Parting words

The course Introduction to research is drawing to a close. It has been an enlightening journey for me. In the past two months, I have been exposed to the world of copyright and open access to research and introduced to different scholarly communities associated with learning, research and technology, to name only a few.




Furthermore, I have been challenged to think critically about my own position on cultures of inquiry, theoretical frameworks and research methodologies. I have been asked to investigate an issue from a variety of cultures of inquiry, to reflect critically on the works of others, authors with significantly more experience than I. I have shared some of my thoughts through this blog. I have been inspired by my colleagues, through our group assignments and I have gone beyond my own comfort zone on many occasions. In short, I have discovered a fascinating world through this course.




What I realize is that although much ground was covered in a very short period of time, there is still so much more out there to explore. This course has opened up so many new doors, raised more questions than answers and motivated me on this journey of discovery. I will continue happily down this path.




For that I have Loni to thank and my cohort colleagues. Good luck with what comes next. See you on the other side.

Good blog, bad blog

I have been reflecting on the topic of blogs: what they bring to their audience, how they work to transform popular mindset about whatever subject at hand. The subject at hand is infinite. Anything goes, in a blog. And therein lies my problem with blogging. I have started and stopped blogs many times in my life, to document and share my travels, as a private journal when I struggle with an issue and lately, to discuss with peers, topics related to learning, research, technology. The list goes on.

I have read some very insightful blogs, presenting interesting information, points of views or debatable topics which provide food for thought. Blogs provide a new, innovative way of creating communities of practice, bringing like-minded individuals together to ponder critical questions on subjects of common interest. But I have also read seemingly scholarly blogs, which are rather tantamount to the proverbial soap box, where the author expounds endlessly on a topic, in a disorganized manner, with, to boot, sentences fraught with spelling mistakes and bad grammar. Blogs provide these folk with a forum, where they might not be afforded this in a better framed environment, say, a scholarly journal. Truly painful to read.

With the open access of the digital age, it seems that everyone is an expert. It is truly challenging to find, in the blogging world, what is truly credible and worth the read. Unfortunately, the good blogs get diluted with the bad. Blogs are not moderated, they are not peer-reviewed, as are reputed journal articles and there are no hard and fast rules or guidelines by which to publish a blog. This certainly adds to the challenge of establishing the credibility of blog content.

What got me started down this path, I can admit, which is a bit of a rant "à la Rick Mercer", was one of the blog articles for assignment 5: "Giving up Control in the Era of Open Business" by one Luis Suarez. Maybe I completely missed the point of his post. That was not really hard to do: the text was not well structured, I could hardly follow the train of thought and it left me puzzled. Maybe I am a stickler for a well written piece, that must be due to my upbringing. My mother was a newspaper editor. Maybe it was the content. Regardless, the debate about the use of blogs in the academic world needs to be further developed, studied and discussed.

I will now get off the soapbox...



Suarez, L. (2013, September 3). Giving up control in the era of open business [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.elsua.net/2013/09/03/giving-up-control-in-the-era-of-open-business/

Data management and the digital age

CC photo by: Will Lion

As a new scholar, or rather a returning scholar, I am repeatedly amazed by the changes that have occurred in the last twenty years in the area of information management. Many years ago, I knew nothing of Moodle, Google docs, other learning management platforms, reference manager software packages, wikis, blogs and the proliferation of social networks that allow everyone to share and access never-ending sources of data and so much else.

I was innocently surfing the information highway on the internet with no headlights. Now, I am racing along, with the high beams on, acutely aware of the catching up that I must do and being blinded by all the possibilities and the challenges. It is a daunting task. It can confuse or paralyze. I choose to be motivated and curious. 

Beyond the fact that in this digital age, the half life of information is minute and data is immediately available for scrutiny, further dissemination, challenge, rebuttal or dismissal, the process of vetting through such a vast amount of data, extracting the most relevant, accurate and comprehensive information in order to support, dispute or expand on an idea or a subject is a significant undertaking. Once one taps into a data source, there is still the task of assessing its validity and reliability and the numerous possibilities of interpretation of the data. Where to begin? How to do this? are critical questions. Having a clear framework to achieve this monumental task remains to me most important in achieving this. 

One such framework can likely be found in a robust online information infrastructure. A review of the book by author Borgman (2007) offers some elements of consideration to that effect. I like the thought of modularity and flexibility and easy access that should be built into such an information management tool. I like her suggestion that the researcher's needs and practices are at the heart of this. It is not surprising though. There is truth to the saying: "build it and they will come" (Field of Dreams, 1989). The scholarly community must be reassured that data produced and collected will be handled with care. Issues of copyright, intellectual property are at stake. On the other hand, this new way of managing data will require a change in the mindset of researchers. The evolution of the open access concept is still a matter of debate.


Spiro, L. (2008, December 3). Reviews [Review of the book Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet, by C.L. Borgman], Literary and Linguistic Computing, 24(2), 243-244. doi: 10.1093/llc/fqn041

Write it and it is yours or is it?

The subject of copyright was addressed earlier in this course. It generated great questions about what this means for students as researchers, writing papers or posting blogs or developing presentations.  

I found the presentation very interesting. I remember specifically a statement made by guest speaker, Melanie Wrobels who said during her presentation that "if you create something, you own the copyright" but "if you have ideas, don't share them" since ideas are not protected by copyright. The message is clear, if you have a good idea and want to protect it, write it down. If you don't write down your ideas, capture them on paper when you have them, they are not yours, at least not in the eyes of the copyright law. If you speak of your ideas to others and you don't document them, others can claim these ideas as their own, legitimately.

As my train of thought sometimes wanders, I started to reflect on the impact of open access and copyright. Copyright applies if you write, publish and share your work. Right. Authors always retain their moral copyrights. That seems fairly straightforward. But then, there is the issue of authors publishing their own works in open access sites, such as Academia.edu. and how it impacts copyrights for publishers. Should self-publication online be promoted, should authors be using open access platforms more, should use of these networks be restrained?

© 2008 Michael Brewer & ALA Office of Information Technology Policy, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Wecker (2014) presents a number of points of view on this specifically, in a recent blog article on sharing research on the open access network Academia.edu. Such points of view support it stating that it increases visibility of the author, the paper and the journals in which the paper is published, that it allows authors to track readership and that it increases collaborative work. Many well known journals, British Medical Journal and Electronic Journal of Comparative Law have gone the route of allowing authors to post their work on these open access sites while retaining, sharing or transferring their copyright, according to researchers Hoorn and Van Der Graaf (2006).

In my opinion, there needs to be greater flexibility in the current publication model, regarding where and how research gets published,  in this digital age.  Open access is the way to go. Researchers' work must be protected, journals must be recognized but at the end of the day, new research must also be widely shared to encourage scholarly dialogue and ongoing exchange of (documented) ideas! 



Hoorn, E., van der Graaf, M. (2006). Copyright issues in open access research journals. D-Lib Magazine. 12(2). Retrieved from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february06/vandergraaf/02vandergraaf.html

Wecker, M. (2014, February 20). Should you share your research on Academia.edu?. [Weblog post]. Retrieved from https://chroniclevitae.com/news/345-should-you-share-your-research-on-academia-edu

On the path of becoming a critical thinker

From : http://www.uleth.ca/education/story/4087

In reflecting on the matter of critical thinking, in preparation for the upcoming assignments of the course, I have come to realize that I really know very little about critical thinking. I don't remember ever being explicitly taught to be a critical thinker.

So my initial questions as I pondered on the issue, were what exactly is critical thinking? Is critical thinking a function of intelligence or in-depth knowledge about a subject, a function of an argumentative or inquiring nature? It seems to me that the more knowledgeable I am about a subject, the better or more confident I am at thinking critically about it. The less I know, the more I feel challenged about the process.

Elder and Paul (1996) define critical thinking as the "ability and disposition to improve one’s thinking by systematically subjecting it to intellectual self-assessment" (para. 6. 1996). This led me to a self-reflection about whether or not I systematically assess my own thinking, from an academic perspective. Perhaps I do, but it is surely inconsistent. I am curious by nature but definitely not argumentative, at least not out loud.

Elder and Paul make the following assumptions about critical thinking :
"(1) that there are predictable stages through which every person who develops as a critical thinker passes, (2) that passage from one stage to the next is dependent upon a necessary level of commitment on the part of an individual to develop as a critical thinker, is not automatic, and is unlikely to take place “subconsciously,”  If Elder and Paul are right about critical thinking as a staged development, where do I stand? This article was helpful in determining this more precisely. 

After careful consideration, I would assess that I have reached the stage of practicing thinker, as per Elder and Paul theory.  Is that a good thing? According to these scholars, this would mean that I recognize my weaknesses in critical thinking but am taking steps to systematically analyze the way I think in a variety of domains in my life. I believe this process really started when I began meditating, being mindful of my thoughts, sitting there quietly, watching them go by, pondering on the why's and the wherefore's of these thoughts. I am now consciously trying to think about issues from a number of angles, challenging the meaning of my thoughts and the thoughts of others, the expressed points of view, the assumptions and inferences made.  I find myself doing it repeatedly during the course of the day. I don't always have a different idea or thought. But I wonder nonetheless.

Hopefully, this process of learning to think critically will evolve further with the work required in this course. There are many opportunities to improve here. I think I will reflect on that. 

Elder, L. & Paul, R. (1996). Critical thinking development: a stage theory. Retrieved from: http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-development-a-stage-theory/483

Asking the right question

As we completed our second assignment, we have also started to grapple with the notion of identifying a right question to ask and exploring how that question might be treated with different cultures of inquiry. Simple? I am not so sure. Attempting to answer that question can eventually lead you down a path, an unexpected path perhaps. Is it the right path? Is there a right path? Will the answers be different if one applies different culture of inquiry? Does it matter? Should the question that you ask be one for which you can anticipate the answer? The answer that you want? So many questions, yet asking the right question does not seem simple at all.

My reflexion about this topic came from reading articles on phenomenology, on bracketing and the application of the phenomenological method. According to Willig (2007) "a phenomenological approach to research acknowledges that the researchers play an active role in the construction of the research findings...their choice of research question all influence what can or cannot emerge from the research." (p.214).

This statement clearly left me with more questions than answers. With my behavioral quantitative background, I have always been taught that research attempts to prove or disprove a theory. That a question is essentially a hypothesis that you have about a certain issue and that you may or may not have a sense of what the research might yield. Not so, with the qualitative approach it seems. The notion that there can be no end point to the research that you are undertaking puzzles me. That the end point is not a definitive answer but perhaps the start of greater exploration is interesting, to say the least. It seems that qualitative research is more about trying to understand an issue than to actually prove a point.

I think I am going to like this.

What does research mean to me?

As we move further into the topic of research and our own position as scholars, I find myself reflecting that research has come a long way from the very dry, philosophical, "ivory tower" approach of so many years ago. Already, in exploring different cultures of inquiry in our first assignment, we have been using very creative tools and visuals to represent our own understanding of what different cultures of inquiry mean to each of us. From planes to plumbing, circles and lines to bubbles and cartoon characters, I have learned more than I imagined about the epistemological assumptions, relationships of the researcher to subject and concerns or issues addressed by these research traditions.

Now I am left to wonder, what does research mean to me? Given my background in health care, one of the overarching themes that comes to mind when I think of research, is ethics. This is clearly a concept that I want to explore further. It is central to my preoccupations and as researchers, we have a duty to ensure that our subjects are protected from harm. Primum non nocere, "above all do no harm" is attributed to an English physician, Thomas Sydenham, in 1860. Originally and still, it stands as a guide to the ethical practice of medicine and pharmacological research and to me holds a much broader reach indeed.

Image source : http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.medicine.uiowa.edu%2Fbioethics%2F&ei=E9GVVbzOOYna-QGKtZuQAg&bvm=bv.96952980,d.cWw&psig=AFQjCNHze5shf2wcBbKlyMpDGOo5OebseA&ust=1435968148292552