Qualifying Exams

There comes a point in the PhD program where the student must prove mastery of the field's body of knowledge. That time has come...

Originally, this summer, I was going to take my exams but my personal life decided to interfere and they were delayed. Right now, I have until Oct 23rd to be prepared to write four 5-10 page papers over the course of a weekend. I am unsure of which specific areas to focus in and am daunted by having to write a 5-10 page paper in 4 hours including citations, but I'm pushing on.

I believe my areas of inquiry are: Information Behavior -- needs, searching, seeking, retrieval; Research Methods for IS; Information Theory and Design; and Information Policy and Management. I've been re-reading everything I can get my hands on.

Challenges at this point:

• Remembering which theory belongs to whom (I've a good handle on which theory falls into which "flavor" of IB
• Differences between Method, Methodology, Model, Theory, Framework, "type of study"
• When to use what statistic (T-test, chi2, U, Anova, etc)
  
• Information Policy -- I didn't have any classes in this, closest I had was a Public Policy class.

Additionally, once these written exams are over, there is an oral defense. I'm told that this involves answering questions about the papers I wrote during the written exams and a presentation on my ideas of what I am interested in doing for my dissertation - not to be confused with the dissertation proposal defense which comes after I've written the literature and study design portions of the dissertation proper. Here again I'm a bit anxious.

My original idea was to study the knowledge retention of participants in online classes versus in-person classes. This is the question that is most burning on my heart. I want to know whether we are doing the next generation of students a disservice by putting all of their classes online. So far I believe that entails looking at learning styles as well as cognitive styles of the participants. But the one question I keep coming back to is... What the heck does that have to do with Information Science? Only place I can put it within the body of knowledge I'm knee deep in at the moment is to call it Information Use. My thought is that Information Use should include how acquired information is converted into knowledge. It means looking at memory, retention, and forgetting. Perhaps that's it...

R1: Do different learning styles account for information retention in online vs classroom courses?
R2: Do different cognitive styles account for information retention in online vs classroom courses?

Hmmm... but they are not supposed to be Yes/No questions. I'm not sure where this will end up. Check back as I go through the process. And... if you have any input, it is certainly welcome! :)

I'm such a geek...

So, this morning, I got email from ILLiad telling me that some of my items had arrived through Inter-library Loan. I went to pick them up and had 3 things instead of 2. One of which was a fed-ex package and had me puzzled. Well, I opened it up and apparently I had submitted a request for someone's dissertation on Cognitive Learning Styles in relationship to web-based learning. I didn't remember that.

I'm sitting here starting to read through it and I'm getting all giddy. So much so that I had to hop on here and write about it. (which if you've been following this blog a while you know I'm the slacker in writing articles) See, I have this 1st draft of a paper due Sunday at midnight that I've not been very diligent about -- and this piece is PERFECT!! It's such a shame that plagerism is frowned on because the lit review of this thing would be something I could pass in. Ah well, there's the ethical side of me I guess.

However, I'm certainly going to use the references list to ensure that I have the quintessential works I need to be able to craft my own masterpiece... (ok, a 20 pg paper is not a masterpiece, but it is going to be a MIRACLE)

Making a Digital Recorder GO....

Our group is working on getting our Instructor Led Classes online. In order to enrichen this effort, we have started recording presentations. These get spliced down to manageable chunks of listening time. Well, last week, we were trying to determine how to record the presenter without having her hold the new digital recorder that was purchased. (It's a nice recorder - Olympus VN-3100PC - and allows quick download to the computer in .wav files.)

We found an older lavaliere microphone system in the tech closet. I pulled it out and said surely this must be able to connect. I took the kit home over the weekend, only to realize that the jacks were not compatible.

As you know, I'm a bit of a tech nerd. Despite that fact, I have not enjoyed or ever been really enthusiastic about going to FRY'S -- the mega mart for all things tech. This morning I reluctantly drove myself up to Fry's before driving 1.5 hours to a class. Within 10 minutes of walking into the store, I explained what I needed (a connector from an old style stereo microphone jack to one that would fit into an Ipod-size device), was led to the product, and was in line to purchase it.

As I write this, the solution is in use by the presenter and within the next coupled days I will be downloading the audio files to my computer.