This semester, I’m enrolled in a doctoral proposal course. The purpose of the course is to help students about to defend their dissertation proposal with a community of critical readers. It is a great idea, imho, to keep us on track during a time when many doctoral candidates begin to lose their way.
I recently had to present my dissertation argument to my fellow students. Few candidates are dissertation in my fields of interest: science education and educational technology, so I wanted to build my case very carefully for an audience outside of my area. Furthermore, most students are interested in quantitative research and while I’ve taken courses through advanced statistics, I’m far more interested in the types of questions qualitative research can answer, so I knew I’d have a lot of explaining to do.
Anyway, here is the ensuing Prezi. Some reflections on how the project was received after the jump.
Chmiel’s dissertation proposal on Prezi
So, the professor of the course was very positive and supportive, but the other students struggled with it. They wrote heavily bulleted PowerPoints, I did not. They had text and citations, while I had Harry Potter fan art and Youtube videos. I deviated from the traditional listing for four of five questions (sacred among academics) and simply said: look, there is a huge hole in the research, and that hole is no longer acceptable. Policy is being made, recommendations are being published, and characterizations are being made about teachers and technology that are simply not true. We just haven’t paid attention to the work teachers are doing online, and I want to start looking at this.