User:Leighblackall/PhD

This is a study to describe, identify, analyse and evaluate networked learning. It encompasses the informal to the formal, the personal to the technologically mediated, a community to the institutionalised. The central question of the study is:

In what ways is networked learning expressed and how might educational institutions and formal learning systems appropriately accommodate it?

To enter and understand this study I have to date been the main contributor to the Wikipedia article: networked learning. I have declared my interests and intent on that article's discussion page, and continue to contribute to its development.

I consider that Wikipedia article - including its discussion page, to be a developing description of the domain in which this study is located. It can, potentially at least, become a central and distilled reference text for networked learning.

Additionally, I keep a label in my blog for work I log relating to Networked Learning. These posts contain a variety of notes and information I collect and work with.

I have documented my work as an educational developer in this way for more than 10 years. My intention is to continue to this practice, and use the data around that corpus in this study to help uncover and evaluate networked learning.

Question
In what ways is networked learning expressed and how might educational institutions and formal learning systems appropriately accommodate it?

What characterises networked learning and what distinguishes it from other forms of learning?
 * Related questions

Plan
At the moment, the process I wish to follow is an Open and Networked PhD as follows:


 * 1) Continue to seek collaboration in the development of the Wikiversity PhD program
 * 2) List research projects and publications in progress on my Wikiversity Userpage
 * 3) Draft publications in public google docs, log progress and document peer review and feedback on the respective Wikiversity pages - generally categorised http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Category:Leighblackall/PhD
 * 4) Use the ONPhD label on my blog posts (and related channels) for formative notes and reflection on my efforts toward an ONPhD.
 * 5) Contribute to Wikipedia articles as I conduct literature reviews and find information that is useful for expanding or improving the articles
 * 6) Encourage supervisors and peers to offer feedback on my blog, in their own blogs, or on the relevant project's discussion pages on Wikiversity
 * 7) Publish finished works in peer reviewed academic journals and complete a body of work that meets an equivalence to a PhD-by-publication
 * 8) Produce a printed and bound book version in three readership levels (children, adults, experts), as well as a video documentary with audio suitable for radio and podcast at these 3 levels, as well as an exhibition/installation of artistic works and artifacts related to the study.

Methodologies
To date, my experience with formal research methods has been in ethnography and action research. I have played the role of project manager or research assistant in projects involving video ethnography and semi structured interviews, and have always aimed to document and publish my professional practice as an educational developer. Informally, I have started an autoethnographic study - looking at my effort to set up a biomass heat transfer unit (listed in my works in progress). I have designed and conducted numerous surveys for people to self report on their skills and awareness to do with media technology. I am comfortable and experienced with literature reviews, but have limited my scope to that which is published openly accessible.

My goal however, in this ONPhD project, is to plan and develop deeper understanding of these and other methods. Below is a list of methods I have identified as having use in my project, and that I have some level of understanding or experience with that I can build on. My intention is to read through reports from research projects that use these methods, in work that is related to the field I am studying. I will design research projects that employ these methods, and seek review from people who have experience with the methods and topics. I will record progress and peer review, and adjust the projects accordingly, documenting each project in its own Wikiversity page. The resulting data will be reported in papers drafted in Google Docs, and included in the folder linked in the section below.


 * Autoethnography
 * Online ethnography and other Online research methods
 * Video ethnography
 * Self-report study
 * Participatory action research
 * Humanistic sociology
 * Critical ethnography
 * Activity theory
 * Social network analysis

Published works
I'm keeping a profile on ResearchGate, Google Scholar and on my Wikiversity userpage

See my public Google Drive folder and/or my Wikiversity userpage for works finished and in progress.