Week 8 - Presenting to Peers 101

 

Almost Done!  The End is NEAR!   :-)

I have completed the draft and sent it in!  Roland has evaluated it and sent it back.  His remarks are helpful for the most part but some of them are questions that I'm not sure he’s asking me to think about or suggesting I address in the paper.  I agree with the majority of them and am going to incorporate them into my paper.  I just wish there was more TIME!  Also, I have to present this thing next week.  I will probably take a day off work again “sick” so I can mash out a script.  Tutorial this week was all about the presentations. 

They will be strict about the 10-minutes and they strongly encourage us to have a script and PRACTICE it to make sure we are within the time limit.  I am happy to write a script – writing is something I'm good at.  Just look at this blog!  It’s like 2200 words of just my thoughts and ideas.  I think I can succinctly deliver the key points of my research in 10 minutes. 

The PPT for the presentation is almost done, too.  I have made up 8 really good slides.  Roland said to have only three and make them graphical, but I feel like I need a couple more.  My experience has been that the same slide on the screen for 2 or 3 minutes causes the viewer to lose interest and since we are peer marking I don’t want to do that!  It should be fun, though, since a bunch of newer AEDT students may attend.  Looking forward to it!

Week 7 - The week off that WASN'T!!

A week off – NOT!

So I have taken a whole week off work as “vacation” time.  But rather than go on vacation I am back at work every day to work on my thesis draft.  I can’t work on it at home – so many distractions with kids and TV and food and all sorts of temptations to do something else.  Here at work I am locked in a room.  I am reading and writing and reading more.  I am getting a lot done!!  I am about 26 pages in now and its really taking shape!!  I am highlighting and documenting a ton. 

I have even started a bit of a “results” graph.  It may make its way into the paper as an appendix.  It’s interesting to read a research paper and document the findings and then document them in a chart. 

I have even made a really COOL venn diagram that represents the findings from a theoretical standpoint – how almost all studies done have used PBL as the foundation for their study/research and also used some other theory to build on it with.  I have attached my Venn in the blog for reference.  It’s likely to change before it gets tossed into the final paper, but it’s cool.  I had never made a Venn diagram before but I figured out how to make one in Excel – hence the grid-like background, LOL.  By the time this paper is over I will be probably way over 8000 words!  Who woulda though that I, James, was capable of this?!? 

I usually take my ball and go home when the going gets tough but I will NOT quit on this one!

Week 6 - Struggles, Trials, and Tribulations

I am working hard on my draft but I am struggling a bit.  I just had meeting with Katie which she was having with me right after she had met with Roland to discuss my framework.  I just don’t get what they are talking about! L  I still struggle with the use of dependent and independent variables.  Those words are foreign to me.  Roland suggested some changes to my TF that I'm trying to understand but it sort of feels like square peg round hole – like I'm completely changing the paper to fit what I THINK they want.  Even after reading what those variables mean I can’t see how they apply to my paper.  It seems like they are more for primary research.  I am considering removing them from the framework altogether and changing things.  I think I will make a new one. 

Also, In the tutorial R&E were discussing “coding”.  I have been working on the premise that coding is supposed to identify consistent themes.  I understand themes and I see them emerging.  Even after googling coding I'm still a bit confused.  I already asked in class and the answer wasn’t clear but I wasn’t going to waste the whole tutorial time on what appeared to be my lack on understanding.

I'm also struggling a bit with the format of this course.  It seems way more geared towards people doing primary research.  There was a requirement last term to have an REB submitted – something you don’t need for secondary research.  There is also almost no guidance for people doing secondary research.  No one can explain how its different from a lit review except to say that in a lit review I read what other people think and then I form an opinion of what I think based on that.  I collect their ideas and share them with some of what I know.  I create links between the themes.  One link I am finding is that PBL doesn’t appear to be used in any application yet without having some other theory supporting it.  This probably indicates that bits and pieces of multiple theories are the way to go.  Sort of like walking through a grocery isle full of candy and getting to fill your bag with bits of each one?  Maybe a bad analogy but that’s what I'm feeling right now.

Week 5 - Themes, anyone?

I drove out to my parents’ place to start writing and to pick my mom’s brain.  She writes this stuff for a living and I would be a fool not to.  Plus she feeds me delicious food  J  Anyway, through the research there are a number of key themes I am seeing emerge, and luckily they appear to be consistent with the same themes that popped up in the literature review! 

Themes like: policing is changing but police training is not, police are still being taught in the liberal style of being lectured to and information is being provided with no immediate context, PBL is being used in some places but not most (I am seeing a lot of new “training” programs that are PBL-based but are called something different, like POST, RENO model, and PTO), that adult learning theory is really gaining traction, and that almost no one is using DT!!  I wonder why they aren’t?  Maybe they don’t think cops can handle Digital Technology?  I hope there is more research on this. 



I am going to borrow Maggi Savin-Badden’s book since if I remember right she was a guru in online PBL environments.  I think mom has it.  Fanshawe College library doesn’t.

 

Week 4 - PSPBL and the Wonders of an Online Community!

I have discovered another EXCELLENT resource – the Police Society for Problem Based Learning (PSPBL) website.  I had to pay $50 to become a member but they have some really great articles available to “members only”. 
They also have a discussion forum but no one really participates in it yet.  I have emailed the site admin, Roger, with my interest and goals for acquiring research on PSPBL and he will reach out to some people he knows.  I am establishing a community! 

Hooray!  So far, I have connected with several people via the website and other email correspondence.  They include Valerie Herndon at the FBI academy, Cecil Queen at Ferris University, Greg Saville (former RCMP and popular PSPBL researcher) and Gerry Cleveland, Eric Werth and Lonnie Croal.  Croal is especially cool as he did his thesis based on primary research at Edmonton police service and I lived in Edmonton for 2+ years.  I am so pleased that there are so many people willing to help and many of them are supportive.  Some have even asked me to forward them my completed work!!

www.edmontonpolice.ca

Side note:  I signed up for RefWorks (http://www.refworks.com/) to try to manage all of these sources and papers.  The website is not very easy to manipulate, so I suspect I will just keep copying and pasting the sources as best I can.  Apa6 and I are definitely NOT friends right now. J

Week 3 - Fun with Sources :)

This entry is wholly dedicated to the findings of my sources.  I started with the sources for the lit review.  A lot of them sourced other people, books, and papers.  I have started to try to acquire those.  For the lit review I largely depended on general web searches and Google Scholar, and I avoided any papers longer than about 10 pages.  I just didn’t have time and I didn’t need as much for that type of document, but for this stage I am being a lot more specific.  I am going to look for the full papers and read them.  Some of them are over 100+ pages, so it’s going to take a while.  I am already finding that I have to put a cap on my research documents.  I already have 10 that I could add to the 15 from the lit review and I'm not even close to getting all the works I want.  I know what Liz meant when she told us research can be addictive!  I will never have EVERYTHING written on a topic.  I have to learn when to say enough is enough.  I met with Donna Sevenpifer here at Fanshawe.  She’s the library’s research person.  She had some good suggestions, but they seem so cumbersome and exclusive.  Like, I have to choose which database I want to query (ex. EBSCO), but why cant I just query all of them?  I think the internet has made me lazy, LOL.  I have requested a few inter-library loans and have already started to lean on Kate Gibbings at UOIT library as well.  M shocked at how many of these papers want me to pay to read them.  Ridiculous! 

I signed out this book “Police Organization and Training”.  So far its awesome!  Each chapter has a different author writing about a different topic.

Week 2 - Lit Review ALL DONE!

I got some feedback from Elizabeth on my lit review and framework.  Largely positive.  SWEET.  I worked my tail off.  I met with R&E to discuss my final grade.  I was pretty down on myself and recommended no better than a “C” but R&E disagreed.  They didn’t care about the deadlines, but rather about the learning.  We negotiated a B+ on the premise that I was going to work really hard in the coming term to generate a great paper.  The bar is set high but I am confident I can meet it.  My literature review was thorough and I think it is pointing me down a secondary research path.  R&E agreed – especially given the condensed timeframe that I have to work with. 



Primary would probably not be possible given the REB applications and such; too bad, since I was seriously considering surveying a small sample of college educators and police constables here at Fanshawe.  Maybe both pre-and post surveys.  My boss would be willing to let me have the Specials for an hour to possibly engage in a PBL environment.  I would love to hear their perceptions before and after.  Oh well.  Maybe a great idea for a Matsers thesis!  LOL

Week 1 - Intro to my blog

I started out in this process about a month late.  You see, I got sick midway through the fall term and I was able to succeed in 3 of my 4courses but I fell flat on my face with the fourth.  That course was called Thesis I.  I was bombing along just fine until late October/November when I moved houses and work and life pressures mounted.  I got sick.  I was in the hospital.  Suffered though many, many visits to different medical professionals.  The prognosis was that I was suffering from anxiety and that I needed to try to reduce stress.  So rather than take a full course load in the winter term I elected to just take a couple. 

I chose to take Thesis II even though I did not complete Thesis I.  My professors graciously allowed me to submit the outstanding assignments that I missed in Thesis I and as a result I get to negotiate a grade – something I wasn’t sure I deserved but was truly grateful for!

 

So I spent January working hard on the outstanding stuff that I should have done the previous term – namely, the literature review, theoretical framework, and methodologies section for the final paper that encompasses the bulk of Thesis II.  With HUGE help from my family and friends I was able to collect a whole bunch of research and wrote a 12-page, 2700-word literature review on my topic, the emerging use of Problem-based learning in police education.  For this paper I had 15 sources cited.  Not all were scholarly but the vast majority were.  Some were from online magazines and different police service websites.  I knew that for my final paper I would be looking into reading a lot more peer-reviewed work! 

I didn’t quite get the methodologies and theoretical framework articulated, but after chatting with R&E I am confident I can put something together.

Milestone met – Submitted Lit review on January 23^rd.  Theoretical Framework draft submitted Jan 27^th.