Is it a good learning environment?

Much of hot research in my department are about online, E or virtual. Many of the colleagues around me are in this area. We contribute on developing education and learning by researching computer technologies or variety of web-based phenomena. But we are not live in a virtual world, how about the reality?

For encouraging communication, the department re-organised the office and seats for the research students, putting people who are in the same group together, or in a big office to reducing isolate working and enhancing communication.

But what we see normally is most of the students are wearing big earphone, put a kind of rear-view mirror on the displayer, or not work in the office any more. Actually, whether we are in the same office or not, we are talk not very much except need to discuss a particular issue of the research and in this situation, we will not be in the office.

Thus, the whole lab is busy, moving but quiet. But talking becomes noise when two or three people together discussing in the office. And this kind of discussion could be noise for anyone who is focusing on their work at that moment. That’s why earphone becomes a necessary tool there. I don’t think everyone has the similar habit that listen music when they are doing research or writing a paper. Most people have earphone for avoiding be affected in a big office, everyone prefer to have a small space even though the very social person, isn’t it?

MPhil/PhD Transfer Presentation

In my department, there are three things need to be completed before get the Mphil/PhD transfer: RTP credits, upgrade report (>10,000 words) and a presentation.

Happy that I get upgrade after one year hard work. It is a milestone and also a nice experience for me. The lessons I’ve learned today:

Presentation skills:
1. If it is a presentation about your research, it is always good to list the main research question and sub-questions on the slides clearly rather than only mention it when you talk.
2. If it is a presentation about your work, it is always good to present your population and sampling on the slides clearly rather than only mention it when you talk.
3. Think about the terms presented in the PPT, present it with explanation clearly. If not confident or clear, probably don’t use it. True, but actually, at the early stage of the research, because I’m not confident of it, I would like to show it and get people’s ideas and happy to be pointed out the issues or errors.

Research techniques:
1. Grounded theory is to generate theory from data; should say what data show us rather than what you think, don’t push the theory generate.
2. Change the way of your thinking of the data – a very hard and vital data analysis skill!
3. Using the term “diagram” or “figure” instead of “model” at the early stage of the study, because “model” can be “theory” sometimes.
4. About grounded theory, I still have a lot of things need to learn.

There is no free lunch

It is a true story.

I asked one of my colleagues if he attended any conferences. He said, “only once, and they invited me, provided travel fee, meals, accommodation and so on”.

I: “How wonderful it is! It’s free.”

He nodded.

I: “But how did they know you? Because of your research publications or because you are a member of a specific organisation?”

He said, I’m a member of E-LIS and use this system to publish my work quite often. I share my work there, invite people join in and encourage them publish, and normally I like to respond people's questions.

See, he got the free lunch because he indeed shares, interact with people and make collaboration into practice. He had taken time on the E-LIS development work and had potentially acted as an encourager. One thing he has mentioned: if you care something, you should know there would be somewhere other people also care about it as you. It’s always an interactive way there.

Blogs source relevant to library services and librarians

I have sorted some blog sources related to higher educational in one entry, and I found it’s probably useful, so I put it under the Links where people can click it directly on the main webpage without searching it through this blog.

Here, I re-sort some sources for librarians who are interested in blog applications; maybe it provides a general picture of how blogs could be used.

• Library Weblogs, listed by countries
• BlogBib: Select Librarian/Library Blogs
• The IPL’s Blog List - Library, Librarians, and Library Science Blogs, listed by subjects
• Yahoo searching - library blogs

Research flowchart

I was interested in a full-time PhD student and supervisor flowchart of Cranfield University. It exhibits a 3 years research workflow including the explicit time of each milestone at different stages, for example, 9 months, students should transfer; 30 months review, etc. It is not very detailed, but it’s clear enough for telling student a general picture of how a research goes.

In Sheffield, there is no any global schedule for all research students. Mostly research students are self working based. We create a short term (one-year) or long term (three years) plan by discussing with supervisor. We also amend a bit the plan during the process; for instance, we don’t know in advance when is the time to transfer, according to the progress, probably 12 months, 14 months or 24 months.

I like the general flowchart as there are two points: new student have a clear picture in their mind that what the research flow is. And secondly, student and supervisor can create their own research plan under the common flowchart.

Today’s resources

When people asked my research, I told them about weblog or blog. They responded that they don’t know what it is, but are interested in knowing it. I told them that they must have browsed blogs somewhere when they were surfing online. So when I gave examples, such as LiveJournal, Blogger, they said that they know it. People know the particular blog services, but seldom notice it is a blogging phenomenon.

Here is a source for most blog host services.

And this is a collection of relative elearning and education blogs: Elearnspace. Everything elearning: Blogs.

The 19 Best Elearning Blogs.

Publications of blogs research in the literature

More than 2/3 resources that I’ve got are indicating the advantages of blogging and encouraging its usage, for instance, Christopher’s report Blogging the future, Pomerantz and Stutzman’s paper Collaborative Reference Work in the Blogosphere. But a handful of literatures are negative and lists the problems of blogs, for example, Charles C. Mann’s article Spam + Blogs = Trouble, Donald Brook’s Why I Fucking Hate Weblogs and Elinor Mills’ Tempted by blogs, spam becomes 'splog'. The literatures are mainly positive. But how successful these instances are through the literature? Can we say that it is a kind of bias in the literature? Criticism or negative voice is always good for warning people to consider the better use of blogs. People want to get the benefits from blogs, would like to use it for forming a sense of community and collaboration or personalised needs, at least blogs provide a chance and a possibility.

Studies and work

I have been working in my summer holiday. Not update this blog often as usual. Now it’s a new start for the next stage studies. Suddenly feel this: in working, most of people consider how to put theory into practice, for example, using a blog product for librarians’ communication; in lots of research, people concern what is a theory, and how to develop or create a theory from real data. Not means I have to link my research into an actual application system, but need to think how the research can be more useful for further application and its benefits.