The interesting discomforts associated with exploring unfamiliar or previously rejected techniques for research are proving enlightening about my attitude to research altogether.  It's not that I'm anti research - though I am horrified by the distortions  to HE caused by the research assessment exercise - it's just that I only feel drawn to certain approaches to it myself.  I haven't properly thought this through before. 

Education has been my third choice of academic discipline - I changed from English Lit to Philosophy early as an undergraduate.  Research in those academic areas would probably not typically involve interviews, questionnaires, statistics or anything like that.  (None of these would have to be ruled out, though.) If I had progressed in either, "research" (perhaps scholarship?) would have involved working with texts and ideas, not people - though people could have been important as an object of study.

As an academic, the writing I have done has tended to be the low status "how to" stuff aimed at helping students.  I have several conference papers that I aim to redo to publish in academic journals, and I might also do this with some essays I've written for this course.  But my aim is to communicate ideas and possibilities rather than present facts that I have discovered.

I'm probably more interested in reinterpreting facts presented by others. Indeed, this would be appropriate for the interest I have in the changes that happen when we move activities online - I believe that they are no longer the same activities and our actions (including language use) are no longer the same as they are f2f.  This could have huge implications for education.

I think I'm feeling my way here to a philosophical stance rather than a social science one, if such a distinction is appropriate.  I've been reintroduced to philosophical ideas several times during the course and have enjoyed exploring them.  And of course Philosophy is also no longer the same online as f2f (nor the same as it was in the 70s!)

This discovery feels quite important, though when I read it over it doesn't seem to be saying much.

I'm a little bit behind with my reading for work as well as this course.  Coming to this blog is probably displacement activity (along the lines of it's not worth starting the reading now as I have to go for the train in 15 minutes).  However, I think it's worth recording how I feel about stats before I start doing them.  The fact that I only loaded my software yesterday (noting that I should have done it before the end of January) suggests some reluctance. 

I haven't done any statistics for a long time, but I can see that one of the things I'm reading for work contains some.  I don't think I'm phobic about statistics - I just worry about their use and the claims attached to them.  But it's actually better to know something about it all if people are likely to misuse statistics, especially if they are making spurious claims based on accurate statistics (but false premises). 

I did use numbers even in my very qualitative autoethnographic study - I created a concordance file in Word which helped me count my references to particular themes and thus see what a student "noticed" more frequently than other things.  It was a starting point when I had a lot of data and didn't know what to do next - it helped me to create categories and also a useful index.  It was of more interest to my examiners than I thought it would be - part of the argument about how you claim your data are data.

So I'll keep that in mind when I'm number crunching!  I've more to say on this but my time's up. 

I hate asking people for things - I'll buy a whole book of raffle tickets myself rather than try to sell any.  Yet I don't mind when other people ask me to buy a raffle ticket … or fill in a questionnaire. Not usually.

I didn't like being hounded by HESA to return their questionnaire, though - that felt intrusive, or would have if I hadn't already returned it at the second request.  I suppose it depends how many other things a person is juggling - in the last week, a few things I've agreed to do (write references, review papers, be an internal examiner, see students and many other things) have suddenly materialised rather too closely together.  If anyone sent me a survey just now, I'd be likely to ignore it (apart from people on the Research Methods module, of course).

When we ask someone to complete a survey for us, we have no idea what level of burden or anxiety it might be adding to an already overfull intray.  I suppose that is what causes me concern, especially if they see it as a pointless exercise for them.  I'm OK with piloting our group questionnaire on some of my colleagues - so I'm not recording a concern about that here.  While I was reading Robson this morning, I just became very conscious of my reluctance to use surveys in general, other than things that can be done very quickly (like the one-minute paper, as a classroom evaluation tool, for instance). 

When I have used the simple single open question surveys described in my last entry, these didn't put immediate pressure on any individual to stop everything to attend to my research.  Rather, I got a quick response from those who were interested in the topic.  That didn't feel as though it was being intrusive, though no doubt there were some who thought, "oh no - not another email from her".

I think that that my concern about being intrusive means that surveys are not for me.  It possibly also accounts for some of the idiosyncracies of my research history - and some other things that I'm still thinking about. But questionnaire fatigue is a real danger, especially among students.

I had a quick look at the site before going to bed last night and couldn't take in the Week 4-5 stuff at all. It wasn't *my* time of day - it's much clearer this morning.  I know this response to times of day very well now, of course - though I didn't find out I was a lark instead of an owl until well after I graduated with my first degree. But the reminder is useful for the current work, especially as we are about to go into a complex group activity.

A a great strength of e-learning is the asynchronous communication that allows people to work at their own preferred or convenient times.  The dialogue becomes a hybrid of spoken and written: faster than letter writing but slower than speech (and therefore more considered).  (I suppose that when there were messengers delivering letters within the same town, the speed of communication might have been similar to that of the discussion board, though not as potentially far reaching.)  The division of the conversation into threads means that the more considered response can still come out later, even if in speech the opportunity might have passed by.  

As well as considering it for team work, it's perhaps important to take timing into account for questionnaires and interviews.  I'm vaguely conscious of this anyway, but I do wonder whether there are any specific implications for the online environment.  Asking the same questions online asychronously, or via Skype or other synchronous medium, or phone or face-to-face could elicit different types of response.  A response can be edited or re-sequenced in some circumstances but not in others.  I've noted before that I will sometimes preview a response and then censor it - if it doesn't "look" right. 

Timing is not the only issue - presence is a big factor.  The absence/presence distinction is already there in questionnaires and interviews, but going online may introduce subtle or major differences. (We are possibly not aware of them all yet.)  How far does the medium affect the validity, reliability and quality of the data?   This is the question I'll have at the back of my mind as I read Chapter 8 of Robson.  

I wish I'd done a research methods course before; I'm enjoying the reactions from different perspectives and the possibilities opened up by the range of potential angles on a topic.  I've been thinking that it would have helped me in my previous big study to have had some appropriate signposts.  I had to find them myself (which is good I suppose).  I am probably coming at the issue of research with the benefits of a piece of work to test against what I'm reading. 

Actually, just writing that has made me think that I did have an advantage in not having too many signposts - it made my observations more intuitive and natural.  When I just went into a college to be a student and see what I noticed without any preconceptions (other than a feeling that there was more to it than deep and surface learning), I suppose I was engaged in a sort of grounded theory.  This was suggested to me at the time, in a casual conversation with a colleague.  When I looked into grounded theory, I decided it wasn't for me, particularly as the internal debates could have sidetracked me from my own debates with phenomenography.  It also seemed to demand a particular approach to data analysis that I wasn't sure about. But I still might have been doing something that could usefully be described as grounded theory.  In fact, the links that Robson makes between ethnography, case study and grounded theory (Page 190) might have reassured me.

It was very late in the day before I realised the significance of activity theory for my research (dangerously late!) And because of a reluctance to tell the story out of sequence, this meant that the role of "action" wasn't highlighted upfront early enough for the reader.  An earlier orientation to different approaches to inquiry and theoretical perspectives might have helped with this.

So perhaps I can now try a different type of study but with some similar themes to my last one.  I'm starting to think about taking myself out of the picture (as far as possible - but I'm not convinced that any researcher can do this totally!) I could use one or more of my earlier conclusions as a hypothesis and find a way of seeing what differences there might be online and face to face.  Perhaps I'd like to explore something around "learning outcomes" - and the relationships between intended, perceived, actual, additional and unintentional outcomes (and there'll be others perhaps).

This morning I'm being sidetracked by other people's blogs - and I've still got loads of them to explore.  I've followed up a link in Wayne's blog to transliteracy, which has got me enthused and opened up all sorts of other things to read and a video to watch.  I'm now torn; I need to get on with some tasks (I haven't done the group task adequately) but want to go off and explore a perspective that might have some bearing on what I do later for my dissertation. 

This is how it should be: an insight from someone else coming at just the right time for one of my own interests - and, I hope, stimulating me to write something that in turn motivates someone else to explore.  

On the other hand, the enthusiasm that's tempting me away from my tasks may need to be reined in. I'm now mentally reviewing my long career as a student and wondering if I hadn't been such a dilettante, I might have achieved more.  I think that students are constantly faced with such dilemmas. 

What's important is to add some proper thought to the enthusiasm.  For my next entry, i should give reasons for transliteracy being worth pursuing in my own context - or not, if that turns out to be the case.  

I feel as though I'm getting my places sorted out - I had something I wanted to say this morning but I felt it "belonged" to my other blog. It's interesting how they feel like different places.  But I've a little niggle; I'm asking myself if I'm being self-indulgent.  The answer is no, not really - there's plenty of space in these places, and my blogs don't displace any other things.  And people don't have to read them.  But I'll find it useful later to see how I write differently in different places.

Today's blogging may be displacement activity (like housework can be - though in my case obviously hasn't been recently).  We have a task to do in response to reading about research design approaches.  Fortunately, this relates to some of the stuff I was reading at the weekend when I was away from internet access.  However, I haven't read it all, just the stuff on ethnography and grounded theory which are probably the most likely to influence me. 

It would be interesting to try to think of different types of design in relation to the same research question and I think I'll tackle the task in this way.  I could perhaps try two research questions: a simple "obvious" one and one that I'm likely to want to consider for myself.  I'm now asking myself whether a tendency towards an interest in ethnography – combined with a resistance to "measuring" complex human things – is likely to determine the kind of research question I'm prepared to pursue.  I am conscious that I need to be more open to the range of approaches.

There's a lot going on on the discussion board - and it's really good philosophical inquiry.  I last opened it yesterday late afternoon but first thing this morning there were 36 entries to look at.  And I'm going to be away until Sunday evening with no internet connection; at this stage of the course this could be a problem.  I'm taking the textbook with me so I can at least keep in touch with the ideas.  But after what I've just been looking at, I now want to take Notes from the Underground too - and Being and Nothingness if I have it, but I don't think I have.  But I was trying to travel light!

The debate about truth seemed slow to get going at first and now there is no stopping it.  I've contributed a few things and have nearly made several other observations but have stopped myself (I'm always interested when that happens).  In one case, i wanted to say something about Plato's Symposium (during our debate on Love) - but I felt it might be a thread killer.  In another, I wanted to add something but hadn't worked it through or had got into an internal contradiction. (I should note when this happens though.)

I haven't much time this morning - I should be marking, I'm packing to go to Aberdeen and I have to go for my train to go to work.  I'm writing hastily and all the time thinking about what this blog should "feel" like.  It's not really just a matter of transferring from Blogger - that's a different type of space.  It almost feels as though in it's in a different place (physical) in the web - which does suggest an intersubjective construction of the online world.

This sounds as though I'm going to want to keep two blogs going.  (But it'll be next week before I can do this.)

This is the first day of this blog and the Research Methods Course and I've also decided to keep a private journal just in relation to the dissertation.  I'll start that today too.  I think this means that my other blog (in Blogger) has to go for now! I don't want to spend so much time reflecting on what I'm doing that I'm not actually doing anything.

But the proliferation of reflection and discussion places is getting me to think about readership/audience.  I like the idea that one (possibly the main) reader is my future self - and that's easier when the blog isn't assessed. So I want to record what's uppermost on my mind in relation to being a student and how that affects what I do as well as who I feel I am.  But this isn't in isolation - the concurrent readership forms the community and context and I am likely to be their readers too.  This is where it differs from my public blog on Blogger, at least as it is to date.

And I want to make my blogs more stimulating for a reader too - so I need to work on that, in particular with more links and visuals.  Perhaps I'll start with a new photo; people will start to see I've been using the same photo for two years.

But for this first day, I'm just checking that it works and I can edit on it etc.  A bit like the digital equivalent of sharpening pencils and smoothing out page 1 of the notebook.  As far as research is concerned, I'm thinking about the online use of language shaping courses in a different way - and that does include non-use of language too.  But it's still very open.