.

  - Mix-method is the "approach"/"research design" for your study. It's not a type of method.

  - Try to make connection and comprehend big names' main arguments and viewpoints in the literature review.

  - Every step in research study is important, including "Why this topic? Why is it important?", deep understanding of literature review, and rigorous research design.

  - Make sure every academic event I participate can be connected to my main research focus.

  - Don’t say you’re researching a context! (e.g. I’m interested in social studies research) - Dr. Glazewski, R690

  - You should be asking questions about implication of the systems, instruction, learning, instructional systems, learning experiences. - Dr. Glazewski, R690

  - Be specifically careful about distinguishing Qualitative Research (interpretive framework) and Descriptive Research (evaluative or prescriptive framework). Most of research studies we do in the IST field are descriptive research, using qualitative data collection and analysis. - Dr. Glazewski, R690

  - Make an appropriate qualitative judgment. - Dr. Glazewski, R690


[In General]

  - Like what Dr. Glazewski always says - "Keep reading."

  - Be very careful of the word choice in dossier #2 PPT and presentation.


**And I think I will keep adding the plans and strategies after I attend more dossier #2 review presentations next year.**

Overall, I learned a lot from the Fall 2013 dossier#2, and feel good about knowing all these important dossier#2 questions. I think all I need to do is to start everything early and keep working on it. :)