Meeting with Sian, Friday 14 December

I had a really positive meeting with Sian on Friday. She described my proposed research as "fantastic" - which was a surprise, even if I'm finally happy with the shape that it has taken most recently. Apparently I will be undertaking some much needed investigation into an area where a gap exists. This is great as it fits with my plan of offering something interesting to what is already out there, and hopefully coming up with something that people feel is useful or has some value.

Alongside a real sense of satisfaction, I left the meeting with a list of important task to be actioned, many of them this week. For clarity and convenience I've reproduced the list of tasks below.

ACTION: What is my theoretical position?
What's my position in relation to enquiry. Am I taking an interpretationist stance? If so (and this is what Sian suggests), it would mean that there would be less need for objectivity (compared to a positivist stance). By taking an interpretationist stance i wouldn't need to come from a position of apology. What I will need to do is say 'this is the position I am taking'. This isn't so much for now but will require a page when it comes to writing up. I need to read up scholarship of method, looking at the paper by Crotty, for instance.

Observation: how many crits would I need to observe?
Three should be enough to generate sufficient data, depending on how the observations go. To a large extent, this will be dependent on how many sessions I'm able to get access to.

Observation: Art and design or architecture?
Again, this will depend on whether I can get access to either. 

Observation: formative or summative assessment?
Again, this might depend on what or whether I'm able to get access. Formative would be preferable as it might make it less problematic from an ethical perspective.

ACTION: Observation: approaches to identifying art/architecture individuals
In Sian's words, the hard bit will be negotiating observations. I will try to identify appropriate key individuals as follows:

• Contact Jen Ross to ask whether the thinks anyone from the multimodal roundtable  would be suitable.
  
• Use my own work-related contacts. There's no harm acknowledging LEAPS in doing this.
  
• Sian will contact Dai Hounsell as he has contacts/has done work with colleagues from the College of Art.
  

ACTION: Interviews: who do I contact?
Contact and look to interview any member of the programme team who has experienced/used multimodal assessment. Do Sian first as a pilot. Contact Jen, Clara, Sian, Marshall, Hamish, Christine, Rory.

ACTION: Interviews: examples of essays
Perhaps look to use good and bad examples of assignments. Or to put it another way, one that worked and one that didn’t. Should need permission for bad examples (as output will be anonymised and I don’t intend to make this public) however consult with tutors. Good examples can be taken from the course gallery.

Who is my audience?
It’s more straightforward if I don’t look to publish publicly. If I was to do this at a later stage I could always seek retrospective consent for the weaker assignments.

ACTION: Literature review
I need to draft this by mid-Jan and send it to Sian ahead of our late January meeting. It gives us something to discuss. In terms of reading, I should focus on the theoretical (multimodal) reading to begin with, rather than the visual research which is more about the methodology.

ACTIONED Literature review: arranging a late January meeting with Sian
I'm to look at Sian's Outlook calendar (on Monday 17 December) and suggest a time for us to meet.

Literature review: resources to follow up

• Carey Jewitt from the Institute of Education. She's a big name in multimodal methods.
  
• Come up with a reading list for multimodality and a distinct one for visual methodologies.
  
• Colleen Mc…. Chapter 4 from the book I looked at last week  - there will be some useful references in there.
  

ACTIONED Revision to ethics form
Add a few lines to acknowledge that I'll seek written permission from course tutors and then oral permission for participating students for the observation stage. The completed documentation should then be sent to Sian who will then send to the university's ethics committee

Formal notification of commencement of dissertation
E-mail Jen to let her know, send her the dissertation proposal and then sign up for the course through Moodle.

Dissemination: rationale for digital dissemination
This can wait until later. It will be assessed. Unsure on whether this should be text-based. It will be 2000-words.

Dissemination: publication
Have a look at Vectors magazine as they do this kind of thing. Christine will also have some ideas.