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10 | course reflections

I’ve already shared a lot of my thoughts with Louise as the course unwound. A first run of a class  is always going to have issues. The content still being in a state of development when the class started, and the subject of the course, made it particularly tricky.

The pacing of the project work, and how it is distributed over the timeline of the course is key. I understand the necessity of getting a comprehensive statement in place – but maybe too much time was spent on perfecting the wording of that component, before the actual nuts and bolts of the topic were thoroughly worked out. I know that the statement should reflect the content of the thesis, but my feeling is that for many it was like trying to describe a painting that they hadn’t even started yet.

Having just re-read the criteria for the concept map and presentation – it sounds like we should be presenting how we arrived at our idea vs. arguing for our idea. I don’t think it is a subtle difference between the two.

+ I cannot even imagine how students managed prior to this class (and the research methods class too). This is a good thing and should result in much stronger thesis offerings. It takes a lot of the mystery our this strange grey foggy, blobby thing called a Thesis.

+ I also cannot imagine what this class would be like without someone as involved as Louise. She has been incredibly (ridiculously?) available and I would bet this first-time-out-of-the-gate  course was no picnic for her either. She sets the bar mighty high.

Filed by Michele Buchanan at March 11th, 2013 under Uncategorized