Seeing Through New Eyes

I am excited to announce that I have been accepted to participate in the AERA Division C Graduate Student seminar. It will be a great experience for networking, one-on-one time with some fabulous mentors, meeting other graduate students, learning more about surviving the dissertation, and learning more about research. Looks like I am going to have a great time at this conference and I'm looking forward to it. There are so many things to do before then, but I am feeling good about the direction I am going. The whole PhD experience has taught me so much about myself, the variety of people in the world, and what I can do. I'm glad to be able to share my knowledge when I can and to continue to learn from others.

My adviser signed off on my program of study today. Whew. I just need to finish up a couple incompletes and do my class this semester and I'll be completely finished with course work! In the mean time I need to be finalizing my committee, finalizing my cognate areas, putting together my article list for comps, scheduling comps, and doing them. Then it is off to dissertation land! Projected graduation date: Spring 2010! I have a ton to do before then (need to do some teaching!), but I am excited. I am nervous but ready to be moving forward. I am excited to move forward with problem-based learning and assessing the literature for non-cognitive outcomes. If that doesn't make sense, let me put it this way. I know problem-based learning is as good as or better than traditional lecture classes for cognitive outcomes, so I want to know how it fares for non-cognitive outcomes like motivation, interest, engagment (behavior), self-directed learning skills, etc. I think it can be a very p...

Last week while attending my church services , the topic of learning came up. In fact, the entire lesson was on learning, how it is everyone's right to be able to learn, and how in this day and age opportunities for learning are more accessible than ever. With that, we all need to take advantage of these opportunities and learn. I believe this learning needs to be balanced (just like everything in our lives). It needs to have a portion of spiritual learning (whatever your beliefs), it needs to have physical learning (to me that is knowing what your body needs, how to take care of it, and actually doing those things), and then you need to have learning that helps you succeed in the world (that can be anything from college, apprenticeships, or personal study). Now, learning needs to be something that happens everyday. It should be something we all desire AND something we share in love and gratitude. For what is the worth of learning something? Just for you to know or for you to do an...

As I continue to work on my literature review on meta-synthesis and meta-analyses of data visualization, I am finding another word: meta-study. This is quite interesting as it appears that it is bigger than meta-synthesis or meta-anlaysis. It claims to be another qualitative technique that takes into consideration a large account of what is happening with phenomena and sorting it out, sythesizing it and putting forward new ideas. Funny, cause thought that's what meta-synthesis was. As I wrap this up for my prof I hope that it is good enough work to be making a contribution.