All 3 entries tagged Meeting Summary

4th Group meeting recording

Writing about web page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMIeoZOKBAo

I am sorry for being a little bit too late posting this. Although I did manage to post it on facebook in time.

Why so late

The reason for me not being able to post any updates in this blog is trifold; too busy with my data collection, llimited access to the internet and finally having other engagements for the last month.

Regardless, I have free internet (for the time being) and some time on my hand to update this blog. So here's the first of (hopefully) a cople more posts.

Meeting in a glance

We had this meeting back on the 25th June with special guest Dr Michael Hammond. We also had acouple attendees who jpint us for the first time. During the meeting we discussed a wide scope of topics ranging from Transcriptions (verbatim vs. edited) to conducting successful interviews, from Discourse analysis to Research paradigm and from The use of the Likert scale measures in surveys to dealing with different writing styles and how keeping a research diary is such a good practice. Towards the end of the meeting we also had a discussion about our future SSLC reps. Dr Hammond took the names of the candidates and promised to communicate the selection criteria and process either directly or through me.

The recording

You can listen to the audio recording here

Make sure to check out the video description (just underneath the title and the sharing buttons) for a detailed list of contents.

Mohammad Waseem Sandouk : 04 Aug 2015 12:02 |  Tags: Cesphd Meeting Recording Meeting Summary |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

2nd Group meeting summary

Writing about web page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjoboJxaaiE

In brief

So last Wednesday we had our second meeting for the PhD support group, on the agenda of the meeting we had a discussion about the definition of case studies (including a talk about revealing contact details about your case study) generalizability of case study [link] research and using NVivo for qualitative data analysis.

The meeting was extra especial because we had our friend Anne join us from the U.S. over Skype, with the magical technological advances and tech wizardry and with Anne heroically waking up right in the middle of the night we were able to have our across-the-Atlantic meeting of the minds. Also to make our gathering that much better we were joined by Henry who is nearing the submission date of his thesis, and was generous enough to join us and share with us some great advices related to our discussion points (more on that later).

So what is the case in case study

So, the first item of business; definition of a case study, the idea here was to collaboratively figure out what defined the “case” part of each of our respective case studies. So, in turns we each presented our research topic and what outlined the boundaries of each case; for some of us a case was a subject institution like a school or a university; for others it was a person whom they had interviewed or were planning on interviewing; and interestingly for some of us a case was a collection of people within an organization like teachers, headmasters and teacher trainers.

Also, some of us are looking at multiple case studies (example Asima and myself) while other are looking at one case study (example Hessah and Hafiz).

Being careful with language

Asima made an important remark about being careful in using the language when talking about the research method and methodology. So terminology such as ‘case study’ comes loaded with meanings and related connotations and the researcher is actually borrowing aspects of case study design, aspects that are related to his or her research. Here the researcher is urged to tread lightly so to speak when talking about the design of their research. They should talk only about those related aspects and make a clear cut about what is it they are borrowing and what is it they are not. (Listen to Asima talk about this and her reflection on Yin’s case study book at the 9 minutes mark of the recording – link above).

Mohammad Waseem Sandouk : 01 Jun 2015 12:30 |  Tags: Case Study Cesphd Meeting Summary |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

1st Group meeting summary

What a great first meeting we had! I genuinely enjoyed myself and had great discussions with other colleagues. The 75 minutes meeting was very smooth and productive. The 9 attendees discussed their research as well as the format and goal of the support group.

You can listen to the meeting's recording here and read about the YouTube video here

The summary of the discussions includes

Introducing the Group and its goals, followed by a discussion on the formula and regularity of meetings.

Asima, who also provided us with a list of book recommendations, triggered a lively discussion on Ontology & Epistemology. The discussion is going to continue on our next meeting. Make sure you are present for that!

The book recommendations are further discussed here.

Another great discussion on Data Collection took place, with everybody chipping in. We all presented out data collection duration and how we managed our schedules.

Interview transcriptions were also discussed, with colleagues sharing their experiences in using transcribing software (namely NVivo). A coming up meeting will include detailed discussions and tips on using NVivio.

Self-reflection was also discussed and the matter of keeping a personal diary. Some suggested keeping track of your work, others suggested going back to your old material and reflect on it.

A closing discussion included the possibility of help from the department. The idea is that the department offered to provide us with workshop and one-on-one support on key research-related topics, such as using NVivo and SPSS. A group of students who are interested in such help can request formal support from the department. The CESPHD support group will help facilitate this request.

Looking forward to our next meeting! Make sure you are present so you don’t miss out.

Mohammad Waseem Sandouk : 17 May 2015 19:19 |  Tags: Cesphd Meeting Summary |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem