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Planning your research

Planning your research. Dr Lesley Jolly ljolly@bigpond.net.au. Does this sound familiar?.

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Planning your research

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  1. Planning your research Dr Lesley Jolly ljolly@bigpond.net.au

  2. Does this sound familiar? • Pat has finally completed her PhD after many years of juggling full-time employment in a university department and the demands of life outside. One of the things that has kept her enthusiasm up is contact with students. She finds this very rewarding and looks forward to bringing in some teaching innovations she has had in mind for some time now that the PhD is out of the way. However, her head of department congratulates her on the award of the degree with the words “Now you can get down to some real research” and starts to talk about the need to be “research active”. Pat’s PhD topic is all used up and she is bewildered about what to do next.

  3. What is “research active”? • To be considered research active, a staff member must have an output in at least two of the following categories over the past three collection years (i.e 2006-2008 for the 2009 analysis) • - Reportable Research Income - Reportable Research Publication- Supervision of a Research Student to completion. • For the purposes of ERA, research is defined as the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings. http://www.arc.gov.au/era/key_docs10.htm

  4. The 5 basic questions • Does this topic/site/method really interest me? • Is this a problem that is amenable to scientific enquiry? • Are adequate resources available? • Will this research lead to unresolvable ethical problems? • Is the topic of theoretical and/or practical interest? Bernard, H. R. (2006) "Research Methods in Anthropology" AltaMira Press: Lanham, MD.

  5. The continuing story of Pat • Pat has decided that there is a topic area that she is interested in exploring. It’s not a topic that most of her colleagues would consider core to the department’s interests so she needs to work hard to get the support for a local seeding grant. To her surprise , she is successful, but now she has to decide how best to go about the research and how best to spend the grant money, with an eye to the long haul. Asking around the department, she gets competing advice about everything from best research methods to accounting protocols. Time slips away and she is devastated one day to fins a demand in her inbox for her first half-year report.

  6. Staging the research Lit review: connects to wider conversation Qual methods for description Quant methods for distribution Establishing the problem Generalising the problem Theorising the problem Small scale/no funding Large scale funding Collaboration Internal Awards Collaboration ARC ALTC CRC Internal Local/national International colleagues Industry Government

  7. Not drowning but waving! • Pat has used a good research assistant who has dug up lots of interesting literature for her to refer to. She has also generated quite a body of data from surveys, interviews and observations as well as collecting a pile of student work for content analysis. The problem is getting enough time to do anything with all of this stuff! Pat has just been given a new program to manage on top of existing teaching and administrative duties and somehow she never gets a day to think about her research much less work on it. Deadlines are passing her by and she is beginning to get depressed.

  8. Don’t get it right, get it written! • The most productive academics: • Write every day for at least 20 minutes • Work socially through collaboration, writing circles, sharing drafts • Persist through rejection • My work habits are: • Write every... • Work with... • When rejected...

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