going / getting (…)where
I have to say, I’ve been feeling an almost constant sense of uncertainty about the direction, scope, and execution of my research project. I have been discussing the research overall in depth and in specifics with both my supervisors, Drew and Andy, who have both given incisive feedback and advice for reading. But, when it comes to actually getting down to it, I feel like I’m making very little progress - both as an individual, and as a community, in the sense that this research is inherently a collaborative effort.
I have attempted to get my research going - on the Wikiversity page “Developing Wikiversity through action research” - and it initially got some really interesting and useful discussion going. But since then, whether due to a lack of clarity in setting up the project’s scope, or perhaps a negative comment by myself, the discussion has come to a halt, and there doesn’t seem to be any movement in any discernible direction from it. I don’t mean to sound entirely negative in my analysis - wiki pages often undergo spurts and lulls of activity and participants - but I’m simply expressing my inner thoughts on this blog - which hasn’t really been the most productive space either. 
However, there have been a number of upshots, offshoots, and/or links from this project page:
* Wikiversity as narrative - a fork of some of the discussion page of my/our research project. Two people I greatly respect, Executivezen and Mystictim, and who ask deep, searching questions, began discussing the idea of “wikis as literature” - looking at the way language, truth, wikis and texts interplay, and influenced by the work of Jacques Derrida.
* Collaboratively building concepts - somewhat related to the above, this project deals with the nature of concepts, how they’re formed (socially), how common understandings of concepts can be achieved (or how this is challenged, or even impossible)
* The creation of a questionnaire, and applying it to active Wikiversity participants to see what they want out of the project - in order to identify where or how we might want to ‘intervene’ in an action research context.
* Possibly related to this - there’s a suggested project in addressing how we can manage to retain visitors to the site who might not know what Wikiversity is all about, and to support them to become active participants
* Developing a focus group (or some sort of research group) with teachers in Otago Polytechnic - where Leigh Blackall is working - in order to ascertain what teachers need from a space like Wikiversity, and how Wikiversity might become more useful for them
* The use of wikis for language learning, and the utility of textbooks on Wikibooks for Wikiversity participants (though I’m unsure as of yet if this is to be considered as an action research project).
Yeah, hmm - actually, I just may have written myself into a better mood about this project! There’s quite obviously plenty of fascinating ideas above - and that’s only been from less than ten participants overall so far. In fact, in gathering together the links for these pages (and in actually writing this blog post over the course of most of a day!), I have re-read sections of discussion that I had let go stale in my mind (there are new developments daily on a wiki, and it is easy to lose track or momentum of an idea) and I acknowledge that there is plenty to be getting on with. And what a range of projects even at this stage! I suppose Mystictim is dead right when he says that this project is too big to be undertaken as one great monolithic study - but rather it should be allowed to splinter into different projects. Part of my job, I suppose (along with any others who are interested in moving this project along), will be to ensure that the learning(s) from these projects are shared at some point(s) in time - in order to ensure that we’re discussing, planning, acting, observing, and reflecting in conjunction with other people who are all working under this umbrella initiative (if I can call it that - or perhaps I’m being too greedy in ‘claiming’ any project about developing or learning about Wikiversity for this one?). But I would like to develop a picture of how all this is to be done - before I can probably start to really feel confident about actually going, nevermind getting somewhere. I’ve a meeting with both supervisors coming up on Wednesday - I may start to prompt things forward in the meantime - or I may wait until I have some more concrete ideas in mind. But the main thing is that I think I need to give this project another injection of energy - I think my uncertainty I alluded to itself stems from a lack of action, as well as vice versa - so, in order to get a better understanding of this project, it’s simply a case of getting stuck in, and on our way.
February 25th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Hopefully you are keeping track of the discussion web and not just relying on what is contributed centrally. Personally, I prefer maintaining a conversation through blogs, and find the wiki discussion pages rather limiting… perhaps you could use a del.icio.us tag to track the splinters of discussion…
February 25th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Thanks Leigh - that helps - and yes, it’s true that we work in different ways and spaces. I am personally more comfortable with wikis than blogs - and, even though I think that may be partly due to my ignorance of RSS, the discussion will inevitably be fragmented over a “web”, rather than predefined set of pages. Tagging is one thing that I need to become more fluent in to consolidate nodes of thought and activity - I haven’t yet really utilised del.icio.us for my own purposes (just browsed), so that’s something I could “get stuck in” with. Figuring out trackback in blogs will probably also help. It’s all networked learning in action, eh?
February 25th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
now you’ve got me feeling bad about not keeping the discussion going ;^)
I must admit to peeping (and fumbling, textually) into what it is you’re doing, Cormac, and not fully realising the effects of these voyeuristic acts. If nothing else, for me anyway, it underscores the ‘time ‘dimension to wiki-ing. That ‘wiki time’ is both collapsed and expanded at the same time (some sort of wiki-relativity theory here?) across dispersed, yet conjoined, posts. I liked this post of yours here; a sort of autoethnography, from a research perspective. I’m intrigued and a little surprised, now, that you think there’s an end, a telos, to your study, over and above what has and is going on around you. I see you writing the ideology of wikiversity and being written by wikiversity’s ideology. This, surely, has no particular ‘end,’ only successive phases of lucidity? And if you’re referring to the ‘thetic’ (”of the thesis” - sorry: this is a word I’m using courtesy of Derrida and I like it cos it allows me to challenge the whole PhD thesis ideology, which I would hope you feel confident to challenge a la wikiology) then I understand your discomfort but urge you to push through this too.
February 26th, 2007 at 12:57 am
Thanks Executivezen! (I sincerely hoped you were peeking in - that gives me great heart!)
I really like this notion of a wiki-relativity theory - it’s not something that I’ve explicitly thought about before (though skirted around it) - but the minute you say that, it clicks. Wiki-time is strange, complex, fragmented-yet-unified - though perhaps this is simply another way of putting what Meatball describes as the “WikiNow”? This is, at its most basic, simply the concept that conversations die out and then come back to life again - sometimes quite a way down the road. But it also implies that we contribute in a wiki so that someone else may come along who will edit what we have said - and that the person nor the point in time is known at the time we make our contribution (and it may very well be ourselves disagreeing with something we’ve written in the past). But, in a way, what Leigh is talking about here is more complex again - it is that this whole discussion is amorphous - not even simply on one wiki, let alone page - but rather an entire web. (Though let’s not get caught up in techno-babble here either - this pretty accurately describes most any type of asynchronous discourse, whether through newspapers, academic journals, YouTube videos etc..)
On a “telos” (which I still have to understand - hopefully with your help) - I don’t know if I really do think there’s an end to my study over and above the continual activity - the project (Wikiversity) is the methodology - the activity is the research process. But one of the major dilemmas I face is that part of the requirements of my PhD is to submit a research proposal - quite soon - to a panel of the School’s professors, and that I’m still nervous about doing so. Not the presentation part, not the people involved - it’s just down to the fact that I don’t yet feel this project is sufficiently framed, mapped, and/or community-driven to inspire faith in the panel. Perhaps my doubt is due to a lack of faith in the “WikiNow” - and this doubt would be temporary - to be washed away in the upcoming flood of participation this project will garner.
Or perhaps this irony indicates something - that I’m waiting for others to drive this work, when I’m often hesitant to do the driving myself - lest this somehow undermine the project’s community-driven identity. You’re right, of course - all of this is the project - and this is what my primary supervisors have been saying to me all the time too!
April 19th, 2007 at 4:40 am
i’m looking at blogs at random…so this is my first ever…do you think wikiversity can become useable to a beginner without a helper sitting at literal arm’s length…
April 24th, 2007 at 3:27 am
I thought of you while bumping into this little number. Have you seen it before?
I’m gonna try to read it soon.
*Roschelle, Jeremy, Learning by Collaborating: Convergent Conceptual Change. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2 (3), 235-276.
http://ctl.sri.com/publications/downloads/ConvergentConceptual.pdf
May 10th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I’ve just come to your blog via your message in Wikiversity and hope this encourages you to continue the good work.
The self-taught route has always been the most successful for me and that is half the attraction of Wikiversity. Also, “Knowledge is Power” may just have a bearing on the value of Wikiversity. Without the free resources and cooperation between individuals which the site provides, many of the impoverished or constrained people in this world have no other chance at bettering their lot in life. The Victorians hated the idea of educating the poor because it might lead to repeats of the French revolution; an educated peasant is an inciteful peasant and more likely to notice the unfairness of his/her lot in life.
If viewed more internationally, it could be said that the Wiki projects as a whole are empowering to individuals and community bonding. In this light, Wikiversity is an absolute necessity to the development of freethinking, productive people worldwide.