I feel as if I am packing for a trip. I have all of these Word documents full of semi-pertinent URLs headed with queries. I am going through them and deciding which I shall use and which I shall not use. Some of them are good for background but are not pin point citations and others make one tiny point. Also, they are quite disparate in the samples they use. I feel queasy drawing conclusions about young adult USA southerners from a paper that deals with rural Indians (from India).
Also, I still don't have definitive research. I can't use editlib.org where all of the on topic papers seem to be (see my comment it Josh's blog). Those papers have titles like "Synchronous and Asynchronous Online Delivery: How Much Interaction in E-learning is Enough in Higher Education?","Opportunities and Challenges of Synchronous and Asynchronous E Learning", and, most of all, "Synchronous Versus Asynchronous: Delivery of Online Instruction and the Factors that Lead to Success or Failure." . And, that is just for this year. Ahr-r-rgh!
All I have is a great number of kinda sorta on topic papers lined up. Sometimes it is a stretch. It seems that every time I write a sentence, I better have a reference at the end of it, or I am toast. Most of the time these references are not a perfect fit or there is one tiny phrase in 384 pages of text that makes my point. I am like the lady who takes way too much on a trip. I have way too many "things" and some of those "things" may be inappropriate - I have to do a little twist here and little stretch there.
If I had a student card, I could go to the library. That would be novel now, wouldn't it?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sometimes I think it's almost impossible to always have a reference that speaks directly to your point. A lot of my early research involved Althabasca, the Canadian online university. I tended to assume their experiences would be similar to ours, although I know that was not always the case. We just do our best with what we can find.
ReplyDeleteI have always struggled witht the same thing. Having too much is almost as bad as not having enough. I think the idea is to make a stab at it and make a point or two. the weeks passed so quickly its hard to believe we are almost done!
ReplyDeleteIt's all a learning process. It seems like the things you're feeling are exactly what one should expect to be feeling. I'm sure you'll do great.
ReplyDelete