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