How to develop a research proposal with Prof. Johannes Cronje

reasons that people keep on asking me whether it's available online somewhere so it will go to YouTube eventually so that at least something if you miss it then you can watch it and you don't have to give up your evening every time when the Dean thinks that he'll say something about proposal writing so that's why he would sometimes find young William walking up and down to adjust the camera in some way and to make sure that it works and so on so that's the first bit a useful book for those of you who want a useful book is this one by your hundred-ton it's called how to succeed in your masters and doctoral studies there's something very important about matones book and that is it contains very very useful information about how to succeed in your masters and doctoral studies but please do not quote from it the reason you don't want to quote from it is you do not want in the bibliography at the back of your research to say how to do research it sounds like a bit of an idiotic title so if you want to quote Milton then quote some of these other books which where you will find similar information but this is a very useful little book it contains a bit of language a bit of grammar talks about the research process of gives dummy proposals an example of a good proposal and example of a bad proposal etc etc so that's just a book then tonight is going to be a workshop which means that from time to time I will give you some work so that I can go shopping but there will be some opportunity for you to talk to each other and to do some questioning and to do some asking and so that's why I brought the Smarties along to make it interactive Smarties I here for smart people there are three ways those of you who work in the Faculty will know that there are three ways in which you achieve Smarties one is by being so brilliant and so smart that I recognize it in which case I will give you a smarty the second one is by claiming to be smart and if I agree with then I will give you a smarty and the third one is by knowing something else somebody else who is smart and suggesting to me that I give that person some Smarties and then you can claim some commission back from that person so by those rules there's not a single person in the room who should not be able to get some Smarties as we go good so that's the housekeeping done so then the agenda has been given to you so it starts for me to say welcome everybody that you are here and I think the first item on the agenda that we're going to talk about is the logic of a proposal is that correct a tween I think I said first thing is the logic of a proposal so we can start by saying well before we get to the logic what is the Russian all of the proposal the word Russian all means the reason for why do we even have a proposal that is actually quite an interesting question because I have two masters and a doctorate and I've never written a proposal I never wrote a proposal for any of them when I went to university to do my first Master's I went to the professor and I suggested to him I asked him what he thought I should be doing and he gave me some advice and he said well why don't you sit down and do some writing and so that's what I did and then I had some army service to do so I went to the border for some time then I got a letter from the University saying that unless you submit by the end of August you will not graduate this year so I took I then took what the army called 14 days which turned out to be about 21 days which turned out to be about six weeks went home and wrote the master's thesis so that was the first one no proposal anything like that then I went to the same supervisor and said now I want to do a doctorate and he said well why don't you just work a little bit more along the lines of what you've been doing and so I did that and eight years later I had a doctorate and so you don't really need a proposal so then why do we have them we have them because it means that you can actually do it a little bit more quickly although having said that the six-week one I didn't have a proposal for either neither did I for the 8001 but it does help us focus our thinking it amounts to some sort of agreement between you and your supervisor and the faculty about what it is that you'll be doing but a proposal has to be flexible because as you do your research you may find that the questions that you are asking have already been answered or that the questions that you are asking are not the sort of questions that we should be asking anyway or that the field that you're working in has been worked to death so one of the reasons we have a proposal defense in public is that we hope that there are some other people in the vicinity who can give you some advice because they've been there before then once you have the proposal we can start giving you some advice about how to narrow down what you're wanting to do so it's an initial thinking but there is no law that says that what you propose in your proposal must be what ends up on in the thesis there's no law that links the proposal in extra Cobley to the thesis you can always change I'm saying that you because I'm worried sometimes in the faculty that the proposal defenses become a very big deal it isn't a big deal the proposal defense is the launch of this thing that's really what it is so that's just the rationale behind the proposal so what is the logic of the proposal proposal starts by saying if you read this document I am going to tell you what I want to find out and there are two qualities that this thing that I want to find out must have in the first place it must be unique other people mustn't have found it out already because then it's not research so the first thing you have to convince me of in your proposal is I am going to do the following stuff which is unique and the second thing is that it must be necessary to do because you could do something that nobody else does and the reason why you're doing something that nobody else does is that there is no reason on this green earth that it needs to be done so those are the two characteristics so the first sentence of the thesis that you're eventually going to write first sentence of your thesis should say you must give me a distinction dear mister external examiner you must give me a distinction for this thesis because I did the following things that are unique and I did the following things that are necessary and then as you submit the thesis you just topics out that you must give me a distinction for this because that the first sentence will still tell us what makes the thesis unique and what makes the order the research unique and what makes the research necessary and while we're on that subject please remember that a proposal is an inanimate object it is a thing as is a thesis so you cannot tell me this proposal investigates or you cannot tell me this thesis investigates because the thesis is a document you the human being are investigating or you the human being are proposing the thesis conte so the first sentence of a thesis at lies of a proposal is this document proposes research to determine or something to that effect so you address the thesis as a docket that the proposal at least you address the proposal as a document so that's the first thing you're going to tell us what the aim is what is it that you are chopped dry to achieve that is unique and why do you want to achieve that then when you tell me why you want to achieve that there are two reasons why you might want to achieve that the one is that you yourself happen to be interested in it now that is a very little concern to us what is a way more concern to us is why would we be interested in it so in fact the question is why would your external examiner be sufficiently interested in this to read to the end of the thesis because what we know about the external examiner is that he gets paid very little and so consequently an external examiner would prefer to mow the lawn than to read your thesis so therefore it is a useful exercise for you to explain in this in when you're saying why you want to do it this is why I think I'm the right person to do it more importantly this is why you and the rest of the world would want to read this thesis and then we have to say right how will I find that out so that's the third part of the thesis how will I find it up and you'll notice at this stage I'm not saying I'm going to do quantitative research or qualitative research or anything I'm just saying well how am I going to find it am I gonna ask people and if I'm going to ask people am I gonna telephone them and ask them or am I going to send them questionnaires and get them to send it back to me that's the sort of question I want to know Oh am I going to build something and then test it or am I going to conduct an experiment that's the sort of question that we want to know up front the next thing we want to know is how big or small is this thing that we're going to be doing so do I want to look at a very small contained unit and go really deep into it or do I want to go very wide into this thing either the two we just want to know the scope of what it is that we're going to do and then once you've told us what you're gonna do we are particularly interested in what you are not going to do by what you're not going to do we call that the limitations or the D limitations of the study and by the what you're not going to do it means we're talking about ethical considerations but we're also talking about those things that fall with our fall outside of the scope of your study and it's very important for you to put that limit down upfront I am going to look at the response of high school children to the Justin Bieber concert okay which high school children those who attend the concert those who do not attend the concert high school children generally wealthy high school children I don't know so that's what I mean by D limitations can you actually tell us about what all the high school children think of the Justin Bieber concert well maybe you can how do you do that because you take a sample and you measure that song does that help us well yeah that would be interesting from the point of view of high school children who do attend it and the high school children who didn't attend it on the other hand if I say now I want to know from the children who actually did attend why did they go it's a tradition now can you see that's a whole different piece of research because now you have to go to the concert and stand outside the concert and interview some people or hand out questionnaires or do whatever it is that you're going to do so that's what I mean by limitations of a study you need to tell me who are the people that you're not going to include in this study of yours what are you excluding from this whole thing and then also what are the things that you are deliberately not going to do because it may be different it may be dangerous or it may be unethical good so that's the first item on the agenda the logic of the thesis and then the at least logic of a proposal then the last bit you're gonna be telling me is how do you plan to get this done what are your timelines what's your project plan when you want to start how long is it going to take and by when do you plan to finish this thing and then interestingly enough I want to budget many of you are saying but I pay for it myself it doesn't matter and the answer is it does matter because you have to show us that you actually thought through these things you're going to field a thousand questionnaires okay at about five render questionnaire to have a printed do you have the five thousand Rand available you're going to visit schools all over the country okay how are you going to fly to those various schools all over the country we need to understand that you have actually given some thought to this so whether you have a bursary or not is irrelevant we want to know how much you think you will be spending on this and that more or less sums up the sort of things that we want to know from the proposal questions comments which brings me to the next item on the agenda right okay now we're getting to the thing that irks me more than anything is it doesn't matter whether it's high or low we just need to know that that you've budget that you've understood what the cost is going to come from and that there is a balance now you may find that say for instance you are approached by a client who wants a very large study done and that client has a vast amount of money then you can do a big study and you can explain that see what we have to realize in research is that you are the project manager of this thing and the size of the study is not an indication of the mark that you would it the quality of the study is an indication of the mark that you're gonna get so you could send really bad question is to really lots of people and get really bad daughter in and you could fail it or you could have a tiny focus group with four or five people and you could come up with a real little gem of research and you can get a distinction it's the quality of what you put in there not the size and not how expensive it is you can get some really expensive bad studies and some really cheap good studies so it's more questions comments on the proposal John yes correct and we're getting to the literature review the literature review is the answer to agenda item number three I think yeah okay so the purpose of any form of research is to uncover the truth that's what we're trying to get it we're trying to find the truth this is very important to remember I remember the first time I heard I thought oh really is it about getting to the truth and we're going to revisit that later and say but what is the truth but very important is the aim of all research is to uncover a tiny piece of the truth and in that process to solve no Chet bloom says to work on a research problem and this is very important you do not necessarily have to solve the problem you must show that you've worked on it for a little I'm thinking John specifically about yours John wants to work in architecture and he's talking about I felt vernacular building that he's investigating and his research problem is about to what extent does this building conform to its time how has it grown what how is the building progressed over a period of 40 years he's telling the story of the life of that building can you see that there is no solution of it's it's just a contribution and that is the word that you need to know I'm rewinding a little a word that you need to remember is a contribution so the Russian all of your proposal what do you envisage will your contribution be so John's rationale is to contribute to our understanding of the architecture of that time and of our understanding of how farm buildings evolved it's very useful for us because underlying all that at the end we want to be able to make some sort of prediction that's really what research is about being able to predict next stages so that's where those who do research in the fashion industry for instance you do trend-spotting because you're wanting to predict what will probably happen next that's why we do mathematical modeling because we're saying if this works then we predict that that will happen next time and so on so those are the sort of reasons why we do that which then brings me to the nature of the problem ladies and gentlemen what will have your proposal sent back is when you step when you confuse your practical problem with a research problem so Alphonse if I may use your example Alphonsus practical problem is that people in the cameroon have stopped farming with chickens and so now they are hungry and the rooster no longer crows in the morning and Alphonse deeply from his heart wants to hear the rooster crow in the morning to him the fact that the rooster no longer crows in Cameroon and people are poor because they can't generate cheap protein from chickens to him that is a real problem to me that is deeply uninteresting because that is not a research problem the research problem may be why have people lost interest in chicken for me that could be an interesting question but the fact that they have been so our sponsors hoping that at the end of his research everybody will be farming with chickens that's not a research problem he's moved away from that I'm just using his problem because it's one that's at the top of my head right now if at the end of his if at the end of his research people do actually start farming with chickens and and the cameroon gets run over with chickens crowing in the morning then he will be happy but that was not the purpose of his research purpose of his research is to find out maybe why are the people not doing it or whatever else the question isn't the question would be a wise sort of question it would be a deeper question then the problem is that there isn't one so not to give it to you in a very very simple way is that if you tell me that the problem is that we do not have a table now you are going to do some research and when the research is done we will have a table then I will say to you that is not research that is carpentry that's the difference so how do we convert them let's say to ourselves there is no table and so we need to ask ourselves I'm sure there's plenty of chairs here we need to ask ourselves what would be the most appropriate table to use in this sitting and then we start saying what other tables have people used what have been the advantages of those tables what have been the disadvantages of those tables what are the implications involved in those etc etc etc until eventually we have a pretty shrewd idea what table we will get that's our research problem the fact that we then get a table is an added bonus and that's what you need to understand in the formulation of your research problem that it needs to be formulated in such a way that it explains to us what is the intellectual puzzle that word remember that word you can write that down and you can use it in slide number three of your PowerPoint presentation that you do is the intellectual puzzle driving this study is whatever so I'll give you an example of one of the very first research publications I ever wrote which was in about 1995 or so when I discovered this brand new thing that they had just started which was called Internet and on top of Internet they had put this thing called World Wide Web and at that stage professor from Braco tells us the other day they were about 15 websites so this was rather an interesting thing but what all the websites had in common in those early days is that unlike today where you can actually see that somebody is at his desk doing Facebook because actually it says user now online in those days it didn't you were right there and it was sort of there is the person welcome to my website this site is under construction used to have this big under construction sign and it then said and I'm going to make the site to do the following sort of stuff and so it was all there but it was sort of like the at the Marie Celeste that ship what they found and the plates were on the table and there was smoke coming out of the ashtray but there's nobody there and so that was the problem with the web that it was not interactive and what one knows is that people learn by interaction with other people and so I said to myself here are two things we know that the web is not interactive but we know that people learn from other people and there is a an educational methodology known as cooperative learning where you give three or four students each a piece of the puzzle and you make them work at it and then meet and then put the puzzle together and that way all of them learn and they learn from each other so I was saying to myself right so if we know that the web is static and if we know that collaborative learning allows people to interact then can we make the web interactive by allowing people from different areas to construct websites together and that was my research question so I gave students various bits of information and I gave them usernames and passwords and I got them to construct their very own website based according to what and what did we find that indeed a great deal of interaction happened between these learners how could we do that because we countered the email messages that they sent each other remember this is way before Facebook but can you see what we did we had two problems one problem the web is static the other problem interaction makes people work can we use interaction to make the static static thing interactive and you put the two together and that's what I mean by an intellectual puzzle you've got to find something that sort of works and something else that sort of works and ask well do they work better when they are together or you can have two things that really work well and say will they work even better if we put them together so at the very basics of this you need some sort of polls and that is what we call a thesis because a thesis is a statement saying I believe this on the other side of a thesis you get an ante thesis also known as and and Justices if you put the thesis and the antithesis together you make a new thing which is called a synthesis and so that synthesis then becomes the thesis for the next person who will add an antithesis to it and then again you will make a synthesis at the bottom and that's called triangulation of research that you keep on building these intellectual triangles so they go on and on a good idea if you win if you do it properly is that you take your B Tech the mini dissertation you did feel BTech that becomes the opening statement for your masters which then becomes the opening statement for your doctorate and that's the way you fast-track this whole thing okay so now I'm going to stop and allow for questions it's a peacock you look really happy you've just made this together right so what I'd like you to do now is to write down what you think your research aim is what is the intellectual puzzle that you are trying to solve write it down in one word no in one sentence problem underlying this thesis is to whatever when you present your research problem discuss it with those around you and then I'd like you to nominate three or four people in the class you can get some swampy writing the research problem is do not look for your practical problems at your own workplace because you're setting yourself up for problems if you get a nicer job somewhere else then your daughter stays behind if your boss doesn't like your research then you're going to fail if your research doesn't work then you lose face I can think of millions of reasons why you should not be using your own place of work as the source for your studies if you're just making your life miserable up front you're already working for these idiots why do you still want to study for them - well this is what I had a student like that who said she works for herself and the never gives it a time off it's a similar sort of problem because if you're an entrepreneur then you have a client and if you decide that your master's is about solving clients problem and client isn't satisfied there's a whole lot of problems that come in there there are ethical concerns one of the questions the moment you start investigating your own practice the question that I will ask you and I'm pre-empting one of the very last things on our agenda the question I will ask you is so how did you protect yourself from discovering what you wanted to decide so in other words you want to do research to show that what you're doing is really good okay so of course you'll find that it's really good otherwise you're not going to find it you're only going to look for the good things that's the problem even if you're working for your employer you know if you find something bad then you might lose your job so that's why it really is I I would strongly recommend that you stay away from your day job when you're looking for something to investigate those of you working for the universe that's even worse because you've now got a triple alignment you've got your supervisor and your work and your it's just mad don't do that go and do something that's cool must be unless if you're an entrepreneur and you want to do something called contract research effectively so you get a client and the client says I want to know under what circumstances does X do y and I am prepared to pay you thousands of rands to go and figure this out then it's worth do because provided of course you make sure that client says to you and whatever you find I'll be happy with so I want to prove that these headed cause of headache pills are better than any other headache though and if they're not it's okay if you say that see what I'm getting it you just have to be sure that you've tied your ethics done if you're working with the client that the client cannot be tied to the result you've got to make sure that whatever the result is the client has asked does this work yes or no and the client must be nice English word disinterested not uninterested disinterested in the result so you say then where do I get a research problem you get your research problem from the previous guy who worked in that field and said what we must do now is find out that so the best place to find your research problem is in the literature now having supervised 45 doctoral students there are very few things that still scare me as a supervisor but there are two things that scare me or that I am afraid of one is the sentence that says this thesis is riddled with plagiarism or this thesis is build with sloppy referencing I have made students fly back from overseas when I found that their thesis did not conform in every way with correct standards of referencing they made them come back and sit and fix up those referencing under close supervision custom quite a couple of thousand ran so that's the one thing that scares me any form of sloppy referencing which means that you don't use inverted commas where they belong etc that's the first one the other one that scares me is very similar that is the one that says this student would never have done this research had the supervisor pointed her to this article we usually say that we don't say this student would never have done the research had she read this article we make it the supervisors problem that the supervisor didn't tell the student to read the article that's just what we super we external examiner's do with like nasty things about supervisors that is a significant problem that's the thing I always worry about that students thesis comes back in the external examiner says the research that this student claims is unique has been done to death isn't it time we stop doing this already that's the scariest bit that I always fearful so how do we find how do we protect ourselves against that we protect ourselves against that by having a thorough thorough knowledge of the literature and so the next bit maybe I won't put on YouTube because I am now going to give you the Dean short cuts to literature surveys and how to get your research done without actually reading how to do a literature survey without actually reading and so on so maybe that will we'll keep this little bit off YouTube so you know what you guys are doing defenses in this faculty have been incredibly lucky the salon because the Dean does not ask the really tough questions that I'm supposed to ask such as who are your heroes that's the first question that what that did did somebody ask her then who are your heroes in other words who are the writers in whose footsteps you are following who are the big names in the fie firstly who are the big names in the field and who are the ones that resonate with you those are the two layers so I want to know who your euros are but I also want to know who your anti-heroes on and the next big question we want I would want to know from you is what are the key debates that are raging in your field at the moment who says this who says that and John here is lucky in that his research matches up with people like author Baca who is considering African vernacular architecture and so there are two two ways to go as far as that is concerned one is you enter into a debate there are those who say that this is the route to go and there are those who say that that is the route to go that's the one the other one is where you innovate within a tradition which is what you're planning to do it's saying gamification is being done all the time I'm asking whether we can do gamification when teaching IT skills for instance so I'm innovating within a tradition or I contribute to a debate but one of those two things and that's called the Russian all of your study the reason why you are doing the study is either to innovate in a certain tradition in other words to contribute to our understanding of or to enter into the debate if you plan to become a respected academic and you want to become world-famous like Eddie does then it is important that you enter into the debate because then you attack the big trees and you tell the big trees what you think and then all the big trees disciples will attack you back and then you get lots and lots and lots of citations and you become famous so if you are planning to be a career academic enter into the debate if on the other hand you want to remain safe innovate within the tradition then you are more likely to keep your fingernails well it's it's sort of the dull route to go but it is by far the safer route to go so how do we find that out the first thing we do is we go to the library and we speak to the subject specialist and we ask the subject specialist to help us obtain the correct journals journals libraries have a thing that they measure journals by which is called an impact factor so the first thing you would do is you'd start looking for journals in your field in your case you'd look for two sets of journals one about midwifery and maternal health and the other one about information needs and information bla bla both those set of journals this is another trick of course working two fields because then you can publish off in the one field and half in the other field and I'm always interested in what the other half knows these are little tactics but they are really useful little tactics be careful though you yourself need to be a specialist in both of those otherwise you're going to be in trouble so that's for instance if you have a first career in one field and then you change another so if you're a mathematics teacher then you have a career in mathematics and you have a career in education you put the two together that's what I did with computers in education so I publish in the Journal of computer science about the following educational principles and I publish in the Journal of education about what computers can do for them both of you more likely to get published in one of those too then you are to be published in a journal of computers for education because everybody goes to those journals so you need to go slightly to the site with making sure that you are still comfortable so now you go to the librarian and you find out what are the top journals by impact factor librarians are able to because they use things called spreadsheets they can say to you these are the journals and here we arrange them by impact factor so in my field top journal computers and education followed by educational technology research and development followed by an educational technology and society and so those are the three top journals and that's and how do you where do you start at the top one next thing you do is you go to that journals website and you look for the most downloaded articles in that journal and the most cited articles in that journal why because those need to be your euros the ones that are most cited so now you can tell me already what are the top ten themes in the top three or four journals now you start crunching them together so that you can now say to me if I look at these five journals over the past two or three years these are the key articles the most downloaded ones obviously you're not going to give me all the most downloaded ones the ones in the bit that you are wanting to work out so gamification for instance educational techno in society I think about three volumes ago beginning of last year there was an entire volume about gamification so that's the next thing you look for special editions where a journal has a special edition on one topic only can you see why you look for a special edition because this is where all the experts in your field have been contacted by the guest editor because they his buddies he was selected because he was one of the key figures in the field he called his buddies and said let's write an article about this so you know that it's been curated brought together by one of the key editors or one of the key writers in the field and that all the other guys are likely to have something to say and now you start looking at what it is that they say and so once you put all that together you're already starting to get to some sort of indication of what the field looks like and all this information you will be jotting down because you are now beginning to write chapter 2 which is called the literature survey chapter 2 of your thesis that's usually the one you write first it's chapter 2 and so you start by saying this is what the field looks like and you tell me how you discovered that I looked on the following databases using the following keywords identified the following journals and from that identified the following authors and then I end up saying you just tell me how did you get to those names then when you've got your five or six top journals and your five or six top authors what I want you to find is the top five or six articles written by the top five or six authors in the top five or six journals and we're talking about blood how many articles are we five or six times five or six times five or six so it's five it's about help me yeah about a hundred so you have a slaughter duster 100 articles and are you saying to me but professor there's no way that I will ever be able to read a hundred articles in three weeks and I say well I haven't said that you must read them all you do now is you can find their keywords you take the keywords of those 100 articles and you put them in a spreadsheet and you sort them alphabetically and you count them and you draw a little graph and you say to me in this field if I take the top keywords that has been written by the top authors of the top articles these are the words that people use and then you can take those keywords and you enter them into Google Scholar and that will tell you which are the articles that you should be reading do you see that you're now beginning to approach and you haven't read a word yet if you notice you actually haven't really word yet you've just analyzed the data of what's out there just to find out what the themes are then I suggest the students you've now got those keywords then I suggest the students that you take the abstracts of all those articles face them into one document and then place them into Wordle and draw a word cloud of them are you all familiar with Wordle okay I will show you Wordle in a short while and any can you call upward or for us here please that's started yet Oh shocking me just get it up there and then we'll see if we want to show them really because if we put it up now then it'll upstage me okay Wordle is that is a website to paste words into it and where you paste an essay into it or whatever and then it makes those nice word clouds that you see with the words that most people use up that occur most of the bigger ones so you see what why you would do that is because in one glance you will see what the field is that you are working with these are the issues that people are dealing and then you start with the tables which my students know what's the word not jokingly familiarly as the clusters now you take what you know are the most significant articles all those articles that you say these talk to me you then find in the first paragraph or to the research questions that are being asked in that article so the this article asked is there a relationship between X and why sometimes the author is kind and says the questions driving this study were a question mark and B question Locke if that happens rejoice if not then you have to make them up say this is what was asked in that study and you put that in your table so now your table is beginning to grow it's an Excel spreadsheet over here you've now got the full reference of the article in the next column you've got all the key words of the article in the next column you've got the research questions that the author is asking in the next column you look at the last paragraph of the article by the way you still haven't read anything you now look at the last paragraph say what are the answers so yes there is a relationship or no there was no relation or whatever and then that's in the second last paragraph by the way the last column there is where you say what are their recommendations for further research and those recommendations for further research that's where you are going to start looking for your research problem the guy says now that I know that there is no difference between x and y the next obvious question then would be which would be the cheaper route to go if it makes no difference between whether I go X or Y what would be the cheaper or the most appropriate or whatever route to go or whatever that question is is it not wanting to work oh it's not connected all right are connected in the short one okay now that you've got your this whole thing with your first question second question etc etc this whole table of yours now you start clustering them in other words these four articles are about gamification these three articles are about reward systems within games these four articles are about ways to Train IT skills or whatever so you cluster them in themes that they go together and then you sequence those themes until you get the one that is closest to your heart and the that guys suggestions for further research that's where you find your research can you see that you then have research which by definition has to be unique because this also says it must be done or says it hasn't been done before this is a question that I always had trouble with right at the beginning that how do you know it's unique because you haven't been able to find it well that just means you might not have looked at the right places it's when other people tell you we still don't know that's what you want you want the most important author to say to you we still don't know and we really must make a plan to find it out good now you need to do something more which is make sure you need to do one more thing and that is make sure that it's worth finding out in the first order that also himself hasn't actually found it out already now how do you do that you email him and ask him you need to make friends with your heroes so you identify the arrows you follow them on ResearchGate dotnet or academia.edu or but one word ResearchGate dotnet register yourself there the other one academia not edu you register yourself on there and then you start following all the Guru's that's it's both those websites are Facebook for academics so it's like Facebook but boring maybe can create some Whitney yeah - here so here is wordle.net and there is one estranja I'm just trying to find some text so I can go to articles so here's the latest article that I've just written and so if I want to know what I've been writing about then all I can do is I cut it and I paste it into word allow a squirtle to draw me a picture and to do that I go control a and I go control copy and then I go to Wordle and I go control V and it pastes it and I go go and then Wordle will turn a little and turn a little more okay and so we'll see what word or comes up with eventually I'm not going to Google for ResearchGate and the others because that would be uninteresting to you it may be that I haven't got a bill again it's going to happen any minute anyways good Wordle wanting to show me my picture they're bringing Java while Wordle is loading if you go to regular regular old Google and but if you go to regular old Google and you google for your honest Rania as one word the honest Rania one word like that you will get to my Google site which looks like that and if you go to the top here it says my new free online doctoral program and if you go to my free online doctoral program you will find the text of what I've been saying here all written there with links to the appropriate things etc etc there's only one catch and that is this one is written specifically for educational technology so it's not going to give you the appropriate journals to your field it will just give you the appropriate well it'll be very useful for you and the others of you are working in educational technology but it'll tell you about Wordle it'll tell you about Google Drive it'll tell you about Dropbox it will even tell you about Wikipedia so tell you about housings publish or perish all those things and there are some deliverables so that's worth remembering and it's just to remind you you type you're honest Rania as one word into the Google and then you get there and there is the word cloud so it clearly about research on educational technology and those four X's that you see there is not that my stuff was x-rated and therefore banned it is because I haven't actually put the dates of the articles in yet so the Perl troupe has to go to every single it's what I did here was I analyzed the 45 doctoral theses and 60 masters theses that were written under my supervision and so each one of those has dates but I haven't I didn't put their dates as a Perl clock still has to read through look for every article date and put it in then the X's will be gone today you can see now you see that there is a very useful way of visualizing your own research and saying what it is that you're working in putting the context together are we doing time so okay we know once you have those that table of yours with your research questions you can now start constructing your literature survey a literature survey and I will do a whole talk about literature surveys at another stage but a literature the most important part of the literature survey is to tell us what we don't know yet so the way in which you construct a literature survey is by saying this is what the field looks like these are the key authors these are the key to know these are the key journals these are the key authors these are the key debates and these are the key words that's what it looks like now within that these are the people who say X these are the people who say Y so therefore we still don't know which is my research question and then you go for everywhere that's your main question and then you say to be able to answer that we need to figure out so there are those who say this and those who say that and so we still don't know which is your first sub question so in that way you extract your questions out of the literature and so now you will see that it's parallel your literature survey will be about topics and those topics will take you to questions your next chapter chapter three will be about methods you say these are the questions I asked why did and will they will be in the same sequence as they were in Chapter two because this is the questions that you should your supposed to be asking and so this is how I'm going to answer them and then you get to your next chapter which is your is chapter 4 which is the findings where you're going to say these are the questions I ask these are the meth I did and these are the answers that I found in your final chapter says now therefore I agree with the literature that says X and I disagree with the literature that says y and I make the following new contribution and there your thesis is done next weekend you can go on holiday

Channel: Johannes Cronje

Views: 80,811

Rating: 4.8975816 out of 5

Keywords: research, proposal, learning, higher education, methodology

Id: wol_uL4oHp0

Length: 60min 7sec (3607 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2013