Next meeting: 3/17 from 2:30-3:30
As Hemant said in his email this morning, to coordinate with the MCRC talk, our last meeting before Spring Break will be this Thursday March 17 at the early time, 2:30-3:30.
A couple of important issues have been raised offline that we should discuss at this meeting. I've received permission from some students to paraphrase the concerns here so that we can all think about them before Thursday:
- Since so many of us are crushed for time in this end-of-semester period leading up to the May school referendum, maybe we should think of that referendum as a "starting" point rather than an "ending" point. We can try to lay as much groundwork as we can and definitely cover what happens at the referendum, but not feel that we must do everything in two months. Those of us here over the summer can then continue work on the project, and when September comes (with its inevitable additions to our graduate student ranks) we can again advertise the QSG with a well-designed project "in hand" so people can budget their semesters from the start.
- Since there are some concrete procedural, methodological, theoretical, and historical questions we're now dealing with (among others) maybe we could try to budget our meetings so that each week there's some time set aside for working on the big project (status updates, next steps, workload decisions, etc.) and some time left for a topic-focused presentation component (initially by the faculty members, but also by student members as well) on key issues. For example, here are some student suggestions I've heard: how to write an effective IRB proposal for qualitative or hybrid research; how to select and justify a sample size for individual open-ended interviews; how to create a set of interview questions that cover your needs but don't "lead" or bias the interviewee; how to negotiate web-based media and communication resources, especially new ones like blogs, wikis, and the like; how to use statistical/demographic data and a GIS to illuminate patterns, correlations, and areas of interest in the city; etc.
If you'd like to respond to any of these ideas before we meet, go ahead and comment below.
posted by Greg Downey @ 9:36 AM
1 Comments:
I might as well throw in my two cents while I'm here:
(1) I think those with the time should do as much work as possible on the project before May, but I absolutely want to articulate that students who can't devote time to this project shouldn't feel excluded in the meetings -- or on the blog. Personally I feel like I get a lot out of watching the process of defining a research project unfold, even if I'm not working on that project.
(2) I heartily agree with the idea of having some more structured presentations at these meetings, trading responsibility for these among students and faculty. I would also vote for some sessions where we all read an article and discuss it, or all read a student research proposal and discuss it, as we did before. I think if we commit to a weekly schedule, we can do this and continue work on the big project, especially as specifics of the project work divide out into "subcommittees" working with individual faculty mentors.
(3) Using the blog is a new, and rough, and sometimes difficult experience, but my hope is that this tool can facilitate this sort of group multitasking, not get in the way. If if does seem to be getting in the way, or if it's too intimidating to use, or if it's just not functional because it's too slow or to hard to read or whatever, let's stop using it and try something else instead (trading emails, for example). This is something we're discussing in my seminar class too; check out this post by Aaron and the comments that resulted.
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