Mtng with Sian, 1 February

Well, that’s not what I was expecting at all. I really, really wasn’t anticipating hearing that I’d done a good job on the lit review. I put lots of effort and thinking into it, however input doesn’t = output. As such, I entered this afternoon’s meeting with Sian prepared to take on board lots of constructive criticism and ready to record lots of suggestions for necessary improvements. I was fair knocked back by her positive response, to the extent that I sat blankly – stunned – before trying to capture some of her comments. This is what I managed to capture:

“I’ve cracked it quickly. Offers some good context. Covers relevant stuff. Sian is really encouraged – I write well. It’s going really well. Things are organized and happening.”

A great writing style, but evidently poor powers of self-appraisal. Meanwhile, here are some of the gaps.

• No comparison between essayistic and multimodal work – it would be good to include why it’s different. What happens to exposition when you take it into the digital? All the conventional understandings of what represents a good essay – built up over years – what are they and do they extend into the digital? Have a look at Stewart Milthorpe’s hypertext paper – arguments emerge. How are arguments made? Do we do something other that create arguments in the digital.

• Make the point about the oral rooted tradition/history of academic tradition hasn’t always been text-based, which is kind of proposed in the literature (my view). It’s not all about the written.  Have a section in there about scholarly text – that would be really good. Sian will look out some stuff on this.
• Another gap – what kind of other assessment criteria are emerging in the literature. There is stuff out there on this. Not much. e.g. Landow’s work on hypertext and anything else from IDEL.
• The lit review feels short which is good – lots of space to add in the sections above. Another 1000 words at least. Aim for around 3,500 to 4000 words. It’s better to have lots of words and then cut back. It doesn’t feel onerous to read therefore there’s space to add the above stuff in.
• There are broader movements – I could include this as part of the counter linguistic turn. 80s 90s – since then there has been a backlash on the overemphasis on text. Looks at materiality. The sociomaterial stuff. Links in well to multimodality. Do I want to do this – would be good to. This is useful in showing the bigger picture. 

Other agreed points:

• It’s ok to change the title to make it more focused. Maybe go for practices around assessment than judging quality of multimodal artefacts. In fact the title can be changed up to the point of submission.
• Agreed that it would be a good idea to drop collection of visual data.
• Redraft lit review and send it to Sian ahead of next meeting, which will double as her interview. Aim for w/c 4 March.
• Interviewing course tutors in Skype is fine and appropriate. It will avoid the lengthy process of transcription.
• Agreed that I will select the good and bad example of multimodal essays for consideration during interview. Sian suggests flaneur as a good one. All the old edcs are available – have a look throughedc sites. In selecting the quality of essays to be considered, focus on quality in terms of multimodal representation (i.e. something poor might be mostly text alongside image), not in terms of quality of arguments.
• Don’t go for videoing observations. A good idea, but too problematic in terms of permissions etc.
• Don’t follow up making contact with individuals suggested by Dai and Jen – save it for Phd...

Follow up:

• JL to e-mail Sian to set up interview time/date for lit review
  
• Sian to e-mail various resources
  
• Sian to forward annotated lit review

Lots to do, but lots of positives to take from the meeting.