Reflecting on: The Academic/Professional divide

YouTube captioning tries so hard but sometimes it doesn’t quite get there

I ran a webinar for the ASCILITE TELedvisors network on Thursday, with a focus on Academic Developers. One of the things that I’m enjoying most about the research process is the way that it lets you put the existing research literature and your own ideas to the test.

Of the three broad edvisor types that I believe reasonably sum us up (Academic Developers, Learning Designers, Education Technologists), it seems that ADs are the most clearly defined. I’d suggest that this is because they are almost entirely academic roles, which makes it much easier for ADs to undertake research relating to their work. One of my go-to references has been the International Journal of Academic Development. I’ve never come across a journal for educational technologists.

Based on the literature, my experiences and those of my colleagues, I’d say that one of the biggest barriers to effective collaboration between edvisors and academics is the academic/professional divide. I’d characterise this as an underlying tribalism that comes from a sense of one side not really understanding the drives and day to day experiences of the other. At its worst there can be an element of snobbery at play but for the most part it seems to come from Higher Ed culture that has customarily been relatively siloed and ‘us and them’.

All of the presenters noted that they felt that by holding an academic role as ADs, academic teaching staff were more likely to take their advice seriously. When I asked what professional staff might do to earn this kind of relationship of trust, most of the answers were variations on a theme of spending 1-1 time with academic teaching staff and demonstrating your knowledge. Which I appreciate but at the same time, this seems to have significant limitations.

Discussion about how professional staff can develop same relationship of trust with academics as Academic Developers have

Another recurring idea was that academic teaching staff will respond more to advice about teaching and learning when it is tied to evidence based research and theory. I can see the value of this and I wonder if there is a case for more effective use of it when it comes to the dissemination of institutional learning and teaching initiatives in particular. Part of me does wonder though, whether this creates an escape clause for some of the less engaged academic teaching staff who might just pick holes in the theory to justify not doing something they had no interest in doing in the first place. But maybe that happens anyway. And maybe worrying about the worst cases at the expense of the greater population isn’t that helpful.

One more area that I think the academic/professional divide is manifested is within edvisor circles. While all the presenters seem respectful of edvisors in professional roles, there did at times seem to be a gap in understanding of the depth of the pedagogical knowledge and skill of learning designers and education technologists. One of the aspects of my research that I’m hoping will shed more light on this is exploring the way that edvisor units are organised in institutions. Whether ADs work alongside LDs and ETs or whether they are all separate. I have a feeling that we lean towards the latter and that this can lead to these understanding gaps. The fact that we had representatives of two AD only communities of practice that there is a strong sense of operating in a specialised domain. (Though I have noticed similar gaps between LDs and ETs at times, in professional roles).

I’ll be very interested to see if there are differences in the levels and types of collaborations based on organisational structures. I think I need to explore organisational theory a little more deeply here – it’s moving away from education to an extent but I suspect that it might be enlightening. Do you have any suggestions about this? Leave a comment (if commenting works) or say hi on twitter – I’m @gamerlearner

Research update #55: 10 months later

The cool thing about not blogging for a little while is that I get to do one of those cool narrative jumps that you get in your better TV shows* where a bunch of stuff happens between now and then but we just focus on the now.

I’m close to putting my ethics application in, I think I’ve got a fairly decent set of survey and interview questions and I have a reasonable idea of what data I want to capture in the first phase of investigation. The plan is still to work with around a dozen local Key Informants (KIs) in universities around Australia, edvisors who will help me sense check the questions and also help source information about numbers of edvisors in their institution, where they are located and how this is arranged (i.e. faculty vs centralised units, do learning technologists work side by side with learning designers etc).

I’m kind of concerned both about the ethics process – mostly because I haven’t been through it before, not because what I think I’m doing is unethical. This comes back to a lifelong wariness of authority I suspect. Recruiting KIs is a bigger worry, I think I do my best work when I don’t have to rely on other people and I don’t think I’m particularly good at asking other people to do things – specially things that will involve a bit of effort. I mean, I do it and I’ve done it but I don’t think I do that bit very well, the getting people excited and bringing them along for the ride bit. I raised the idea of paying the KIs some kind of honorarium when I spoke to Peter (supervisor) the other day but he was against it. (Ethics mostly I think).

One great thing that has happened in the last year has been the way that the TELedvisors network (and I) seem to have become a touch point for people doing research in this area. I should say, for professional staff and PhD students doing research in this area. I think I’ve been contacted personally by maybe 7 or 8 people wanting a chat and/or to use TELedvisors to help recruit participants to various studies. These all centre around Learning Designers, interestingly enough. I guess Academic Developers, coming moreso from the ranks of academics still tend to steer clear of professional staff and nobody really gives a damn about learning technologists, except me. (That’s not true, there’s a fair body of research about technologists out there but it’s a far small slice of the pie).

I’ve also reached out to a few people doing research in this space, and some taking it off in interesting new directions. I don’t feel at all insecure about saying that I feel like many of these people are smarter than I am, so it’s nice to be able to extend myself through the complexities of their ideas. Sarah Thorneycroft, someone I’ve been fortunate to know in the sector for a few years now has started her PhD on learning design, but for organisations. I think what I admire most about practitioner driven research is that it has a tight focus on meaningful outcomes rather than feeling like some kind of loose thought exercise.

One idea that I’ve been wrestling with has been about the difference between Learning Technologists (LTs) and Educational Technologists (ETs). Part of this was sparked by my gut reaction to ALT’s definition of LTs. ALT is the UK based Association for Learning Technology. In the TEL sector, they are a pretty big deal and their annual conference is one of the events of the year, from what I understand. They run CMALT, an accreditation scheme for learning technologists and also have learning technologist of the year awards. The 2017 winner of this award posted a reflection blog saying that she works as and probably sees herself more as an academic developer. In the post she does discuss “proper” learning technologists, people with this as a blog title but neither her or ALT saw not being a learning technologist as a barrier to being the best one of 2017. Which brings us back to ALT’s definition.

We define Learning Technology as the broad range of communication, information and related technologies that can be used to support learning, teaching and assessment. Our community is made up of people who are actively involved in understanding, managing, researching, supporting or enabling learning with the use of Learning Technology.

We believe that you don’t need to be called ‘Learning Technologist’ to be one.  

Vasant, S. (2014, March 31). What is a Learning Technologist? Retrieved September 11, 2019, from Blog.jobs.ac.uk website: https://blog.jobs.ac.uk/education/teaching-learning/what-is-a-learning-technologist/

As a professional staff member in a Higher Education institution and someone who has worked as an actual Learning/Education Technologist for a number of years, I struggle with this for a few reasons. The biggest relates to the academic/professional divide. My immediate, visceral reaction is that academic hobbyists are barging into a domain and claiming ownership like some European coloniser here to save the poor, ignorant local natives from themselves. Clearly that is a gross overreaction. It comes from an array of experiences (shared with my peers) of being disrespected and marginalised by (some, not all) academics as a professional staff member. Research is the key word at issue, as in most institutions, professional staff are excluded from this activity.

There is a second divide, lesser spoken of than the first, the pedagogical/technological divide. While I don’t have literature to back this up, I’d suggest that there is a hierarchy of knowledge in HE that goes 1) domain/discipline, 2) pedagogical and at a distant 3) technological. Given the purpose of HE, I don’t necessary disagree with this, although it does depend on what weighting we give research over teaching as a university purpose as to the gap between 1&2 and I also question the need for the size of the gap between 2&3. Both of these factors mean that, as a “proper” learning technologist, I can sometimes be sensitive to a sense of othering not just from academics but even from some edvisors in more pedagogically oriented roles and so this sense that ‘anyone can be a technologist’ probably grates more than it should.

But, I need to recognise that my feelings aren’t the only show in town and none of this has been consciously factored in to the ALT definition. Looking at it from another angle, it is about fostering an inclusive community of inquiry and practice, which is obviously a good thing. If there is one thing my research has made clear over the last 3.5 years, it’s that language in this space is hazy and fluid and just because I believe (for some good reasons) that the term learning technologist should represent a dedicated profession, it doesn’t mean that others have to. Stamping my feet about it is certainly not going to get me anywhere, anyway.

All of which led me back to the perennial question of what does a learning technologist do. Most of the ALT definition actually does capture it, though I think we need to go deeper. Managing, supporting and enabling learning are a big part of my work, with some understanding and some researching. (I consider myself fortunate to now be working somewhere that actively supports professional staff participation in research – oh yeah, one of the things that happened in the 10 months was that I got a new job). Managing, arguably is where the main dividing line between academic and professional and pedagogical and technological can be found. (Probably supporting too but let’s stick to managing for now).

Thinking about managing educational technology led me to the realisation that we should have educational technologists (ET) and learning technologists. Both need to have a strong understanding understanding of both technology and pedagogy – a fact that many people seem to miss. The difference between ET/LTs and IT staff is that our focus is ultimately always on the best application of technology to enhance learning. Without the learning, there is no need for the tech. If it doesn’t enhance the learning, there is no need for the tech. This isn’t to say that IT staff don’t have ideas about how tech can enhance learning but this is not their primary function. (I raise this – and will come back to it in a future post – because one of the biggest misconceptions about LT/ETs is that we are primarily IT staff).

So what’s the difference between a learning technologist and an educational technologist then? Great question, thanks for asking. I would suggest that an LT is principally focused on the connections between learning, teaching and technology. They tend to work more closely with teachers and will more commonly be found in faculty/college based units than in central ones. An ET, on the other hand, does this as well but has a lot more to do with how the education technology works in and serves the needs of the wider institutional education ecosystem. They are more commonly found in central teams and will work more closely with the institutional IT teams to manage and implement systems and platforms.

These central teams are often the business owners of the tech, and In addition to the impact tech has on learning and teaching, they need to be across the practicalities of how it is supported, what happens when it breaks, how it integrates with other institutional systems (e.g. student management), how its use aligns with university policies (e.g. academic integrity), legal requirements (privacy, security, intellectual property), how the implementation works with the available staff resources to actually get the work done (amidst competing priorities) and financial considerations. These are some of the less interesting aspects intellectually of using technology in education but nonetheless, they are essential for facilitating the big picture operation of the institution beyond learning and teaching.

Now, as I’ve mentioned once or forty times before, the semantic landscape when it comes to describing edvisors is more of a jungle than a garden, but in terms of making sense of the different responsibilities of types of technologists, using educational vs learning seems helpful. Whether this might also be applied to learning designers or academic developers is something for further consideration.

It feels good to get that all out of my head.

In terms of what’s next, I have a long list of things that I’m trying to cut back to something manageable and less overwhelming. A big thing overall would seem to be to do more writing, so returning to this blog feels like a positive step in that direction. The advice I read about doing a PhD is not to wait until you’ve collected your data to start writing it – because there are going to be many many drafts before it is ready. Setting up Scrivener to support this seems to be a good next thing to do. I’ve been flipping between whether I want to set up individual Scrivener projects for each chapter or just put everything in the one. A single one feels like it might be unmanageably large but maybe there would be problems if I want to quickly access content/ideas/etc between chapters if I do it the other way. Compartmentalising by chapter feels like it might better support a sense of progress and achievement. I’ll probably do that.

Time to crack on then.

*Apropos of nothing much, one of the best shows I have watched recently, to the point where I felt the need to ration it out, has been a series called Patriot. This low key spy comedy is like nothing I have seen on TV before. It has the sensibilities of a great indie film, deep rich characters, imaginative production, a profound love of language and just superb story telling. It takes it own time and I could never tell where it was going, which makes the comic moments leap out. Stephen Conrad, the writer/director has gone on to make Perpetual Grace Inc. which is equally amazing. These are true auteur shows. (Below is a nice example of the fun they have with language – I’d share a series trailer but there are too many joke spoilers, just watch it)


#Research Update 54: No more excuses

(Caution – this is very rambly and introspective and I think I largely used this to tease out some ideas that seem quite obvious in hindsight. You can pretty safely skip this post, even if you sometimes find my other ones interesting)

A couple more months have passed since I went through my confirmation and while I’ve been letting ideas percolate and I’ve been developing plans, it feels like there hasn’t been enough pixels put to e-paper

I caught up with Peter, who continues to assure me that I’m not aiming too high, and he said a few times that more than anything else, I need to be taking notes about everything. That was one thing that I was using this blog for and it is the thing that I am returning to.

I actually like writing and I don’t feel like I get to do enough of it in my day-to-day – or at least I should say, I don’t get to do enough satisfying writing. Emails written and instruction/process writing has skyrocketed as I slowly get my head around the challenges of a shared management role in a Higher Education institution. In those cases (other than instructions and processes), a lot of what I’m writing still feels like it is wrong because the landscape is changing so quickly that it is incredibly difficult to have the context and rationale of many of the things I’m responding to. I am quickly – though not quickly enough – learning that I’m not in a position to raise questions about decisions made at an executive level and I need to get on with just implementing them. Which is ironic I guess because I feel as though many of the calls that I have been making are similarly questioned by my team members and I know how frustrating that is. (Because I have the full context perhaps and they don’t? Who knows – that does at least seem to be one thing I can try to do better anyway)

The apparent binary between rational factors and emotional factors in decision making and activities at all levels is definitely something I had never given enough thought to before. Both types of factors are valid and need to be addressed, working with the emotional is a lot harder though. I feel as though I have touched on this a little in the Lit Review as far as teachers/academics goes but have greatly underestimated its impact across the educational ecosystem. I do suspect that this ecosystem is relatively unique in terms of workplaces and that people accustomed to working in “normal” work environments frequently don’t make allowances for it when they try to apply typical change management strategies and tools. It feels as though I have already seen it bewilder and crush the spirits of more than a few sensible and good people. It is probably both a strength and a weakness of Higher Education and I guess I need to find some way to explore and explain it in my research. I keep coming back to the Brew, Boud, Lucas & Crawford article from 2017 about “Responding to university policies and initiatives: the role of reflexivity in the mid-career academic” as something that both shocks and enlightens me about aspects of university culture. This culture seeps through all areas of the institution.

Coming back to methodology, one of my big concerns as I work out how to do the first round of interviews with Key Informants (approx 12 across edvisor and manager roles – maybe some teacher??) has been how to find a reflective sample of Australia’s Higher Ed landscape. In broad brushstrokes, we have city and regional/rural universities, “elite” research institutions (the Group of Eight), technology oriented universities, younger research focussed ones and a large set of ‘others’ that are often considered by learners as having more of a career-gaining purpose (though quality research is also done in these ones). Some institutions are financially well-off and others struggle for survival – which could both make them more open to innovation and teaching and learning support offered by edvisors as well as less able to pay for it. Culturally, the ‘elite’ universities – and particularly the academics within (to apply a ridiculously broad brush) might have much more restrictive internal hierarchies and cultures that downplay teaching support from ‘non-academics’ – or even teaching over all.

So how to allow for all of these factors (and so many more) in choosing which institutions to focus on in a logistically feasible study. Peter’s feeling – which surprised me but kind of makes sense – was that these distinctions fade away somewhat if I ultimately aim to gather rich data from all the Australian universities. All 40-43 of them (depending on the inclusion of private and international unis with Australian campuses).

In a separate writing practice I like to write ridiculously unfilmable science fiction and horror scripts. I used to write like a producer, only including the things that I thought were actually doable (not that I have the experience to know what that is any more). After a while though, I realised that this seriously stunted the enjoyment that I got from telling crazy stories and I decided that the first drafts needed to have everything and I could leave the problems of actually realising them as someone else’s problem. This feels a little bit like that in some ways and maybe it’s a terrible analogy as none of the scripts have ever been made but at the same time, it seems increasingly like the only way I am going to really learn what it is to be a researcher is to aim too high and then let reality whittle that down into something achievable.

So I guess I’m aiming to explore the relationships between edvisors, academics and management in all Australian Higher Ed institutions, in some way.

The key informant interviews are still as much about working out how to do this substantive piece of research and the different avenues that I might need to follow in order to get access to institutional data. Given that every institution is different, I guess I can only hope to get indicative insights into how this might be done rather than definitive information.

Any way I cut it, I need to actually be doing it to learn about this rather than trying to work out the perfect fully-formed solution in my head before I go and do it. Which will be a challenge but one not unlike my current new work role.

This has been my TED talk, thanks for listening. (It was really just about committing to some ideas I now realise and there is no better way to do this than have to commit them to screen.)

Research update #53: Methodology or Messodology?

I have identified around 17 different types of data that I want to collect for this research. I have been waiting for people who know more about this than I do to say – ‘you’re out of your mind’ – but as yet, nobody has.

It looks a little something like this.

More than a few of these things (edvisor numbers, quals, entry points, unit structures) don’t even necessarily answer my research questions but seem important in the journey towards them. The I.T bit in the corner is more of a stray thought because I’ve been spending a LOT of time in my own edvisor practice lately chatting to them and there is wealth of research to be done on their role in edutech projects that nobody seems to have touched on yet.

Determining how, where and from whom to gather this data is my first stage and will involve working closely with a set of key informants across institutions. I would assume a mix of edvisors, edvisor unit managers (or higher level types – DVCAs maybe?) and I’d imagine teachers but that seems slightly hazier right at the moment. One of the edvisors on the review panel did note that there is a major difference between types of edvisors and while I believe I have acknowledged that, I can probably give it a lot more thought in terms of considering the relationships between edvisors (academic developers, learning designers and learning technologists) and our perceptions of each other. So that’s fun.

For now, the logical thing to do seems to focus on the interviews with key informants, which are intended (amongst other things) to provide some insights into how to go about collecting the rest of this data. I’d like to get a reasonably representative cross-section of people in a range of different types of unis (I considered TAFE and private providers but that’s just too much extra), so I figure I need Group of Eight, Australian Technology Network, Innovative Research and Regional ones. But maybe that’s overdoing it. I do think there is something to be seen in comparing teaching oriented vs research oriented ones and perhaps also (though maybe this is the same thing) well resourced vs less well resourced institutions. Then again I haven’t considered any of these things as factors in my proposal so far, so ??? Anyway, I guess that falls under the research apprenticeship side of this whole endeavour.

But, be honest, this still seems like way too much to be trying to do right?

Research update #52: holy shit, I’m a researcher

I mean, I guess I am anyway. After a great deal of panic and uncertainty about my methodology (particularly), I flew through my thesis proposal review/confirmation thing a few weeks ago and it was signed off by the panel with no changes, there and then.

All that remains now is to actually do the research, analyse it, make sense of it and write it up. (Oh and get ethics approval and maintain a healthy work/life/study balance and…)

While I was feeling pretty good about my review of the current literature and ideas about what I’d like to achieve in this space, my lack of research training and experience and my incredibly scatter-shot approach to what I actually plan to capture as data (and how) had me deeply concerned that I was going to be sent away to do major revisions before resubmitting my thesis proposal. (Also the fact that it weighed in at 15,000 words – a lazy 5,000 over the recommended word count).

I’ll save the full description of my methodology for another post – suffice to say that I’ve counted 17 different sources of data that I want to collect and a good 4 or 5 of them I find I’m completely unable to link them to my research questions. (Also I think my research questions are not quite what I want to do but I was damned if I was going to mention that. I mean, they’re close but the wording  isn’t quite right.)

Getting this thesis proposal accepted has been my only real goal for the last 2.5 years, with everything else largely sent to the carpark to deal with later.

But I guess later is now. On with it, I suppose.

I would like to thank the friends and colleagues who have helped me to get this far and been generous with their time, support and advice – Peter, Lina, Kerrie, Mischa, Carol, David, Kate, Chie, Kym, Pam and anyone I’ve missed.

Research update #51: Been a long time Been a long time Been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time*

Actually it hasn’t been that lonely at all, life is pretty good on that front, but it certainly has been a long time since I last posted here – coming up to 3 months.

So why is that? Well, I moved cities and changed jobs for one thing. After 16 years in Canberra and three at ANU, I’ve finally returned to Melbourne to work as a Senior Learning Technologist at Swinburne University of Technology. It’s a step up in many ways and it also gives me an opportunity to develop some insights about how a centralised TEL support unit works.

In the times that I have found to work on revising my thesis proposal, which my supervisor has assured me can be a little late because life changes are factored in, I’ve been looking at some significant structural issues and fleshing out the core areas that have been a little thin or overlooked. Conducting more empirical research on edvisor numbers, origins and edvisor unit structures absolutely makes sense, given the paucity of existing data – it’s virtually all feelpinions, the closer I look at it – and I’m also starting to realise that while I like Bourdieu’s ideas about power and belonging, I have nothing to say that smarter people haven’t already said about it or used it for.

I’m also trying to work out how this research can dovetail with the wider objectives of the TELedvisors SIG and how both can inform the other. It hadn’t occur to me that this was something that I could talk about in my research proposal but Peter sees it as a strength, so that sounds good to me. This does mean that I need to explore some new ideas (such as Participatory Design and Development) to see if that can give this a framework but my ducks are now all in a row and I’m well into the process of actually rewriting draft 2.

There is a mountain more to learn in my new role – far more management and operational responsibility than I’m accustomed to – and we’re in the midst of some massive projects (transitioning from Blackboard to Canvas, rolling up Echo360 ALP upgrades and training, looking for an ePortfolio, looking at badges, developing an education technology evaluation pipeline) but I’m incredibly glad to be here.

Yesterday’s TELedvisor SIGs both look like they could be particular helpful in both work and study as well. Check them out below.

 

Research update #50: Thesis proposal feedback day

I got some rich, detailed feedback on my thesis proposal from Peter. Given that this was firmly entrenched in my mind as a first draft, I was prepared for the worst – I think – so I was fairly happy that some of the key issues were things that had already been concerning me.

I need to go over the comments again in more depth but the biggest areas for improvement so far seem to be the fact that I got a little repetitive in the latter section (and I know this is true) and I focused too heavily on building and supporting my argument in the literature review rather than just describing the current state of scholarship in the field. That I had been less aware of (or perhaps didn’t quite understand at the time), I think maybe because I’ve been concerned about snooty examiner academics looking at my idea and saying – so what? I probably also liked the flow that this  – making a case – gave me in that it made it easier to look at the connections between a range of ideas but I’m sure there’ll be other ways to do that that will be less, I don’t know, needy?

One thing that was interesting was the fact that I had been concerned that I was trying to cover too many things and needed to reel it back in a little to come to an achievable project. On the contrary, Peter suggested a couple more avenues that might be interesting to explore and noted the virtual absence of students. I think it’s more about teaching than learning but I also had a great discussion with a friend last week along the lines of ‘you can learn without a teacher but you can’t teach without a learner’, so there’s some room to move there when we look at the practice of teaching (If that’s what I’m going to do)

One thing that I was perhaps a little wrong about was my sense that older literature might carry more weight or have more gravitas or something. I’ve read a lot and must confess that some of the more recent work has been particularly valuable in some ways (probably that whole standing on the shoulders of giants thing) but I guess I was concerned that overemphasising this might make it look as though I’d only taken a shallow step into the pool. Just picked up a handful of recent journals and gone ‘this’ll do’. I do still think that the older literature has value in demonstrating that these issues aren’t new and that, in spite of much discussion of them, little seems to have changed. Room for both I guess.

There were also a few minor things – formatting and heading size, indenting quotes etc – which I’m always fine with because these are the easiest to fix and the more of this there is, the less there is to improve in the actual writing and arguments and ideas. I also need to be a little more mindful of my broad declarations that a thing is a certain way and claiming knowledge of things I couldn’t possibly know. That’s fair too. Sometimes you just get caught up in an idea and go too far.

So there’s still a fair bit to be done but there doesn’t seem to be anything majorly wrong with my key ideas, so I’m happy.

Also, hooray, 50 research updates. I have no idea if anyone reads these, I seem to get maybe 10-15 hits on these posts on average but I have no idea how much people read. If you’re still here, I hope you get something from this. It’s a weird form of public personal writing really, blogging, when you think about it.

Research update #48: Proposal writing day 16 – Hitting paydirt

So you know how they say that you’ll never feel like you’ve read enough for your lit review and there comes a point where you just need to stop and work with what you have? Well I’m glad that I ignored that advice, the stuff that I’m finding now just keeps getting richer and richer.

I came across some work done a decade ago that took a deep dive into the nature of academic developer roles, practices, units and everything else here in Australia and brought together the heads of most of the teams to thrash through the ideas.

https://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/file/afda4788-9421-4ee5-a3d4-fb055bfc4dfb/1/PDF%20%28Published%20version%29.pdf

The good news is that this backs up a lot of what I’ve found and experienced, I guess the bad news is that with all this data, little seems to have changed. Now it’ll be interesting to see what has and hasn’t been achieved since then and I’d say it also offers an opportunity to conduct similar research to get a longitudinal sense of what’s gone on.

That said, I will stop looking for new things for now as I’m keen to rewrite / revamp the existing lit section and want to give myself the time needed to get this done before 2018.

Research update #47: Proposal writing day (I don’t know, stuff, like 15 or something) – Tinkering and tweaking

I’ve reached that glorious part of holidays where you have to check which day it is. I’ve been pecking away at the proposal on most days to different degrees and the biggest realisation that I had in this time was that in giving myself permission to write the lit review section badly, I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. It is all over the place and parts of it make me feel like I’m being a petulant whiny child, railing at the many injustices dumped on the edvisor class.

Fortunately, this is ok because there are still some good salvageable bits and it’s given me something that I can reorganise into a more coherent discussion of the literature. Working backwards through my scattered but semi-organised notes to fill in the gaps is also bringing up a few ideas that I’d missed and I have a much clearer sense now of what I’m looking for in the various papers and articles and books spread around the (digital) house.

The revised target to send draft 1.5 off for feedback is now a hard end of year – but ideally 30/12. Estimates always blow out a little, it’s just the nature of the beast. Back to it.