still no progress

All I've done since the last post is to schedule an appointment with my adviser. We are meeting tomorrow afternoon at 3 PM.

Not Even Close

2008 came and went three years ago, and I am still not close to graduation. I finished my required courses at Towson, but I still have to take comprehensive exams and complete a dissertation. At Delaware I at least made it through exams.

I met with Dr. Lohnes-Watulak in January 2010 to ask her to be my adviser. She agreed and gave me a few articles to read and a writing assignment. I haven't yet done any of it. I am supposed to write a single-page summary of my elective credits to explain how they go together. That shouldn't be a problem, except I just don't want to do it.

My biggest problem is that I just don't know what I want to do for a research project. I had somewhat of a breakthrough in my thinking over the weekend. For the past decade I've been thinking about researching multimedia learning theory. For most of the past five years, I've been thinking about researching writing. When I was in the Dissertation II seminar in spring 2010, my proposal was to do a qualitative study to investigate the process by which college students develop the concept of audience. Well, that idea didn't go over at all. I already know what I believe, so I'm not interested in proving it, and I have way too much background reading to develop a theory of why it matters to other people.

That problem is what I keep getting stuck on. For lots of issues, I already know what I believe, so I am not motivated to do research. For other issues, I don't know enough, so I have too much to do to even figure out where to get started.

Now, I have a new idea that just might be a good balance between the two. I found an article by John Zeuli, "How do teachers understand research when they read it?" (1992 or 1994). When I was in Dr. Lohnes-Watulak's seminar on Web 2.0 in fall 2009, I did my project about the Joomla content management system (CMS). I set up a server and it is still sitting here in the HDS Media Lab. I haven't done any work since. I had the idea that I would create a database of text and video content that brings practicing teachers together with education researchers to explore education issues. The prompts would be two published articles about a common topic. One article would be primary research from a peer-reviewed journal, and the other would be a how-to piece from a publication for practitioners. I would get two participants to read both articles: one would be a university professor and the other would be a classroom teacher. I would moderate a discussion between examining the common issue. The purpose of the discussion would be to get teachers and professors to talk to each other and explain their different perspectives.

These videos, along with the original articles, would be posted on the website for others to watch. The value of these videos would be for both teachers and professors to see one of their own talking to the other side. Yes, I believe that there are opposing sides. I believe that teachers and researchers don't talk to each other, don't understand each other, and don't respect each other. I also believe in the value of face-to-face conversation as a way to get to know somebody else. The discussions would be 30-60 minutes. After that much time, it is more difficult to dismiss the ideas of the other person.

My role as moderator would be to get both participants to try to understand each other. The teacher would explain to the professor how such research could be implemented in the classroom. The teacher would explain the practical realities of day-to-day life in a real school. The professor would explain the theoretical background to the issue. The professor would identify when research does not support classroom practices and why that matters.

So, that's why Zeuli's article caught my attention. He first wrote it in 1992 as an address at a conference. Are the issues he identified still relevant today? Do teachers and researchers have a communication gap as I believe exists? That article has been cited by 36 other publications since 1992 (according to Google Scholar). Thirty-six articles is a reasonable number for me. I could read one or two a day and finish in a month. All by itself, that would be an interesting project.

One of the biggest obstacles for me to developing a research plan is the vast open-endedness of the available research. I want to know how much I have to read and I want to know that I won't be wasting my time. With my other idea, I start looking for articles and the list of possibilities just keeps growing. But, with this idea I have a limitation. I could begin with Zeuli's article and my study would be a follow-up two decades later. And, because of my program at Towson, I would limit it to the area of instructional technology. How do practicing teachers understand and/or implement research in the area of instructional technology?

I could easily make the argument that the area of instructional technology is unique when compared to other areas of educational research, such as math, reading, composition, or learning disabilities. The content of instructional technology research changes more rapidly than such research can be summarized and printed in textbooks. And, the expense of instructional technology hardware, software, and training make the consequences of mistakes much more important. Of course, researchers and teachers in other areas would make the same claims, but that would be a limitation of my study.

So, what do I do now? First, I suppose, would be to read the entirety of Zeuli's article. Then, I need to find these 36 articles and start reading them. At some point, I will need to make the case for why Zeuli's opinion matters as a starting point. His article references other thinkers on the topic from the 1960s and the 1930s, so I think I could make the case that this issue has been continuing for nearly a century.

I would also need to find other people who are currently working on this issue and include their work as well. And, I need to figure out how to turn it into a research project. I think I read that Zeuli's original work included a qualitative focus group combined with some survey data. That seems like the kind of projects that other doctoral students at Towson are doing for their research, so it should work for me.

So, that's my update. Now, will I actually do any other this? Or will I be back here in 3 years writing about how I have 18 months before my time limit runs out and I'm forced to leave yet another university without a doctoral degree?

Daniel

Here is it almost three years later and I have a new deadline.

This week, I started the Ed.D program in Instructional Technology at Towson University. I am taking two classes: Legal Issues and Intro to Instructional Technology. My big dilemma this week was whether I should take a third course, a statistics class on Thursday evenings. The other two are both on Tuesday.

My advisor and the director of the program, who happen to be the instructors for both of my Tuesday courses, both advised against taking a third class. The reason for wanting to take a third class is to be able to finish earlier. The obvious reason against doing so is that I would be overwhelmed and not do well at any of them. So, I'm sticking with just the two classes.

My only deadline now is that any courses I might transfer from Delaware will expire ten years after I took them. So, my classes from Fall 1996 will no longer qualify for tranfer by the end of this year. And every semester I am in this program, another 9 credits will expire.

I started working on a course calendar for the next 2-3 years and I figured out that it is technically possible to finish by the end of 2008, which would allow either 6 or 9 credits from Delaware to transfer in.

But, I realized that planning that far in advance does not do me any good. If I get to 2008 and I am almost ready to graduate, then, yes, I will inquire about transferring those credits and saving a semester, but until then, I am just going to focus on doing well one semester at a time.

So, I will continue with this blog as a record of my progress through the program.

30 August 2004
Well, I gave up on my blog and I gave up on my Ph.D. I am now teaching writing in the College of Education at Towson University. I'm happy and I do not regret my decision to leave the program at UDel. Although, every once in awhile I look up information about online Ph.D. programs. I may finish one someday.

Daniel

It's now 6:45 and I'm back at my computer. Maryland just beat Xavier to earn a trip back to the Sweet 16. It was an exciting game and I enjoyed it with a tomato and basil pizza, peanut butter M&Ms and diet Sprite. I had a great 2 hour break. Before the game, I spent an honest 3 hours working on article summaries. I'm getting better at doing them faster and I feel great about it. Now, I'm back to work and I'll do some more. None of the TV shows Rebecca and I watch on Sunday are on tonight: Alias, Criminal Intent, and Boomtown. But, when she comes home with the girls and puts them to bed, I suppose we will watch something on tape, probably around 9pm. I've got a little over 2 hours to work.

It is now Sunday noon. Last night, Rebecca came home with the girls from a party around 10:30 and put them to bed. Then at 11:00 we watched TV for an hour -- another L&O edpisode. Then she went to bed and I read the news and sports online for about an hour. Then, I converted my PowerPoint notecards to a web page and sent the link to my advisor.

Here is the text of an email interaction I have had with my advisor.

--- On Sunday, March 23, 2003, at 12:54 AM, Daniel Rozmiarek wrote:

Dr. Macarthur,

I've finished notecards on almost all of Mayer's studies. The process has turned out to be really helpful in organizing all the issues and information. I created them as PowerPoint slides, which was helpful to me because it sort of limited how much I could write about each article. I converted it to a web page and posted it to my website for you to see. If you would like me to send you the PowerPoint file, I could do that. Or I could convert it to a Word file and send it, or I could print them out and FAX it to you. Whichever is easiest for you to read is fine with me.

Here is the URL of the website.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/danielroz/dissertation/notecards/Notecards_files/frame.htm

I will be updating it as I finish more articles.

Daniel

>> at 10:52 this morning he replied:
--- Charles MacArthur wrote:
Daniel,

I read the cards you produced so far. They seem clear and have the info you will need to write the review. When will you be finished with the cards? The next task is to sort them and arrange your argument. Then you can write.

Skip MacArthur

>>
And I just wrote back to him...

Dr. MacArthur,

I don't know when I'll be finished with the cards. I'm working on them now and Rebecca is taking the girls to visit grandma for the day, so I'll have all afternoon to work.

At this point I'm just trying to focus on keeping going. If I start to worry about how much left I have, I tend to get overwhelmed and give up.

I'll keep you posted.

Daniel

>>

It's now 12:08 and I'm going to post this and get back to work. The University of Maryland plays Xavier this afternoon at 4:40 ET in the second round of the NCAA tournament. I hope to have enough finsihed by then that I can feel good about watching. But, I'll probably watch anyway. I've got 4 and half hours.

It's 3:50 pm on Saturday afternoon. I've been working for about 2 hours. I just went upstairs to change from my jeans into my shorts and to get a handful of candy. I got a Reese's, 3 hard candies, and 3 lollipops. I also got a quart of chocolate soy milk. I'm a vegetarian and avoid dairy when I can. The chocolate soy milk gives me the chocolate flavor I crave and fills my stomach when I am feeling hungry, but know that I don't need to eat. Lollipops give my mouth smething to fiddle with so I don't bite my nails or eat lots of chips. I suppose they also give me a relatively continuous sugar supply.

I am still working on summarizing the same article I was working on last night. It's been three years since I first read it and I have to go back over a lot of it to make sense of it all. There are a lot of details about ANOVA, covariance, MSE, and Tukey tests. I haven't had a statistics class for 4 years and I don't remember much of it. I didn't understand it all that well at the time, either. I can find and understand the main finding of the experiment, but I don't know enough about the methodology to evaluate the quality of the experiment or the reliability of the conclusions.

Ok, it's time to get to work. More of the background story later.

I've spent about a total of two hours of disciplined work today. My goal is to spend four hours everyday. That was the deal I made with a counselor in the counseling center on campus. For about three years, from 1999-2002, I participated in a graduate student support group for people with procrastination issues. In the past five years, I have been to six different counselors and two psychiatrists to help me with my problems, both academic and personal. I've been told I have ADHD, procrastination problems, and depression. I have been prescribed Adderall and Paxil. The pills give me a bit of a high, but don't make me do my work.

This morning, I was excited to get back to work. At 8:30, I set up my daughters in the kitchen with breakfast and "Clifford" on PBS. Sarah is 8 and Anna is 1. Sarah was a great help babysitting today. But, I wasted nearly two hours this morning because I lost the PowerPoint file I had created with my notecards of about 5 articles. I tried opening the file with various programs. Then I downloaded and installed two other programs I thought might help. I ended up where I began two hours earlier and just opened the file in MS Word and copied the text over into a new PowerPoint file. It took only about 10 minutes and I was back where I was when I lost the file.

Then, about 11:00, instead of getting back to work, I showed Sarah some pictures of the War in Iraq. I actually spent about an hour yesterday finding the pictures and creating a PP slide show. Yes, I like PowerPoint. I've often said that I think in PowerPoint. Then, around noon, it was obvious that Anna was not going to fall asleep for her nap, so I got her up and we all went to have lunch in the kitchen. Then after lunch, we went to the library and the grocery store. Finally, at 3:00 Anna went down for a nap and I went back to work and summarized two mor articles.

Rebecca came home around 4:00 from school. She is a teacher. We cuddled for a bit and then she got Anna up from her nap and took her for a doctor appointment. I went back to work but didn't get much done because I was listening to the news about the war. About 5:45, Rebecca came home and I went for a walk on the bike trail. I went a little over 3 miles in about 50 minutes and I was home by 7:00. Then, Rebecca took Sarah out for dinner and a trip to the mall and I started dinner with Anna while I watched The Screen Savers on Tech TV. Now here it is, 8:54 pm. Anna is in her playpen and I writing this log instead of summarizing journal articles. I promised my advisor I would have these done yesterday. Rebecca will be home soon and we will put the girls to bed and watch TV for an hour, an episode of L&O:Criminal Intent that I have on tape. Then, at 10:00 I am going to sit in front of the tupe with a big bowl of Chinese food and watch the Maryland - UNC-Wilmington game in the NCAA tournament.

Will I get some work done after that? I doubt it.

Well, since Tuesday, I've wasted too much time figuring out how to get this blog posted online. I've finally got it working.

My assignment for the past few days has been to write note cards of all the journal articles that I am using for my lit review chapter. I've had some of these articles for 4 years and I just keep rewriting drafts of a summary. But, in the past few days, I have written real notecards as PowerPoint slides. I've included the citation, the content, questions, conditions of the experiments, and the conclusions. I've had to do this because the draft of my lit review was scattered, inclomplete and incoherent in places. I have written enough to explain what I know that I mean, but it's not enough to explain it to the academic community as a formal literature review.

I should explain why I have a deadline. I've been a graduate student in the School of Education at the University of Delaware since 1996. I'm nearing the end of my 7th year. Because I entered with a Mater's Degree already, I had a 5 year time limit to finish. During my first year, I was so excited that I thought I would finish in 3 or maybe 4 years. I was a full time student for the first three years with a full course load of 3 or 4 doctoral seminars each semester. For my fourth year, the fall of 1999, I went on sustaining status to take a full time position as the computer teacher at a Catholic elementary school here in my hometown. I was at the school for two years, and 4 semesters on sustaining status. During this time, I made almost no progress on my dissertation.

Then in June 2001, I left the elementary school and got a new computer and set up a home office with the belief that I had a new committment to finishing. In the fall of 2001 I was assigned to teach a course for the department as an adjunt faculty instructor. I did the same in the spring of 2002. My family was growing, while I was still making little progress. My wife gave birth to our second daughter on September 12, 2001. Yes, the day after. She is a school teacher and the stress of being at her school on 9-11 probably sent her into labor. While she was on maternity leave, she helped me make significant progress on my research project, but it was personally stressful for her because I am not nice to be around when I don't want to work on my disseratation. But, but by Christmas break, I had enough to convince my advisor, and myself that I was close to finishing. In reality, I still had a long way to go. I taught another class in the spring of 2002, but made little progress on my dissertation. In the summer of 2001, at the end of my 5 year time limit, I was granted an extention by the graduate studies office. But, in the Spring of 2002, my advisor told me that if I didn't successfully defend my proposal by the end of the semester, that he would not support another extension. I put together a decent draft that was enough to get another one year extension. But, there was still no proposal defense. For those of you familiar with doctoral programs, you may be wondering how I was on sustaining status without having passed my proposal defense. Well, the first semester I was allowed to do it because when I asked for sustaining status it was approved and it just continued for two years. Nobody realized that I wasn't supposed to be allowed to do it. At first, I didn't know either, but after I found out, I just didn't ask questions about it.