Researching for 6411

The past few days I’ve spent time researching for the upcoming course, circling down the rabbit holes of library and Google Scholars searches. I’ve managed to manage my efforts by selecting the weekly topics and linking to chapter content. I’ve explored by restricting my searches to current articles from 2016 to today. The topics included working memory, short term memory, attention and memory, schemas, frames, long term memory, flow, semiotics, situated cognition, cognitive load theory, theory of causality, media & multitasking, abstraction, knowledge transfer in both individual brain activity and within organizations, habits and automaticity, and repetition.

While each of these topics links into the course content in some way, there are definitely threads that need to be pulled and strengthened within this fabric of ideas and conceptualizations. Building an analogy for this may be helpful – since it’s one of the methods for building long term memory within the brain. Just emphasizing that my brain will need multiple ways to engage with these topics and individual ideas to construct abstractions for the course, and into the PhD comprehensive portfolio as well as the dissertation.

After reading Boote & Beile (2005) I am aware that building a literature review for this course includes being explicit about coverage, in order to justify what I am including or excluding from the literature. As I’m searching, I’m making decisions to access or read further on specific articles and research based on my current knowledge and long term memories, as well as titles or topics that catch my attention e.g. novel, interesting, or unusual titles lead to scrutiny. While conducting these searches, those that jump from the scanned listings tend to be ones that include links to digital, literacy, media, online, or computer related topics. As I search, I make quick decisions to download or link to articles, while capturing the citation into my BIN for this course, as well as other active BINS for my PhD areas of interest – theories, open OER or OEP, media & digital, and research methodologies (who & how). A BIN, in my current usage, is similar to an alphabetized, annotated bibliography, but with additional information, content, and quotes that can potentially be used or applied when writing articles, essays, and research reports. Since these are searchable documents, they are quickly becoming my long term memory system of what I’m searching, reading, or referencing for this PhD, as I fluidly move between my brain and my BINS.

Reference

Boote, D. & Beile, P. (2005). Scholars before researchers: On the centrality of the dissertation literature review in research preparation. Educational Researcher, 34(6), 3-15.