November 19, 2009
At a workshop on writing. One of the key points that Pat Thompson is making is that there is no such thing as writing up because we don’t know what we’re writing up until we start writing.
The title and abstract are important as most people are selecting to read the article base on this. These are key invitational things that allows the reader to select.
Through writing we’re presenting ourselves as scholars.
By becoming a scholar – sometimes you may have devalued your previous identity before starting as a scholar (particularly for late-life researchers) – but there should be a way of meshing both identities.
The point of a journal paper is a persuasive and argumentative piece not a report on what was done. The conference paper tends to be a report – and thus the journal paper is a different rhetorical task.
Two types of text:
- Monologic: dead text – does not draw people in (like a laundry list)
- Dialogic: brings people in to think and engage – this is what research writing is about i.e. invite the reader in to making meaning and associations such as through references and other themes and other conversations.
Fariclough’s 3 dimensional model of discourse (process of production and interpretation):
- Layer 1: Text
- Layer 2: Discourse practice
- Layer 3: Sociocultural practice
Dissertation: the text is the dissertation, the discourse practice is imparted to the students by the supervisors, and the sociocultural practice is drawn from the supervisors background.
Conference papers: Text is the paper, the discourse practice is the presentation, and the sociocultural practice is the audience.
Some rule of thumbs in deconstructing a journal website:
- Try and cite the editors from the journal.
- Read the aims of the journal and analyse what they want from the aims. Make sure you address each of the aims.
- Check the editorial board and see if they’re from different countries and hence it has a large reach. In the larger reach you need to work from the specific to broader issues.
- If you’ve never heard of the editorial board you might want to use another journal.
- Read a couple of papers from the journal and determine what is the conversation of the journal – from this – determine the ideological position and the theories.
- Have a look at the editor’s interviews (either transcripts or MP3s) that some of the journals have – as they give you what they want
- Cite papers from the journal
- Check for stylistic conventions (APA etc)
- Get people in the know to know the turn around time – such as the refereeing time
- You may decide on the journal to put in – depending on your career progression – that is – if you need a quick turn around then probably a less famous journal
- Check the readership of the journal and make sure you address the issues/implications for everyone
- Reviewers are looking for the “so what” and the “now what”
- Strongest paper has one argument or one point to make not two or three – state the argument of the paper upfront
- State the research in the field and how it stands and what you’re going to contribute to it
The genre of the journal article (most has to be like this but not always):
- Introduction – locate, focus, argument, outline paper
- Possibly theoretical orientation
- Literatures
- Methods – explain report
- Discuss
- Conclude
Five moves in a journal abstract:
- Locate: specific paper in relation to larger project/debates/issues – naming the angle
- Focus: identify the particular question/issues/kinds of problems that the paper will explore/ examine
- Anchor: establish the basis for the argument
- Report: summarise major findings pertinent to the argument
- Argue: open the argument - the so what question
- Use the abstract as the plan for writing the paper
October 30, 2009
I have to work on the outline of the NetGen website and decide what each section would contain. Thought I would brainstorm it over here. I already did some brainstorming when I submitted the proposal to the AACS people (bureaucracy is rampant at the OU!). Anyway, we’ve been alloted a URL although not live as yet – but this is what it will be: http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/netgeneration
Anyway, onto deciding the outline (it is necessary to decide the outline first as the APS system being used at the OU – is not very flexible and if you get it wrong – it’s massive amounts of work to get the outline correctly!). What I could do – is do it in Dreamweaver first and then copy and paste how I want it – but still need to do the outline anyhow.
- Net Generation: Welcome page to the Net Generation project – not sure what to include as yet!
- About Project (upper level headings cannot have any text because of the APS)
- Background to Project: Pretty much background to it – being an ESRC project, the aims and objectives, the timelines
- Highlights from the project: Video clips, transcripts etc.
- People on the Project: Just a list of the different people on the project and short bios
- Publications: a list of publications and presentations which are directed back to oro
- Future Events: Future things happening at Net Gen, going to conferences, publishing books ?
- Net Gen around the world: Twitter feeds from other NetGen people, other relevant projects
Ok, that pretty much seems like the website outline I can deal with – I definitely should make it in Dreamweaver and then copy and paste into APS (can’t import into APS …!!!)
September 29, 2009
For Survey 2 on the NetGen project, I’ve looked at the database yesterday. Just wanted to make notes on the changes, I’ve made and the reasoning why, before I forget because Ruslan has told me there are particular requirements for UK data archiving that is needed by the ESRC.
First of all, Ruslan had fixed some parts of the Survey 2, but these are my additional fixings and have saved it as a new file 28-09-09:
- Any data that had numeric answers were changed from being string to numeric (this makes it easier for SPSS to analyse the data – particularly if we want means that is if we treat some of the Likert scales as continuous)
- Some of the data is related to tick boxes, where when students have ticked the boxes this is coded as 1 where students have not ticked this has been left blank as a system-missing value. I have recoded these variables into the same variable to be that 1 = yes and system-missing value to be 0, so that 0 = no. I think it is a fair assumption if the students did not tick the box then it is a no.
- For QE4, the data was coded as follows: 1= “don’t know”, 2 =”not at all useful”, 3= “not very useful”, 4 = “fairly useful” and 5 = “very useful”. If means were used for analysing this question, then it would be all wrong because of the “don’t know” is represented by 1. So, I’ve recoded into the same variable, so that “don’t know” is now represented by 5, and 1 = “not at all useful”, 2 = “not very useful”, 3 = “fairly useful” and 4 = “very useful”.
These are the things I intend to do today for Survey 2 and if I get time for Survey 3 and the linked Survey 2 and Survey 3:
Change system-missing to user-missing values
At the moment there are system-missing values (i.e. blanks) – I want to change these to user-missing values (i.e 999) (and make sure and add these to the variable as missing) – looked through the internet to see if there was a good reason for doing – or whether that was just my preference – and it seems to be more my preference than anything else … but here is my reasoning for doing it
- If we want to do a missing-data analysis it might be easier to sort out who were missing using the 999 as SPSS automatically disregards system-missing values
- If any new variable was computed in SPSS, blanks may represent that SPSS failed to compute an answer rather than a student failed to input an answer – so need to distinguish between that
- Should really be able to distinguish between questions that are not applicable to the student and where students missed out a question – although in this survey as far as I can see there are no ‘not applicable’ questions
Look for double entries
There seemed to be some double entries for students, I’m not sure whether to delete them or just exclude them from the analysis. As most of the double entries seem to have missing values anyhow they might just be excluded – but possibly shouldn’t take any changes and just omit them from the analysis. Hence I need to create a new variable which will be 1 = include and o = exclude, where I can then select cases.
Create a new ID
Unfortunately at the moment, the NetGen ID is a string rather than numeric and whilst that is ok for identifying students, when ordering students it tends to be: 2NG10, 2NG100, 2NG11 which is not the best way for finding and ID. So, I’m going to create a numeric ID, by removing the 2NG – going to do this in Excel and then copy back over, since in Excel it will be easy to remove the 2NG.
