Yesterday I had a meeting with my supervisor to discuss the assignments I’m going to run as part of the first objective of my PhD. Together with a systematic review and a survey, I was interested in using student and staff participation in a social network to derive additional data that would help me form a baseline understanding of their attitudes and skills around teaching and learning practice, as well as establish the level of digital and information literacy within the department.
After joining the SAFRI programme, I incorporated the social network idea into my SAFRI project, but unconsciously ended up with a different agenda. Instead of using the network to highlight potential problem areas and the challenges of teaching with technology, it morphed into me trying to demonstrate the effectiveness of using a social network to facilitate reflective practice. In hindsight, it’s clear that the 2 projects were at odds with one another, and the objectives were definitely not aligned.
When my supervisor pointed out that there was inconsistency in the 2 projects I really struggled to accept it. I was adamant that my methods were fine and She suggested that I hand over facilitation of the assignments within the network to other staff who didn’t have such a high personal stake in the success of the project, and I strongly disagreed. I found several reasons to explain why I had to be the person to run it, the strongest of which was that "…no-one else will try as hard as I will to make sure it works". Which kind of made her point.
When I went away and thought about our conversation I reviewed my objectives for the 2 projects, and then it was clear that they really were 2 different projects. One was suggesting that this would be a useful tool to describe the current state of affairs, which I know will be less than ideal. The other was intent on proving that the network would be a positive tool, rather than describing what would happen if we just incorporated one into the department.
After the painful realisation that I’d let my personal desire for this project to succeed override my objectivity as a researcher, I agreed to let others lead the social network assignments, with guidance from me. This will greatly reduce the impact of researcher bias, as well as synchronise the objectives of the 2 projects. As it stands now, it will more accurately describe the state of the department in terms of attitudes and skills around teaching and learning, and the levels of digital and information literacy, which will give me valuable data that will inform the next objectives of my study.
This was a great learning experience for me, and a warning of the dangers of getting too close to one’s project. There are some situations where the researcher can be an integral part of the project, but this experience has shown me when it would be detrimental to the process.
Posted in research.
Tagged with assignment, attachment, personal, phd, reflection, research, safri.
By Michael Rowe
– March 11, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized.
By Michael Rowe
– March 8, 2010
Someone told me that the SAFRI programme had changed their life, and I remember thinking that that might be taking it a bit far. But today brought me closer to thinking that it might not be that far from the truth. It wasn’t so much the content of the session, but the reflection and discussion that happened as a result of an exercise on conflict management. During the session, I was able to confront a part of me that isn’t the rational, logical person I usually think I am, and gave me a greater appreciation for the poor souls who have to try and understand why I think and do things so differently to them.
We spent a lot of time talking about the different approaches to managing conflict, with people who share similar psychological attributes identifying with certain approaches. I realised that I have ways of dealing with difficult situations that aren’t shared by most other people (I was the only person in my group, besides the facilitator, as opposed to 3 other groups of almost 10 in each group). My MBTI type is:
- Introvert – draw energy by looking internally, prefer reflection over action, prefer written communication
- iNtuitive – prefer theory and abstraction, imaginative, desire change
- Thinker – use logic and objectivity to make decisions, remain detached, truthful rather than tactful
- Perceiver – remain open and adapt to new information, be flexible, enjoy surprises, routines are limiting
The exercise I got the most out of today was to analyse a conflict and reflect on my own responses, as well as how I respond to the responses of others. Here’s the short reflection I put together after a few minutes of discussion with the facilitator:
I approach conflict logically, which is good for mediating the conflict of 3rd parties, but not so good when I’m personally involved. While other personality types might avoid conflict, I will sometimes create it by playing devil’s advocate. I’ll probe and push buttons to get a reaction and will sometimes take an opposing viewpoint just to have an interesting discussion (I’ll also not understand when the other party doesn’t appreciate this attempt to engage with them).
When I am involved in a conflict, I experience a rapid escalation of my own emotional response if I feel that those emotions aren’t being acknowledged, yet I have no natural tendency to acknowledge the emotions of other’s (“I’m right, so you must be wrong”). If my emotions are not acknowledged, I tend to withdraw and switch off emotionally. In those cases I find it difficult to let go and will definitely refuse to acknowledge the other person’s emotion…as a form of retribution (when I write it down like this, it seems insane, but in the moment, it’ perfectly clear to me).
On the other hand, if my emotions are acknowledged, there is a complete collapse of my resistance and I’m able to move towards resolution. However, I struggle to close the issue and will often find myself prolonging an argument to make the point that “I’m right”. When I do manage to avoid that and the conflict is resolved, I forget about it in minutes.
This experience, and the wonderful conversations it generated afterwards, really gave me a greater insight into who I am, as well as how I relate to others. For the rest of the day I was acutely aware that almost everyone else in the room sees, and responds to the world differently to me, which I found both sobering (“I’m alone”) and inspiring (“I’m special”).
Posted in education.
Tagged with conflict management, conflict resolution, emotion, faimer, intp, logic, mbti, rationality, reflection, safri.
By Michael Rowe
– March 6, 2010
The third day of SAFRI 2010 has come and gone and I’m exhausted. The sessions are intense and for the first time in years, I found myself counting the minute ’til the coffee break. But even that doesn’t offer any respite because it’s regarded as an opportunity for informal discussion about your project.
We switched back to a presentation / workgroup format today, with the focus being on managing change in the morning, and on research methods in the afternoon. I found the session on change management really interesting. The presentation was interesting but didn’t have much that you couldn’t find easily online. The really interesting bit were the activities we had to work through:
- Stakeholder analysis – identify the stakeholders in your project, taking into account their level of enthusiasm and influence. Plot the stakeholders on a matrix, creating links between them to highlight how you could create opportunities to have influential and enthusiastic stakeholders encourage those who are resistant to your project
- “Elevator speech” – prepare a 2 minute speech that you will give to a stakeholder in your project, highlighting key objectives, significance of the project and requirements. Make sure to get their attention and on your side
- Force analysis – identify forces (factors) that will work for and against the change you propose. And although we didn’t address it today, there’s space for the action one plans to take to either address the forces against, or to take advantage of the forces for your project
- SOCKS analysis – Strengths, Opportunities, Challenges, Knowledge, Stakeholders. Identify different components within each of these factors, as they relate to your project
What I liked about this session was that we were guided through the various components by using our own projects as the framework. This not only allowed us to make progress on our respective projects, but made the content much clearer than if it had only been presented to us.
As far as this afternoon’s research methods session went, we covered focus groups and survey questionnaires, but in a slightly different format. Eight volunteer, participated in a “real” focus group where the discussion was recorded and documented, then transcribed and printed out. Each group was then guided through an analysis of the transcript to identify key themes. Those themes then formed the basis of the questionnaire. This is the first time I’ve seen a qualitative method leading to a more refined quantitative method, and I think it’d be really useful for my own project.
Tomorrow we’ll be using the survey we created today, to generate data that we can analyse. While I really saw the value in today’s session, I’d have loved to have been able to use my own project for the afternoon session, much like we did in the morning session.
Posted in education, research.
Tagged with change analysis, change management, faimer, methodology, research, safri.
By Michael Rowe
– March 5, 2010
Day 2 of the first residential session felt really productive, although I’m not sure if that was because I worked hard or because I spent most of the day staring at my tiny netbook screen (I love my NC10 but it’s definitely not for 8+ hour shifts). Before beginning this session, each of use had to have some ideas around a project that we’d be running over the next few years, as well as an idea for a study to run within that project.
The main theme of today was to make sure that we could conceptualise the research and project as 2 components of an integrated work, and to create strong links between the various parts of the study. The aim of the SAFRI programme is to develop leadership skills and research capacity within the domain of medical education in Africa, so the research project is a critical part of the programme. I was surprised to find that even though the emphasis on doing good research was only a recent development within the programme, it already seems to have been tightly integrated.
Most of today was spent writing (laptops allowed) and working closely with our supervisors (each Fellow is assigned a supervisor who helps to guide their project and studies). For anyone who joined this programme thinking it’d be a nice afterthought to add to their CV’s, today would’ve put that idea to rest. It’s intense, and there’s a lot of pressure to produce a good piece of work.
It’s the end of day 2 and I’m exhausted, but happily so.
Posted in education, research.
Tagged with faimer, project, research, safri.
By Michael Rowe
– March 4, 2010
Today was the first day of the first SAFRI residential session in Cape Town, where SAFRI is the Southern Africa FAIMER Regional Institute, and FAIMER is the Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research.
We spent today working through a few activities that served as an introduction, both to the programme and to each other. It’s a nice, small group of health educators from several African countries, with diverse professional backgrounds. We also worked on group dynamics and did some interesting tasks around gaining insight into ourselves in terms of our MBTI results.
While it was a great start to the next week or so, I was surprised when I was asked to put my laptop away while taking notes during a presentation. I’m not sure how using a laptop will impede the advancement of medical education? I’m sure the presenter had concerns about me checking email or Facebook or something else that would, heaven forbid, impede my learning, but is a blanket ban the way to go?
Yes, I could make notes in the comprehensive handouts we received, and yes, I didn’t need my computer for a lot of the activities. But, I now have a set of notes that can’t be searched, can’t be modified, can’t be shared, and will never be linked to or from. Some people don’t understand that a laptop is the new pen and paper…would he have asked people to put down their pens in case they were drawing pictures? People need to move beyond this idea that computers and the internet are a source of distraction and accept that they are how we situate ourselves in the world.
Posted in education, research.
Tagged with banning laptops, faimer, groupwork, leadership, safri, teams.
By Michael Rowe
– March 3, 2010
This section included a general discussion on methods, then provided a brief overview of the 2 main types.
Make sure to choose a design that’s appropriate for your project
Research tends to fall broadly into one approach or the other, and is often not entirely quantitative or qualitative
Make sure to avoid using the language of one approach when you are using the other. Example: talking about “proving” something when using a qualitative approach isn’t appropriate
Continuum from Quantitative ↔ Qualitative
- Predetermined ↔ Unfolding
- Tight design ↔ Emerging
- Architectural / blueprint ↔ Open ended
Planning your research design
- Often begins with an identified gap in the literature → initial research question
- What do you want to find out?
- What is the purpose of your study?
- What are the questions you want to address?
- What methods can you use to answer these questions (data collection / analysis)?
Identify the problem and then choose a method, rather than deciding from the outset what type of research you want to do
Overview of quantitative research: what types of questions can quantitative research answer?
- Give an overview of information with regard to a population
- Measuring the extent of something using numerical values
- Identify trends over time
- Measure attitudes / opinions of large groups e.g. political surveys
- There is a tightly designed structure that comes before implementing the research to ensure that one is measuring what one intends to measure
- There are clear variables
- You would define concepts
- Formulate measures or indicators for assessing outcomes
Often makes a claim of a causal relationship between 2 variables that requires:
- Control for interfering variables
- Sample and control groups
- Period of time in which to run the intervention
- Pre- and post-test
- What statistical tests can you run to analyse data
- What results would be significant
- What can one claim based on the sample size
- Can your results be generalised to a larger population?
Overview of qualitative research: what types of questions can qualitative research answer?
- Aim to gain more understanding of people, processes, organisations and relationships
- Naturalistic approach, research something within a natural context in it’s full complexity i.e. not trying to control for interfering variables
- Aims for depth, rather than breadth → limits how many cases one can study i.e. not a large population
- Sceptical about the concept of objectivity i.e. acknowledges that the researcher comes to the project with a background and their own values and doesn’t try to completely eliminate bias
- Don’t claim that findings are generalisable
- Tends to have a more flexible design, open-ended and iterative process
- Data analysis → codes for analysis and themes are derived from the data
- May apply initial theory to data analysis (deductive research)
- May use grounded theory → themes emerge from the data and influences the conceptual framework (inductive research)
- Often there is a combination of deductive and inductive research
Posted in research.
Tagged with methodology, qualitative, quantitative, research, research methods, uwc, workshop.
By Michael Rowe
– March 1, 2010
These are some of the notes I made during the presentation on preparing a proposal, but include some points that relate to the general process of conducting research
There are 3 things a proposal should try to address:
- What? – What contribution will this research make? What is it about? What do you want to study?
- Why? – Why should be bother? Why is it significant? Why do you want to study this?
- How? – How are you going to study this? What tools and techniques will you use? Who else will be involved? How long is it going to take?
There is no “one way” to write a proposal, rather conform to the norms of your department. How do you find your “voice”, and what is the voice of your department? Bear in mind that the proposal voice is more tentative and uncertain than the thesis voice, which has defiinite ideas to convey
Research = Inquiry
PhD research = Making a contribution to a field, linking it to what already exists
Your research question should be real i.e. the answer is not readily available
Hypothesis = “a bold guess” → I think the answer could be…
Research journey
- Ask a question
- Begin reading (the “river of words” – who else has asked this question, where do they live, what did they find i.e. what is already out there, what already exists
- Could lead to the question changing → you find your question has been answered but there are other, related questions that need answering
- Interact with others who are looking at similar questions
- Research design is central, may include a redesign following a pilot
- Be aware of gatekeepers and how to get around them
- Know when to stop gathering data, and when to start analysing it (if this is addressed in part in the proposal, it can give guidance to this process)
- Following the analysis, you may have to adapt or even to discard some ideas if the data doesn’t support it
- Be careful of despair when your ideas aren’t supported
- Following analysis comes synthesis (this is the hardest part where many candidates drop out) → putting the thesis together / linking all the ideas
- During the writing / rewriting process, you may have to return to the “river of words” to review significant contributions
- What is the contribution of the editor and supervisor of the final document?
- What do you have to say when all is said and done i.e. what is your contribution to the current understanding and knowledge base of your field?
- Be wary of those who presume to “know it all”. How will you defend the unique nature of your research?
Synthesis involves structuring data (following analysis) and linking it to literature. Analysis follows a formula, whereas synthesis is the creative component that leads to your unique contribution
How do you persuade your reader that your data is valid? Without valid data, you can’t build an argument on it
Is your methodology sound enough to convince your reader that your results are trustworthy?
Differing interpretations of the same data can be a result of using different theoretical frameworks that underly the analysis
The proposal should lay out what the researcher wants to do, but should also include limitations i.e. significance (what it will include and why that’s important) vs. limitations (what will be excluded and why)
Negotiate with the supervisors as to what wasn’t done and write it up i.e. explain to examiners and readers what was left out of the study
The literature review is being written and rewritten throughout the process, because you’re reading throughout the journey
Make sure the research question is clear and concise. What is the background to the question? Why is it relevant now and didn’t arise 10 years ago? What makes “now” a good time to try and answer the question?
Posted in research.
Tagged with methodology, proposal, research, research process, supervisor.
By Michael Rowe
– March 1, 2010
This presentation mainly used the ethics policy of this institution, so I didn’t take many notes considering that I have the policy.
The intention of ethics in research is to safeguard human dignity and to promote justice, equality, truth and trust → crtical reflection on morality
Ethics are norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour
Why is research ethics necessary?
- Promotes the aims of research
- Promotes the values that are essential to collaborative work e.g. trust, accountability, mutual respect, fairness
- Helps to ensure that researchers can be held accountable to the public
- Helps to build public support for research
- Important to develop morale
Posted in ethics, research.
Tagged with dignity, ethics, morality, research.
By Michael Rowe
– March 1, 2010
I’m attending a research development workshop on campus for all staff members who are just beginning their PhD’s. I’ll post my notes here as we progress.
Why engage in research?
- It’s expensive (manpower, finance, cost, equipement)
- Dependent on motivation, commitment, hard work, ability, enthusiasm
- BUT…
- It enhances learning and intellectual development of staff
- Keeps staff abreast of current developments
- Allows interactions with peers from other institutions
- Through collaborative programmes, it promotes institutional interactions, generating a source of funding
- Promotes interaction with parastatal organisations e.g. NRF
- Contributes to RDP of the country
- Contributes to the development of a strong PG school
- Transforms the approach to learning → allows you to engage in parallel thinking
Mechanics of the process
- Honours, or Basic Science degree → enthusiast with focus on higher education
- Masters → to get a Masters without going through to PhD is a “tragedy”
- PhD
Selecting a topic
- Self choice by virtue of preference
- Have a general idea of fields of interest e.g. curriculum development
- No particular preference, explore what’s available
- Theoretical or experimental / practical
Critical factors for success
- Self motivation (since one is not driven by examination) → weekends and evenings
- Choice of supervisor
- Expert in the area
- Must give guidance
- Must inspire the student
- There must be a relationship that goes beyond the research topic
- Must be able to agree to regular meetings that have set objectives
- Work consistently
Benefits of conducting research
- Develops you as an academic
- Allows you to engage with your peers more confidently
- Allows you to rationalise research programmes
- Promotes inter-departmental / institutional interaction
- Harness internal and external funding for research, as well as for attending conferences
- Research reward funds
Posted in research.
Tagged with higher education, msc, phd, postgraduate, research, supervision.
By Michael Rowe
– March 1, 2010
