Learning Blog Five 23/04/10:

I have now completed the first draft of my project proposal, I have drawn a number of conclusions that I must consider when completing the writing of my research project. I found that writing the first draft of my proposal took me drastically longer than I had anticipated, for although I have written a number of essays of this length before this level of academic referencing took much longer than the style that was required in my previous learning. This has made me consider my time management skills for the research project as I found writing this first draft of project proposal that citing existing research and constructing my prose with this in a fluid manor took much more time that I had previously considered therefore in the future I must ensure that I allow more time than I anticipate in order to alleviate the pressure that I felt when writing this first draft. Before commencing writing the draft I thought that I had extensively researched social researched methods as I had spent many hours reading about the subject and though that I had accumulated sufficient information to reference my choices however when writing the draft I found myself becoming aware that I was constantly referencing the same resource thus revealing that I was heavily relying upon one resource. This resource was published and was exceedingly well referenced however I was still referring the same resource none the less, although at the moment I am trying to find the original papers/ books referenced in this publication, this is proving difficult and therefore I must consider this in my future research project. When beginning my research project I must try to obtain information from a number of resources, even if one resource details extensive and supported information, I should read from as many resources as possible. I found that I was formulating concepts as I was writing and this meant that I was having to read further to evidence these theories thus reaffirming that I must allow plenty of time to write up my research and have a multitude of resources to reference so that it does not appear that I have not researched sufficiently.

Having completed the first drafts I must remember the following points:
- Allow plenty of time for writing plus extra to what I anticipate.
- Record of all websites as I go along not just the dates that I have accessed them as this will make the references page at the end less time consuming.
- Don’t rely heavily on one resource even if that resource is extensive.
- When writing allow extra time for further research as there will be new things that present themselves as I write.
- Be specific in my words and don’t be repetitive as this adds to an unnecessary word count.

Learning Blog Four: 02/04/10

From reading briefly into research I methods I had formed my own plan on how I would collect my primary data, performing what I had classed as an experiment. This involved me introducing a creative dance exercise into one of the Jazz classes and then observe the effect this had on the students modern syllabus work (approximately half the modern class did jazz and therefore I thought the half that didn’t would be my control group however when reading further into the realm of experiments I found that my idea was not matching the criteria of any of the types of experiments that I had discovered (The static group comparison, The pretest- posttest control group design (True experimental design), The nonequivilent control group design (quasi-experiment) and the Time series design (quasi-experiment). I then pondered on whether there was such a thing as I mixing an experiment with ethnography and continued to mix various research methods in order to fit defined research methods to what I was trying to accomplish, confusing myself in the process by trying to blur the boundaries between methods. Following a conversation with my academic adviser I concluded that I was over complicating the process and following advice, my concept was simply the standard qualitative research method. Following this experience I must ensure that in future I do not over complicate the information I collate regarding research methods and do not so absorbed into the information that I am reading, attempting to make links that are simply not there. It is often productive to take a step back from your literature research so that you do not become over-whelmed by all the information that you have discovered otherwise you can create more barriers rather than informed solutions.