Organizational considerations

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With so many readings on so many topics to keep organized and manage for citation purposes, I’ve used a couple of different strategies. I’m revisiting one that I started using early in the PhD process and reviewing the documents that I created during the course work of the PhD journey. This was a tip shared by a respected friend and fellow academic researcher that was titled as a BIN. I created a BIN for each of the core topics or fields of study that intersected the research as I searched for the question for my dissertation. These BINS are listed here:

  1. Theory and theorists
  2. Research methodology and methods
  3. Media and digital literacies
  4. Teacher education
  5. Open educational practices
  6. Alternative dissertations
  7. General – other research that may not fit within these specified categories.

Then yesterday I came across something I had picked up and stored away while doing some initial research early in the PhD journey. This may be a helpful way to organize ideas as I dive more deeply into the analysis. It may be a way to tie the research to the concepts I am exploring. It is an open resource created and shared by Dr. Ingur Mewburn titled Using a Matrix to Organize Your Notes.

SIDE NOTE: in the same web location is a document titled Examiner Template which I’ve downloaded to identify key points for my thesis examiners which may be helpful in the coming months when I approach the dissertation defence process.

As a primary way to organize the readings for the dissertation, I have created a copy of a spreadsheet that was shared openly as part of a research study that I read about. In this spreadsheet document, I am capturing the key information from Zotero for each of the articles and categorizing them for quick reference.

  • TH = theoretical, with a secondary page where I can further categorize the articles as TF for theoretical frameworks or CF for conceptual frameworks, further subdividing this category into DL for digital literacy; ML for media literacy; TEd for teacher education; OEPr for open educational practices; and Crys for articles relating to crystallization conceptual frameworks.
  • ME = methodology for articles relevant to the methodology section of the dissertation
  • DA = data analysis for articles potentially relevant to the data analysis chapter
  • DI = discussion – where I am collecting articles that may inform and support the discussion of results from the data analysis (even though this has not been done yet, there are research references which may be helpful for this section of the dissertation).
  • CO = conclusion – where again, I am collecting articles that may help inform this section of the dissertation.

What may be helpful from this spreadsheet is the collection of abstracts and key words as well as the ability to search for an article that may fit when results and insights are achieved. For the coming weeks, I will carve out time to add a minimum of 10 articles to this spreadsheet every day. I will track this completion in my daily journal to hold myself accountable to this process. In this way, I will have this spreadsheet document in a ready position with a minimum of 200 relevant citations/references for my dissertation. This is part of my process and a critical way to prepare for the upcoming writing phase of the final paper for the PhD.

As well as this spreadsheet, and reviewing my references and citations through the BINS I have already prepared during the earlier steps of the PhD journey, I am also creating an active reading list for the coming weeks. I have curated and collected over 50 new research articles and references that have been published in the previous 2-3 years that I will read, review and make notes within the BINS documents, in order to have this ready for the dissertation writing phase. For the coming month I have planned a reading schedule of a minimum of 3 articles per day, with subsequent notes and quotes collected in the BIN document.

Keeping organized and setting the preparation schedule is an important part of my PhD process. I am documenting and sharing this as a way for others who may be searching for a way through to the end of the dissertation.