New vision

In the meeting with Adrian this afternoon, we discovered that there was no actual issue to the project I was planning to do. Also, if I continued to pursue it, I would most likely end up writing a thesis instead of conducting a project. I’ve already done a thesis and it didnt seem like very much came out of it. I really feel the need to do a project in order to make this honours year feel worthwhile. Also, I’m pretty sure doing really hands-on activities that’ll be assessed would help prepare me for the work place next year.

Feeling my drive to a research project instead, Adrian suggested one for me that is a Parks Victoria project which requires me to use social media to connect people with information so that if anyone is looking for an expert in a certain region, they’d be able to find one with a click of a button (well thats what it is a very small nutshell). He asked me to read Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations by Clay Shirky.

Upon reading half the book, I found that everything that I’ve done in the lead up to honours is essentially social media. This is actually what I wanted to do, just framed differently. I’m glad I had the discussion this afternoon eventhough my head wasnt really in the meeting.

Still thinking about my previous idea I suppose it would’ve been fun to conduct experiments in the online virtual world. However, Adrian did make a good point that if I assumed that the virtual world was similar to the real world, there wouldnt be a point conducting the project because there wouldn’t be a difference to reflect on.  He also mentioned that it would’ve been too big a project for an honours thesis. I suppose I can always recycle this idea and use it for my documentary project in Transient Spaces later on.

I came out of the meeting this afternoon wondering if the project that he suggested for me would be a good fit. Upon reading the book on social media, I think it just might be. In any case, I’ll most likely have to amend my four sentence abstract.

Week 2 slides

Looking through the ethics approval issue, I remember having to worry about this when doing past projects. People really take this seriously. The whole ethics issue will narrow down what you can/cannot ask or do in an interview. I used to avoid doing interviews for mini projects because you have to fill up a form and prepare questions that are to be asked months ahead of time. I’ve previously gone through the ethics approval process and fount that by the time it was approved, my research project had changed direction and I had to go through the whole process all over again. This process can take a long time to get approved and this can hold back progress on a project.

I’ve known from the beginning what conducting an honours research project entails but hearing Adrian reiterate that nothing new has to be discovered really takes pressure off me (especially seeing as we dont have a long time to conduct extensive experiments). I am planning on doing further research eventually (that would require me to discover new things) but probably not in the direct future.

As for having a supervisor, I know I’ll definitely be needing one, I just dont know who to look to for advice in Computer Mediated Communications in RMIT. I wouldnt be able to use my initial choices as I am only allowed to ask for help from RMIT supervisors.

I already have the bare bones of my research project figured out, but I’ll probably still just run it by the supervisor and see if he/she has any suggestions that would improve the idea.

I plan on working next year back in Brunei in the government sector. This research would contribute to my work next year because contrary to what people think, communication within different departments in the same ministry OR WORSE among various ministries is notoriously bad! Im not looking to uproot the whole system, I just hope to be able to improve it piece by piece.

Four Sentence Abstract

1st attempt at a four sentence abstract. Here goes:

The workplace is an ever changing environment with new technologies being introduced to it on a day to day basis. Like a workplace, online games have a diverse population where there is a wide age range of people. I propose to conduct a survey/experiment to find out if the online game environment reflects the real life working environment and if these technologies used in online games make the work environment more progressive. This will make a difference because whether the results are positive or negative, we will know what is being done correctly/wrongly and be able to make improvements to the workplace environment.

I had to sit and think for a little while when trying to approach this task. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do for my research project but when I had to put it into words on a page, it seemed a lot more obscure. Upon writing these ideas, a structure was created and it made the research project more real.

Doing this task over and over again really helps me refine my question – certain aspects of the research question may change but hopefully the bones of the project will remain the same.

I feel doing this four sentence abstract really helped me get started with the whole research process. Without having done this, I wouldn’t have known where to start.

Week 2 Transient Spaces

Trying to decide on a project to do a documentary on is pretty tough especially when there are no actual guidelines. I was bouncing ideas off walls and I still havent exactly landed on one that I plan to stick on. Having an idea about what sort of community to base the documentary on is easy, it’s finding the issue or an angle to make the documentary interesting that’s the problem. I worry now because it seems that people in class really know what they’re doing and they’ve gotten started somewhat on their plans.

My ideas for the documentary are sort of flimsy at the moment. Initially I wanted to do a video – Jenny said they had to be about 10 minutes for a proper video and I needed to find a crew to help me if I were to do interviews. After that I changed my mind and decided to do a documentary with slides and some video footage. That would mean that I wouldnt need to be in the frames when I shoot. These ideas are still brewing. Hopefully I’ll find something worth documenting before class time on week 3.

For now, the communities that I have been thinking about are sports communities (as in clubs, sports bars) and student groups that are external to the universities. These groups are communities of interest and I think a good idea would be to investigate the readings from Week 2 a bit further to get a better idea on what document on.

..of food poisoning and thesis topics…

Seeing as I had minor food poisoning earlier, I had some time to think about random things. Lying in bed and not being able to move much, my mind drifted to the topic of uni work and I realised that I have no clue what the assignment for the research workshop entails. Should it be a topic that I write about now and later on in the second semester expand on to form the research project? Or are the projects from sem 1 and 2 totally separate from each other.

Throughout Summer, I’ve been planning out my proposal for the thesis because it was required for my application to other unis. I didnt quite expect to have separate research projects for each semester.

My initial idea was to do more research regarding online gaming and to analyse how people communicate within the game – the sorts of mediums that are used in this communication to conduct tasks – and how these methods of communication are relevant to real life work environments. Of course this is just the basic idea and there is so much room for change.

I really hope I can get my question answered before I waste too much time wondering. I’ll have my chance tomorrow in class =D

writing on my face

I was just thinking about the workload for this semester after coming out from my Comm Revs class. All the assignment questions were given out in that class (well, really it was given out last week but I could go coz of enrolment issues) and it’s only striking me now that I’m in a ship that’s sinking. I’ll need to start hauling water out by the bucket loads in order to survive the semester.

In terms of participation for Research Workshop A, I think the research has to start now. I’m really going to have to start balancing my time properly between work and play. It seems I currently have somewhat of an imbalance favouring sports and games. The idea of failing this course really is a powerful incentive to get work done. Unfortunately, the idea doesn’t linger for very long. I’ve been trying to do readings whenever I can but some of the literature is just so dry that I actually find my face planted in the book halfway through the reading. If at first you dont succeed, try try again right ?

I know I’ve been talking a lot about what I plan to do this semester to keep my work in line, but I’ve realised that saying that I’ll tick boxes off a list is one thing, actually doing it is something else. A little less talk, a little more work yea ?

The only way I can think of measuring how much work I’ve done is by taking notes and at the end of the day, review them. So I suppose the amount of work done would be proportional to the number of pages I have written (or the number of lines highlighted).

Anyways, I better get back to it. So yea, if anyone sees words printed across my face, you’ll know that I’ve been studying hard =D