Reflections on an EdD study week-end

The highlights: meeting my supervisor, anticipating the highs and lows ahead, wondering whether having been a research student in the 90s will comprise an advantage, concluding that it probably won’t.

 A really good conversation with one of the OU people about what ‘democratic values’ means in the context of ethical research. A parliamentary democracy can invade an oil-rich nation. A parliamentary democracy can land commandos on a ship carrying aid. If I practise comparably aggressive methods in my research, am I being ethical? If not, why not? It seems to me that democratic values can mean whatever the powerful want them to mean.

 Getting a really interesting book on Communities of Practice, critically challenging the whole idea. It may shake or cement my views; either is good.

 The less than highlights: not being a natural networker, keeping that frozen smile on hold was a big ask.

 Eating way way too much. Henceforth I will be known as Sir Loin of Pork.

 Rushing back on Sunday to see England play Germany. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s best to have a defence, midfield and attack, rather than 11 clueless Herberts running randomly and pointing a lot.

 The security guy at the library who wouldn’t let me in at 11:57 because the library doesn’t open til 12. No further comment needed.

 And next – sorting out my research methods. What do I do, apart from conduct interviews? I don’t want to add another level of data gathering just for the sake of doing it. But there may be a gap between how people tell me they use technologies for learning, and how they actually use them. That gap seems big right now.

 Overall – very glad I met my supervisor (Daisy) and spent several hours discussing the research with her. Very glad I attended the workshop on transcribing interviews (her suggestion). Very glad I met a very nice Labrador on the way to the library.

 Could the event have been half a day shorter? Maybe, but churls like me never wholly enter the spirit of these things.

 Final thought. The perennial anxiety of research as an isolating experience. That’s the best bit. Some of us were medieval monks in a previous life. Probably.

The twenty-first century scriptorium

I’m beginning to understand Brabazon’s (2008) objections to Web 2.0: ‘The long tail of proliferating mediocrity, where bloggers link to other bloggers and podcasters namecheck other podcasters, is the great cost of Web 2.0.’ Having started this blog as part of the final component of my MA, I realise that there is, essentially, no audience for one more educational blogger.

It makes me thinks of monks in the medieval scriptorium. They produced beautiful psalm books, for example, but in a cultural context in which literacy was marginal. They had drawings, too, accompanying the script. Sometimes these were didactic, underlining the point of the psalm (and providing a learning experience for those who could not read) but they also did funny drawings, sometimes with a surreal quality that Terry Gilliam would be proud of. I remember seeing one in which a knight has approached a lady, and has slain a unicorn lying between them. The unicorn was a symbol for chastity (no idea why, given the horn in the middle of its head), the idea being that the knight has removed or is about to remove said maiden’s chastity.

Maybe they were bored. I suspect you can only write about the Lord’s greatness a few thousand times before it starts to lose its gloss. But I wonder, too, if they were ever beset by a sense of futility, that they were investing their time and labour in something that wouldn’t achieve much. Maybe not, and I accept that their sense of selfhood can’t be conflated with selfhood as we understand it in the twenty-first century. But, in the absence of an audience and communication, the lone mind undertakes some odd journeys.

Learning needs friction sometimes, so maybe, for a blogger to have a satisfying experience in a quiet room, they need to just play with the technology, think about the creative potential of blogging, and let the learning and teaching ruminations (the content) come after the form has been figured out.

Try
Brabazon, T. (2008) ‘Nothing to lose but our mobiles: review of “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations”’, Times Higher Education, 3–9 April, no.1, p.839.