Hi welcome back

Here are some starting back thoughts.

First, if I am your advisor and haven’t already emailed you by Monday contact me (there may be a glitch in the matrix!!!). There are a number of advisors on the course we all have blogs and they are all useful because different people have different ways to explain and share the same ideas. I am going to be writing blogs that are across all three modules. So sometimes my posts might be more useful to someone on Module (3) than Module (1) but it is useful to think of the WHOLE course as one thing. Do not to think of each module as a closed set of activities we are making you do!! By thinking about what people are doing at other points in the course you might find something really useful for your current study. If you have finished a module there is nothing more to get out of it. Keep looking backward and forward (its how you locate yourself).

For people beginning the last module (3760) (that is Module (3), the research project) a couple of things:

1   The last module you did was to plan what you are doing now – but its not written in stone, look at the feedback you had on your grading form, think about it now you have had the summer to let the idea settle.

2      Adapting your method, addressing questions your advisor highlighted is all part of the process. DO NOT think the whole thing is just about gathering data. You can get all the data in the world but it is only as useful as the questions you ask of it.

3   The module is about the process (as is pretty much everything we are doing) NOT ABOUT you finding an answer to some problem. Focus on your process, your artistic development, what you can LEARN. We are looking for you to show us what you learn from the experience that is all (and that is a lot).

So get chatting talk to people about what you think blog, email, don’t hide away trying to get a perfect answer for your project.

For people beginning Module (2) (3630). Have a look at what happen last year. Look at the blogs see what you can learn from observing what other people thought about. This module is quite extensive. Start to get on with things get the reading done its more intense than the first module because we are asking you to apply some of the principles you are learning about.

For people beginning the first Module (1) (3730) and everyone else remember this is not a set of hoops we want you to jump through. We have planned something that we hope will be useful and meaningful to you in YOUR situation. Try not to see the module as something to critique, or on the other hand something ordained from on high. Try and apply the ideas to your life. See if they are useful and in doing that see what you learn from them. Do not be put off by starting to blog just get on with doing it.

If you are re-doing a module have a look at what you did last time but also let go of some of the things that seemed like obstacles. Move forward, work out what helped you last time and what hindered you.

Get advice from your advisor if you got an unexpected mark. It was higher than you expected work out what you did to get that response, if it was lower work out what you did to get that response.

For everyone MAKE a timeline for yourself, work backwards from the hand-in date Jan 7^th 2013. Work out what you need to hand in to be marked. This is different from what you will be doing as tasks. Work out when you need to have a final draft by in order to get feedback from your advisor if you want it. Work out all the things you want to do right up to today. Make a plan and be kind enough to yourself to stick to it.

Lastly, my office hours on SKYPE  for this term (October 1^st to January 7^th )  will be:

Monday 11am to noon (GMT)

Tuesday 7pm to 8pm (GMT)

Thursday 7pm to 8pm (GMT)

Friday 11am to noon (GMT)

I have tried to make them when people have breaks at lunchtime at work or after work. However if you can not make these times email me for an appointment either on SKYPE or phone or over a coffee. Also if you see I am on SKYPE feel free to just call me I will let you know if I can chat or I will call you back when I can.

Have fun

Adesola

September 1st, shaking off the summer and beginning to prepare for the start of the new term. It's a great time to start getting a routine together for documenting reflections and ideas. Having a journal you carry around or texting your ideas to yourself on your phone, writing a 5 minute poem before you go to sleep, having a note book for lists that acts as an overview of your ideas and activity each week. I hope everyone had a good summer. Mohamed Ali said something along the lines of ' if you are exactly the same as you were 20 years ago, you have just waisted 20 years'. So let yourself be different from the Self that had ideas last term. The idea to enrol for module ones, the way you describe yourself to yourself for module twos, the plan you had for your research module threes. Thats the learning process slippery and ever changing!!!!

Info. passed on

Winchester Big Dance 2012 Commission Are you interested in…….. Working with a professional choreographer? Gaining an insight into how to make work for site specific projects? Being part of a large scale outdoor celebratory dance event? Keeping active over the Summer? Hampshire Dance still has a few places available for dancers to work with a established choreographer Bettina Strickler to create a site-specific dance performance for this year's Hat Fair in Winchester as part of Big Dance 2012. Bettina is an independent choreographer and ex Co-Director and performer with Protein Dance. The project is open to 3rd Year Students, recent graduates and dance artists. She will work with the group to create a new piece of dance to be performed in the outdoor spaces by the Great Hall and old castle in Winchester. Your performance will be part of a whole day of dance and street art that will celebrate the sheer quality and diversity of dance in the region. The event is part of a nation-wide response to Big Dance and Cultural Olympiad initiatives and will take place in collaboration with Winchester Hat Fair on Saturday 7 July. Rehearsals will be in Winchester from Monday 2 July to Friday 6 July from 10am – 4pm each day. To be part of this project please email anna.brown@hampshiredance.org.uk as soon as possible. Please include a short description of your dance experience and a statement to confirm that you can attend all rehearsals and the performance day.

Post Marked

A quick note from conversations I have had with students. The hand-in date is May 14^th. For things that are being mailed in this means you must attempt to have them post marked May 14^th . You do not have to send them to arrive on May 14^th because some people are on the other side of the world and would have to send things a week before or something. So this way everyone has the same cut off date. However you do need to email you work to arrive by May 14^th.

Feedback

This week is a short post because I think last weeks post left a lot to chew over. I have been doing some self-reflection because that is what we are asking you to do. Yoga class is a great place to think about ego. (I am a pragmatist believe everything is connected) but one teacher talked about thinking of oneself as be made of three parts: body, ego and breath, which is interesting. In yoga I butt up against ego in terms of body and breath and it helps me think about it. I was thinking about it because sometimes it feels as if there is a bit of a battle between me and the advisee and I wonder if my ego is getting involved.  I have to make sure I am not just saying things because that’s the way I would do it. But at the same time my role is kinda to know some established ways of doing things. It is a delicate balance to keep between suggesting something rather than instructing someone they have to do it, but also in a way so they notice you are suggesting it.  It gets back to the relationship on this course between us all. It is one where the student is not sitting at the feet of the teacher but is empowered to go out pull information to them – this is a connectivism model: acknowledging how the internet has changed the dynamic of teaching by having some much information available. BUT information is not knowledge what we as advisors are trying to help you with is two things:

Looking at the quality and validity of the information

Using the information so it becomes knowledge.

It is here that the clash (that could be ego) happens because here we come across points when we feel we all ‘know’ something. And knowing something is an important feeling because it anchors us down. But 'knowing more' is not a threat – of course it changes what you know and change is scary. In these last few weeks of term there is a hanging on to things because there is so much to do and you are so busy. But in fact this is the time when things might change as you write them up, as you discuss them and there is nothing wrong with saying I thought this and as I started to put it into my reflection or plan or review I realised that…. You do not have to fight your corner and hang on to stuff. You are just asked to honestly evaluate and reflect. If you can explain it and give a good reason for it, than that is more than half of what we expect. Comments and feedback will shift things and change things for you and you will need a moment re-group. But it is not about ego, it is about the disarming, amazing experience of learning.

My advice is to get your work to best possible place before you send it for feedback. This is a much more daring thing to do than anything else because it means the feedback will shake what you have done because you have done your best so far. But then it can only get better with more exploration. If you send it knowing it is too long, or part of it is missing then you are taking the safe option of kinda controlling what your feedback will be because you already sort of know what you think you need to change (and you run the risk of only hearing the parts you already know.)

What do you think? How do you feel?

Adesola

Details

Just did a piece of choreography with a Hip Hop Crew and they got me in “telling it how it is mode”!!!!! This week’s blog is all about the details. What ever module you are on please read all of this :)

11)    First, MODULE ONE please be assured we do not want you to write a critical reflection about how right we were to encourage you to learn more about Web 2.0. Really we are not asking you to reassure us we made a good decision in writing the module. It is not an exercise to make us feel good. WE really do want you to REFLECT CRITCALLY ON YOUR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE using the experience of doing the module to inform how your thinking on your current and past professional experiences. Don’t just tell the story of the each module –“ web 2.0 is very useful.” Why in terms of your experiences, Is it really? How have you used it and has this changed? Also see    

Positioning of Self  16 October 2010

hhttp://www.adesolaa.blogspot.com/2010/10/positioning-of-self.html

22)    Read my post about ways to order what you write using a timeline can make it really hard to really reflect on something and makes it more like just a re-telling of an activity. also see 

Assessment portfolio 21 November 2010

http://adesolaa.blogspot.com/2010/11/assessment-portfolio.html

33)    Think of the blogs of students and advisors as a mine of information you can read what has been said about a module over the past three years. Three years of information and ideas about the very thing you are doing. Take the time to research the blogs themselves see how other people approached the assessment work. Why re-invent the wheel, make the same ‘mistakes’ someone has already made for you.

44)    The hand-in date is May 14^th now don’t ask me again!!!!!!

55)    When you send work in for feedback you will not be told this is ‘right’ and this is ‘wrong’. There is not ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, there is make a well-articulated critical reflection about something. The feedback from your adviser will consist of questions aimed at making you think further, or comments that hope to stimulate you to work further on your ideas. The more comments the more great ideas to develop you have. Don’t wait for us to say that’s ‘right’ because we don’t think that is very helpful to you. Who would want to condemn someone to being at the end of their learning journey in life? The exciting part is that there is always more.

66)    Read my recent post on citations, PLEASE. Citations are a vital part of the paper because they tell the Reader how to link what is being said to the rest of the world (sort of). You have to get your head around them and follow the way you are meant to use them. 

Citations Jan 27th 2012

http://www.adesolaa.blogspot.com/2012/01/citations.html

77)    OK NOW LISTEN: having data is not the end result of the research process. It’s like going to the shops and coming back with flour, eggs, and sugar and a candle and saying you’ve got a birthday cake! Data is like the ingredients but the skill (and how you show you understand) something is WHAT YOU DO WITH IT.

DATA IS NOT EVIDENCE TO PROVE YOU WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG.

It is something you use to better understand a situation.  MODULE TWOS as part of your plan you have to say what you will do with the information you gather in your interviews/ observations/ questionnaires. You could compare what you find to the literature – that is the basic analytical process.  You could compare it to your own historical / biographical experiences.   But the goal is not to have a volume of things people told you that you can pick through to prove a point you want to make. YOU HAVE TO EMBRACE WONDER.

MODULE THREES – great you’ve got data now don’t just basically tell us what it is as if we should have been at the interview too and you are having to tell us what happened. If that is all you do I could just as well as done it myself.  You are bring your unique experience and the literature you have read to the data, so you can share with us the wonder you found there , the way you found meaning (often by noticing themes), the things that surprised you, how you got meaning from the surprises. Also see   

Why research analysis is so important; it's not all data collection!  24 September 2009  http://www.adesolaa.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-research-analysis-is-so-important.html

88)    MODULE THREES – the time has come to think about and create your   artifacts. This is a thing that embodied the research experience, that allows you to express ideas and event without being limited to words. I know there is a work count max. but that is more to guild you towards the importance of the artefact. (Traditionally in universities the word count sort of indicates how much time to spend on something.) To make your artefact a word document that summaries the longer critical report you created is “kinda lame right”? It’s basically the same thing but shorter. Celebrate the embodied being you are not a head full of words. YOU KNOW THINGS outside the computer key board use you whole self.

99)    For those who have read my past blogs !!!! this may seem like I am repeating myself.  Imagine you are holding an audition and fifty people send you a file called “C.V.”

First problem:  You lift the file from the email of an auditionee and put it on your desktop say, great. The you do that again but the next file call “C.V.” replaces the first one or you have to spend time re-naming one of them. 

Second problem: imagine you some how got then to be all together in a folder maybe some ate call C.V. and others “C.V. for audition” etc… then when you look at them you do not know whose C.V. it is unless you open each one. 

I have literally been close to deleting a person’s application just because I was so exhausted and would have had to open the document. If you have 75 people already you think “I’m sure I can find someone from the people I already have.”

So my point is that you need to send files to people FOR THEM. The file name needs to help them know what it is NOT HELP YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS. If you are calling the file CV it because on your computer you have a number of things and you want to find your CV. It is named for you. But sending it out CV is what everyone else is sending too. Naming the file for the person who receives it means putting information on it you know already. You name it  “A. Akinleye CV”.

Likewise I have 20 people sending me a file called “critical review” !!!!! Great for your computer there is only one “critical review” but I now have 20 of them. I have to open and rename them so I don’t get them mixed–up.  Sending for the person who receives means thinking about their experience of you. Particularly, in an audition process as some many of us work in you want the experience to mean you are easy to find, notice, and clear and not giving them more work.  If I was going to give someone a job I want someone who will do the job not someone where I have to work first just to find out if I should hire them or not! Get it.

OK, talk to us, blog, email. What do you think of all this? Add some other tips in comments please. You can do it

Adesola

Time

Time is rushing by. It just seems like yesterday I wrote the last blog. I have been in a weird flux where there are lots of things in my head and I know I have things to do but completely lack the energy to do them! Sometimes I think you have to trust yourself: that you are working through things even if it seems like you are doing unconventional things (like watching every episode of Glee in my case!!). Having a timetable of the term acts as a safety net because them you can make sure you don’t get behind while allowing yourself time to just brood on things. I wonder if you are feeling the same? Its kind of still Easter Break so I hope you have given yourself a bit of thinking time. A bit of a short post today.

Finding a focus

This week I spoke to a student in module two about the size of the project you are being asked to plan. I used a dance class metaphor that might be helpful for others: The topic area of your inquiry is like a dance class. You decide what field / area/ genre you are going to be exploring. This is like you deciding if you are going to be in a ballet class, a tango class, a hip-hop class that tells you the context of what you are doing, (ie an inquiry in the field of curriculum development for stage schools, or funding cuts in dance or marketing a small business). So now you know the topic the class type in terms of the metaphor. But your inquiry is not the whole class. The inquiry is to find one exercise in the class to focus on and really look into.

So in my area of a ballet class my inquiry is to look really carefully at how I do my tendues. I look at this really closely and carefully within the context of the whole class but I do not try to take on looking really closely at all the exercises in the whole class its too much at one time. It is important to do one thing really well and with real care and that will inform, support and connect to a bigger picture. So you are looking at your field of inquiry and finding something you really want to know more about. Not looking at the whole field as a site for proving things you already know. In terms of the metaphor you are deciding the type of environment / type of dance class you but then you are focusing down to look at a particular thing / one exercise to really work at.

Does that metaphor work for you?

Well, I hope everyone is having a good Easter Break

Adesola

Holidays, networks, tools and be led!

This week’s blog is a little late, in that I try to post each Thursday. I had a test on Thursday and then had to watch a few hours of 'Glee' to calm back down.

So how is it going? The Easter holidays are upon us but I know for some people that means having more time to work on your module since work obligations are not as intense over the holiday. As the term comes to an end really meeting your own scheduling targets for your study is important. You might use some of the time to assess where you are in the module and re-schedule how you will approach the activity of the last few weeks. Always leave yourself a couple of weeks to write and re-write what you are handing in. In some ways you need to think of writing the work you are handing as an experience in itself that will teach you more. Having written it you might find that the experience of writing it completes the module activity for you and helps you have a full perspective. At that point you will have a kind of clarity of completion that will in form the whole process and will mean you can go back to what you wrote and improve it in terms of order, or clarity of the points you make or seeing where you have left out something important.

I am not going back on what I am always saying about thinking. I am not saying that thinking is IN the writing but knowing the whole event is helpful for organising understanding of it. The whole event is doing the tasks AND writing about the learning. It is like the way if you are learning a dance sequence even if you don’t know how to do it all yet knowing how it will end helps you to start to internalise the sequence so you can learn and remember it. I always find while I am being taught a sequence it seems really long and overwhelming, but once I know the whole thing where it goes I can start to manage the parts of it much better and it don’t seem as long at all.

Module Ones are thinking about networks. This is am important idea because it is about how you connect to things and how you see yourself in the context of your professional activities. The last part of Module one is different from the first two parts because it is asking you to expressly look beyond yourself, to position yourself in the field of your activities. This is the first time we ask you to expressly do this. The reflection part of the module asks you to look in and the network part of the module asks you to look out. By doing both you get a sense of where you are, what your position is now, where you come from and how that has influenced you and the trajectory that moves you forward that will be the energy you use to engage with module two and then later three. I have a number of posts about ‘positioning’ and ‘YOU’; have a look around my Blog at posts from the past.

Module Twos are looking at tools of inquiry. The pilots are trying out tools to see what they do in practise in terms of the kind of information you get from them. Then think about whether this information is in the form that addresses the approach you have taken to inquire. Does it create data that is relevant to what you are interested in. In other words if you piloted something and found you got data in numerical form, (six people thought that, seven thought this) is that useful if your topic is about personal experiences of people? You might have piloted another tool and found you got a massive amount of thoughts from two people this form of data might be much more useful. NOW why do you need to have useful data?... because the inquiry is not about generating data (information) it is about what you do with the data, it is about your analysis (see last weeks blog). If how you are going to analyse is to compare numbers, you need data in the form of numbers to do that. If you are comparing or looking at feelings you need to have documentation of feelings to do that. How do you know what kind of analysis you will undertake? You know because in your inquiry question you indicate what you are looking for.
Module two is about making the ‘framework’ of your inquiry - all the bits fit in and support each other. The art of the module (and research in general) is to be sensitive to the life of the inquiry / the question itself and not to impose your own expectations and assumptions on to what will happen. This is to allow the research to lead you NOT for you to lead the research. This is a lesson for Module Threes also as they begin writing-up there research now.

What do you think?
Adesola

Weeks 6,7,8& 10 (Module three particularly)

This week I am writing particularly for people on Module Three, although I think it is important for everyone to think about … analysis. According to the Addendum page on Libguides in week six

“Students send adviser 1-2 paragraphs as a sample of your inquiry analysis. Formative feedback will be given on the structure, the quality of the arguments and the quality of the supporting evidence discussed”

I was talking to one of my students about this and we thought that some of our conversation would be good to share on the blog. So here is my take on how to address this. First this is not about writing the whole analysis section of the Critical Review Think of the analysis as an actual activity and you need sometime to do it. What you are meant to be sending is something that explains how you are addressing the activity of analysing your data. This is to check that you are actually doing it and not just writing-up an ‘incident report’ type piece of writing instead of a Critical Review.

So here is how I would do it. Summarize the following:

1) What kind of data is it that you gathered? – you may have intended to get one thing and in fact when you did your data collection you got something else. So although you said what you wanted to do in your project plan (and you will also explain this starting point in your introduction in the Critical Review) it is important to show you know what it is you got. For instance in my last research project my data was:
i) The narratives of eight people about what it feels like to learn to dance.
ii) Literature by dance academics that discusses what it feels like to dance, I particularly use McFee.
iii) My own observational data from watching the eight people in dance classes, and from doing the dance classes myself

What is important here is that I know the kind of data I gathered and I can put into categories of like kind – narratives, literature, observational. What did you gather?

2) What are you doing with it? This is hopefully some kind of triangulation (if you don’t know this word you should by now). But how are you triangulating – for example I am:
• comparing what the people said with what I felt within the classes
• comparing what the people said with watching them in the classes
• comparing what the people said with what the literature says
• comparing what the literature says with what I observed of the people in the classes
• comparing what the literature said with what it felt like in class
• comparing what I observed with what the people said
• comparing what it felt like in class with what the people said
• etc…

3) What themes are emerging from the data? From doing this I keep noticing certain things, ideas, theories. Some ideas reoccur to me or some questions keep coming up. Organising these I can group them into themes. So this step is

4) What you are doing next? These themes are where you do the activity of analysis in that you start to look deeper into them. For each theme you might need to read more of the literature focusing on the aspect of one of the themes. You might want to go back to the place you collected the data and look at things again with a theme in mind. You are starting to inquire into how the themes that have emerge relate to the initial research question that you started out from. You will need to ask yourself questions like why do you think you (yourself) noticed this in the data. Is it unexpected? Etc…

Then you need to look at what relationship the themes have with each other and with the research question. So lastly in your summary you need to state what ‘more’ you are doing which of the themes you are looking at more deeply.

So a summary of your analysis would be:
What kind of data you have
What you are doing with it
How you are doing this.
What themes have been emerging.
What more you need to know and/ or what questions have they raised
Any ideas you have at this point in terms of how this relates to your initial research question.

This should be short and clear for your own clarity and direction. In terms of what supporting evidence is, this not to build an argument yet. You need to do the above. Think of the use of the word ‘evidence as ‘illustration’. See my blog on my MAPP site March 8th
RoL 'evidence'
http://www.adesolamapp.blogspot.com/2012/03/rol-evidence.html

Now in week 10 you are asked to:

“Students send to advisers the last two sections of your Critical Review (Analysis and Critical Reflection) in draft for written feedback”

at that point you should have done the activity of the above and be able to start to put it into the words you are going to use to explain it in the Critical Review. But the words themselves are not the activity of analysis; analysis is the activity of thinking!!!


Before that in week 8 you are asked to have a draft of the first two sections of the Critical Review.

“Students send adviser the first two sections of your critical review in draft form (Introduction, Evaluation) …..”

Much of the ‘knowledge’ for this is already known by you. It is the outline of what you planned to do which is all in the work you did in Module two. It is just that in module two you planned it now you write have done it. The introduction would be to say why your interested, where you are carrying out the research, a bit a about you as the Researcher etc… the evaluation is saying what happen if any of the data collection activity changed from the plan, if the you used a different methodology than you had planned etc… This should not be a problem to write because you already know it all. Getting this bit written is just helpful because psychologically (and actually) it feels like you have a chunk of the work done. OF COURSE you will need to go back to this draft at the writing-up period and work through the text incorporating a little bit about what you found (your analysis) which will not be complete at week 8 so that why you will have to go back to this draft.

Long post!!
Does that make sense what do you think?
Adesola

Dance UK - Healthier Dancer Conference

Monday 30 April 2012, 9am - 5pm
Healthier Dancer Programme Conference:

Nutrition and disordered eating in dance: Artistry, athleticism and the role of the multidisciplinary support team.

Book Now for EARLY BIRD rates (until 2 April) Dance UK members from £40 and students from £30
Venue: Royal Society of Medicine, LONDON, W1G 0AE
Key topics: Demands on dancers, healthy nutrition, and the prevention and treatment of disordered eating.

This conference will aid the dancer and their multidisciplinary support team to identify and encourage healthy behaviours and deal effectively with disordered eating patterns when necessary. It advocates a multidisciplinary approach, with presentations from leading artistic directors, health professionals, and support staff in addition to personal insights from dancers.

Speakers will include: Dame Monica Mason DBE, Artistic Director, Royal Ballet; Lauren Cuthbertson, Principal Dancer, Royal Ballet; and Huw Goodwin, Research Associate, Loughborough University Centre for Research into Eating Disorders (LUCRED).

Dancers are expected to train hard and perform excellently. This, in turn, puts particular nutritional demands on the body and psychological demands on the person. This conference will explore the technical, aesthetic, social, and personal demands on the dancer. It will ask how these demands can be managed to achieve optimal health and performance, rather than disordered eating.

Sessions include:
• The technical and aesthetic demands of dance and whether they are realistic and healthy for dancers; to be debated by a panel of artistic directors including David Nixon, Artistic Director Northern Ballet and Ann Sholem, Artistic Director National Dance Company Wales.

• A panel of dancers and educational staff will explore experiences of disordered eating in educational and professional environments.

• Recommendations for identifying and treating disordered eating.

• Recommendations for best nutritional practice, education, and the prevention of disordered eating.

• The day will finish with a discussion around the role of the multidisciplinary team working with dancers, including recognising and managing maladaptive strategies and supporting dancers’ ultimate goals of optimal health and performance.


For booking details please go to: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3053540221

Messy

Well, hard to believe it’s week 5!! Hopefully you are well into everything, possibly getting acquainted with the feeling of ‘not knowing’, which comes before that light-bulb moment as things click into place. I think the biggest thing to check at this point is that you are ‘in it’. That is you have done the things you set yourself to do and if you have not just get on and do them as best you can – get messy.

Module ones are trying out different kinds of reflection tools, writing different journals. And going further than the handbooks by looking at books in the library by theorists that have interested them from the Reader.

Module twos are really looking deeply at the ethical questions that their experiences, and professional environment raise – maybe asking uncomfortable questions of themselves or looking at things differently.

Module Threes are coming to the end of data collection and starting to try to find meaning in all the pieces of the research.

Emergence: it’s a messy, wonderful time! And then it’s Spring the perfect illustration of growth as dainty buds move stones and dirt in order to push themselves into the sun and flower. You might be pushing some stones too.

A word about books: (still thinking about literature for all modules)

Below is a really interesting TED talk. It is about the way Google, Hulu etc… find things ‘you would be interested in’. That is the mathematical patterns that computers run in order for listings to be produced. When you Google things for instance. Now how do things pop-up when there is so much out there… its not magic.

Watch the video, which is a word of warning about the trust we place in these patterns. It is clear that it can not be ‘fair’ because how does anyone decide what should be first etc. So as something goes viral it can be ‘real’ be what it appears to be or it can be something else – marketing. How do you check its authenticity?? It is why the internet is problematic as your only source of information gathering. There is an in crowd.

Books that have been published go through extended checking because they are out there and people can question them. Authors have to cited other authors to show where things have come from. Now I am not saying that this is not exactly the same situation of in crowd. There is an in crowd in the literature too. Judith Butler who writes about women’s profile in the crowd and Cornel West who writes about the non- caucasian’s profile in the crowd. The point is that the bias in the book has been better documented than the bias in the internet. The books have been going on for thousands of years and the internet is new to us. So ideas from cross across a range of sources seems to be most useful. I highly recommend you look at published works as much as the internet.

What do you think?
Adesola

Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape are our lives

http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html

Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape are our lives

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html

Having fun, chatting and being brave!

Module One people you are starting reflection tasks these can be a lot of fun. In the past, as well as the tasks in the Handbook, we have tried writing a poem each night. It is a fun way to see what you were thinking, often it is quite a surprise what you write about. Reflection is at the core of this work since it is the process of analysis (looking at the things around you and finding meaning, relationships and connections between things. The reflection reader is your first introduction to theory in the course. Take the time to find out more about some of the people you are reading about and also to apply (link) the theory with your own day-to-day experience -  reflection. 

Module Two people a word about the SIGs each year the students in this module have found different ways to make groups. The goal is to have a group of people to discuss with. In the past facebook has worked well but this year Linked-In seems to be working well for some people too. Go to the notice board on Libguides to see which groups have been formed. You don’t have to make a new group for every thought or theme you have. Just find / create a place where you can exchange ideas with peers. Remember it could be a regular meeting in a coffee shop with other students near you, but for most people the internet is easier because they are moving about because of work or do not live near other students. The point is the get chatting with people.

You are also thinking about ethics. I really would like to stress that ethics is partly about what you create for others. It is about thinking about what your actions will create and also thinking about how one can not control what people receive from us but we can put in checks and reflection points for ourselves to consider what our actions and perceptions create.

Module Three people – artefacts!! You know its great to start to think about what you could do for an artefact, but I want to ask you to consider being brave and allow yourself NOT TO KNOW yet. It is pretty hard to know at the moment because a large part of your inquiry is your analysis (thinking, reflection) of your data. You cannot really know what your inquiry is really about until you have done that part. At the moment as you collect data you are following ideas, intuition, literature but putting it all together happens in the analysis which is down the line yet. So of course you don’t know what the artefact is yet. Remember it is an artefact of the inquiry not a solution to the ‘problem’. The inquiry is not about problemtising elements of your profession (to which the artefact is a solution) rather you are inquiring to find out more for yourself.  The artefact is the manifestation of the experience of the inquiry. It is a way to move from a totally theoretical piece of work to something that expresses outside words something that stands physically outside of the pile of words in your report.

What do you all think? How is it going?

Adesola

Dyslexic film!!! Power to the dys

http://dysthelexi.com/

DYSPLAMENTARY OFFICIAL TRAILER from Kazimir Bielecki on Vimeo.

Question(aires)?

My blog post is a little late this week, sorry. I have been at a conference – “Meaning + Making of Queer Dance: embodied pleasures in History, Representation, and Queer Communities”. It was a great conference and really interesting. Queer theory is an interesting strand of inquiry. For me it responds to and informs the use and expectation of the body that resonates with questions that dance wrestles with. “Trans” informed thinking raises questions about the body, who defines it, how it can change and wider questions about the linear progression of time that heterosexual perspectives take which are not the lived narrative of many peoples lives.

I will write more on the conference maybe next week. This week I wanted to talk about literature reviews and questionnaires. This is particularly relevant to Module 2ers and 3ers. I have notice a trend, which I will describe below, but just to say there is nothing wrong with this trend but I just want you to think deeply about it and be aware of these thoughts on it.

It is clear that if you are going to analyse data the simplest way of understanding that activity is to compare one set of data with another. The second set being a kind of fixed or established idea and the first being looked at in terms of the fixed or established idea.

I have notice a lot of peoples plans for their research involving taking a questionnaire or survey as a first step then using that to inform further collection of data through interviews. What I want to point out here is that the questionnaire / survey is being used here in the way a Literature Review should / could be used. That is to establish that a group of people think a particular thing. I feel that people are seeing the numbers that a questionnaire can gather as a form of justification for the main ideas the questionnaires uncover. As if, if 50 dancers think it, it is validated enough for you to go on to ask questions about it or use the idea as a basis for your interviews, but this a weak position to be in for two reasons.

Firstly, the size of the questionnaire and the quality of the questionnaire is not enough to justify the results being a the foundation of your ideas and inform the rest of your inquiry. Secondly, the time it takes to really analyse the data from the questionnaire itself is prohibitive to getting the interviews done in time too. In other words you run the risk of the questionnaire being so superficial or under analysed that it does not really provide a foundation for rest of your work.  

However this process is not wrong it is just that academia has solved the problem by using a Literature Review. A Literature Review looks at ‘all’ the books or ideas about your topic. It is not looking a Key Texts – one or two books that you read and quote – it is about knowing what people think / have published on the subject generally. In other words in the same way the questionnaire gives you an overview of what 50 people think. A literature review also gives you an overview of what 50 people think but these are people who have published their ideas so the ideas have been challenged and defended. This means that using these ideas as the basis of your interview (as you would the questionnaire results) is a stronger foundation. The authors have done the work of rigour and ‘credibility’ for you.

So I would like you to think about what you are using as a foundation for the ideas you have and then what you are comparing them too or using to make them credible: a questionnaire in a way is like you saying if I can get 50 of my friends and colleagues to agree with me then I am going to say that this is a kind of fact that I will interview people about. The literature review is saying I think this and XXX thinks it too but [and here is the most useful part of the literature review] YYY does not think this and challenges this. I will use this site of interaction that the literature revolves around  to inform how I approach my interviews.

Does that make sense? What do you think?


I am not saying that a survey or any other method is a replacement for a  literature review. I am saying be careful that you use the literature review and data collection methods appropriately and not use them interchangeably. I am making the assumption you do not want your conclusions to be limited to information gather from a few people you loosely know but want to be informed by the wealth of literature and ideas out there. 

Module One (1st campus session)

Module One (First Campus Session)

We had campus sessions this week. The idea of campus sessions is that they instigate ideas, question and thoughts that the whole student body can discuss and think about. The blogs are a good space to do this of course. In the first campus session for Module One we took an over view of the whole module. I felt important points were:

1). The tasks are not assessed; it is your reflection of them in the Critical Review that you hand in at the end of the module that is assessed. The tasks are to guide you through a learning journey, they are tips on how to look at yourself, look at your learning identity and style and start to see how you will move forward as you complete your BA with us.

2). Don’t get bogged down in the first section of the module. There are a lot of task suggestions there and you can get stuck in the comfort of doing things because you have been told to. Don’t get stuck making the perfect blog site (!), throughout the whole course you will be developing your ideas and often coming back to things to develop them further too.

During the session the Advisors introduced themselves, Paula, Rosemary, Alan and myself. Every student has one of us as an advisor. You need to have contacted your advisor by now so if you are not sure who your advisor is check your emails and make contact. Avni also introduced herself she is our administrator and will help you with issues to do with enrolment, etc… Then the students who had come introduced themselves. See Sherminne Seaman’s comment below.

Then we when through the module and underlined what would be assessed. We also looked at the tasks in terms of how they are spread out over the 12 weeks of the module. Following this looked at the steps the first task form.  We had a short break and then we looked at the same ideas using movement games (dance).

We discussed in words and we also did some movement  (dance game) in order to look at our ideas. After our discussions I asked everyone who attended the campus session to write down a single idea they thought was important that had been generated from what we talked / danced about. Also visit there blogs for further comments.

“I enjoyed how one ‘movement’ game allowed us to share and inspire each other’s new ideas.” - Liam Pentland [Using the interactions within a physical space,  the room we were in,  taught us something about the dynamic of the interactions within the cyber-space of the blogs also]

We found that sharing ideas with each other help us articulate our own ideas. “I found it was interesting to learn a variety of ways in which our own learning can be strengthened by communication with others. “ – John http://johnnordon.blogspot.com/

“Life is a journey, experience different things but don’t lose yourself throughout your experience, observe, be aware and make progression. Your experiences are your journey.” – Nina Nunes

“A point I found really useful today was working as a team and learning that we all had different aims but still working towards quite similar goals.” – Sherminne Seaman

“Finding the equilibrium between working alone and working as a team. Sharing an idea is more valuable than owning an idea [and not sharing]. We are all on individual journeys; nourish this!’ – Hannah Zapala http://hannahzapala.blogspot.com/

“Even though we are all on this journey together we all have different pathways. Sharing is better as knowledge is doubled. We don’t own the information and often information is improved when discussed with others.” – Nina Standen

[From the Movement game to generalising about the activity of the first module] “we are all in the journey of the course doing the same tasks (moves). However, the interpretation of the taks (moves) is free for us to decide. We learn from each other but there is no right and wrong way of doing it.” Ahmet Ahmet http://mrahmet.blogspot.com/

“[informed] looking at other people’s work as a guide to your own will help you on your own journey” Afi Agyeman http://afiagyeman.blogspot.com/

[movement exercise] “to share ideas – no need for ownership! [I felt an important point was] that you need to have your own journey as well as learning from others. [It’s about] about finding a balance between those two things.”  - Hollie Smith

Module Two (1st campus session)

Module Two (First Campus Session)

In the afternoon on Monday we had a campus session for Module Two. We had talked about starting to think about of a topic to inquire into for your investigation in Module Three. In terms of thinking about topics of interest we thought about who else is involved – who the stakeholders are? – this gives you a way to look at something from a number of perspectives to get a more three-dimensional picture. It also helps you think beyond your direct experience of place or event. 

We talked about different kinds of learning and the idea of challenging your ideas and notions. This is described as ‘rigour’. It is about not assuming anything but look further, or beneath the surface of things. We talked about how we acquire information (how do we do an enquiry? & What do we need to do to check it has rigour?)

We talked about field data, and data collected from Literature reviews.

This module is much more intense than the first module because it requires a number of things to be thought about and drawn together by the end of the module. It is the module where you figure out what will do to ‘compliment’ your existing credits in order to complete your BA (Hons). This includes being able summarise your knowledge into the title for your BA. This module also asks you to “sharpen your skills” and teaches you new techniques for research and inquire. These skills are not just so you can complete Module Three but so that you can conduct research within your own Professional Practice. This is so that you have the tools to continue your life long learning journey after you have graduated.

Go to Rosemary’s blog for further comments about the session. http://rosemarymcguinness.blogspot.com/

My important points to share were:

Indulge in a sense of wonder – enjoy the idea of knowing nothing and finding out something new.

Don’t take on the burden of spending 24 weeks planning and executing ways to prove yourself ‘right’.

Module Three (1st campus session)

Module Three (First Campus Session)

On Tuesday we had a campus session for module three. We looked at an overview of the next 12 weeks (planning your time will be important). Paula will be posting dates for events to remember over the term, for instance: The next campus session dates (March 1^st and 23^rd), also a day for help with writing (March 8^th). There are also dates for sending in drafts of your work for feedback. Across the 12 weeks you are also asked to post at least 6 Blogs there were some suggestions for topics. All the details are in the power point slides on Paula’s blog http://paulanottingham.blogspot.com/.

We also did an exercise for thinking about the whole embodied process of the learning. We looked at what we want to keep, let go off, carry forward, shout about, think more about, the emotions of. Here is a summaries of these from the people who came to the session. It is different for everyone. It might be fun to try answering the categories for yourself.

Things to keep:

-       Healthy eating

-       Working when the house is free and quiet

-       Working  for hour a day everyday (small chunks)

-       Working for the whole day (it takes me time to get started)

-       Scheduling (work and study)

-       Using pictures and images to break down text into images)

-       Going to the library

-       Listening to music

Things to let go off:

-       Overtime at work

-       Bad eating

-       Leaving study work to the last minute

-       Studying at break at work

-       Panic

-       Being negative

Things to move forward with:

-       Using interviews

-       Observations

-       Reflecting

-       Learning how to set-up a sound system

-       Experiencing new things

-       Surveys

-       Completing the course

Things to shout about (feel proud of):

-       How far I’ve come and not given up

-       Sticking to deadlines

-       Paying my fees

-       Organisation

-       The research I’ve done

-       My essay and research how to write better

-       Not giving-up

Emotional associations:

-       relief when deadlines are met

-       panic

-       stress

-       passion

-       enjoyment

-       Motivated / de-motivated

-       being honest with myself

-       questioning

-       doubting

-       anxious

-       enthusiasm

Things to keep thinking about (let stew some more):

-       maybe access the library more

-       better contact with my Advisor

-       how I should use my spare time

-       Find literature

-       Use of interviews (and how to document them)

-       Surveys (to use or not to use)

-       The path the project is taking

-       Observations…

I asked people who attended to write one point they thought was important to share (there were lots more of course).

“Organisation, I think is a key [That worked for me last module was]. I need to have a sort of planning for my study time around everything else that happens in our life. I found that scheduling 1 hour of study / research into my diary and treating it as an hour of work, for instance, really made me stick to it.” – Laura 

http://laurasinigaglia.blogspot.com

“I found mapping out where we are like this very useful…[it made me think]

-       not to be so harsh on yourself

-       allow yourself enough time for deadlines

-       reward yourself for things you are proud of

-       we all feel anxious and stressed at times / allow yourself to enjoy the process

-       Don’t give-up / help is out there” Tanisha http://planyourblogger.blogspot.com/

“For those that were not here today, useful tips:

Organisation and sticking to it.

Support  / keeping in contact with others and other students on the blog

Finding some quite time

Letting go of things that didn’t help or blocked you with Module 2 “ - Samantha http://samanthawebber.blogspot.com/

New Term / Campus Sessions

Hi

Well the new term starts Monday. Don’t forget the Campus Sessions kick-off on Monday and Tuesday too.

Monday: Module One (10am-1pm),

Module Two (2pm – 5pm)

Tuesday: Module Three (10am -1pm)

All of these are at Trent Park Campus.

If you are re-doing a module get to know the your new colleagues who are doing it with you. They maybe someone you have blogged with before. Remember that it is the quality you the learning experience you have that is important not a race to the end. Enjoy the company and community we are building.

If you have just finished and will be graduating PLEASE keep blogging, it would be so nice to have a really big network of people who are doing have done (and maybe thinking of doing).

Adesola