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updates to the website

For those of you who might be following these posts via RSS — and others — I am slowly working on making some changes to my website and blog. For some reason, as a consequence of something I did (I guess?) WordPress decided to dig up an old post from 2009 and add it to my RSS feed as if it were new. How bizarre! So no, I haven’t invented time travel, or magically changed into my pre-doctoral self. It was just a random blast from the past, courtesy of WordPress. Kindof reminds me of Dan Cosley’sPenseive” work, actually. Check it out, it is really cool!

Anyway, the changes to the site mainly consist of the blog becoming more of a “news and announcements” venue, than my random musings — I don’t have much time for random musing these days, it seems. I’m also putting together more information about current projects, and shifting some effort to keeping that stuff more up-to-date. Project-related non-random musing may work its way back into the blog at some point, but while I’m ramping up here at MSU I can’t make any promises about how frequently that will happen. I’ve also removed much of the old blog content form the past few years — if you’re particularly sad about losing something that is now missing, send me mail and I can restore it.

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part 1 data collection complete

it’s official! i paid my 100th subject this evening. there were days when i seriously didn’t think i would reach my goal of 100 subjects in part 1 of the experiment. thanks to all the volunteers!! and, on to part 2 (in january). now, if i could just finish this grading…

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I passed!

My dissertation proposal defense took place on Thursday morning, and I passed! Yeah!! About 5 or 6 graduate students came, and of course my committee, so it was a small audience.

I was nervous at the beginning of the defense, mostly because I felt like I wished I had made more progress on firming up the research designs between the pre-proposal meeting on Oct. 3 and the defense on Oct. 25. But, the meeting turned into a really interesting (and fun!) brainstorming session, which I found incredibly valuable. It is almost like the ‘defense’ happened at the closed pre-proposal meeting, and the public meeting was more like a working session. So, even though it added some extra stress to my life over the past two weeks, I’m really glad I ended up doing the public defense — I got a lot out of it. There was a really interesting conversation about changes to my experiment design that will hopefully mean less work for me; I need to think about the potential changes a bit more and talk it over with my advisor next week.

I’m not sure I have any reflections or meta-level thoughts about this stage of the process that might be useful for other people. Thinking back, one thing that helped me a lot was having written up little mini-reviews about chunks of literature that I’d read in the past, and rough sketches of research designs; this made it a LOT easier to put together a rough draft of the proposal document than it would have been if I had to start from a blank page. Also, I spent a lot of time over the summer thinking about my research questions and scope, so when it came down to defending why I chose these particular research questions and how they fit together I had a reasonable argument. (This is an example of the kind of ‘tough’ questions that were asked in the pre-proposal meeting, rather than the public defense.)

I feel like my committee was on the same page about what a dissertation proposal should look like, and at what stage one is “ready” to defend the proposal. In psychology, I think it is more normal for students to propose earlier rather than later, maybe after having collected some pilot data, but before conducting any of the dissertation research. The proposal is then an argument for studying a particular research problem in a particular way, supported by a literature review, and including specific research designs and their expected outcomes.

I’m not sure this model would work for somebody on the “three paper” plan, or someone planning to build something as part of their dissertation. It seems like with the three paper plan, the proposal might be more about how the papers fit together than about what the research will be and how it will be conducted. If the dissertation involves building something, the design of that something will in a sense constrain the output of the work (just like any research design bounds the expected outcomes); if producing the design is part of the research problem, it is less clear to me at what stage the proposal should happen.

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public proposal defense: thursday october 25, 9-11am

FYI, I’ll be defending my proposal in a public session on Oct. 25, 9-11am. Location TBD, look for an email in the next day or so.

I left the pre-proposal meeting with the impression that a public defense would not be necessary; but we had talked about me doing it regardless of the outcome of the meeting since it is technically a requirement, and our department hasn’t had a public proposal defense for a while. So, come to the defense if you can! It will be nice to have moral support.

I have yet to find time to really sit and think about the feedback I received at that meeting, and the changes I need to make to my document and my research plan. I put off some teaching stuff in favor of the pre-proposal meeting, and had to play a bit of catch-up in that area. But now I need to have a plan for how to make all the changes by the end of next week, before I go to ASIS&T, so that my advisor and committee have time to review the changes before the defense. It all seems a bit overwhelming at the moment, but I’m sure that once I have a plan in place, I will feel better.

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submitted!

phew. the CHI note is submitted! thank you thank you thank you to everyone who reviewed the paper for us; it is much better for your assistance.

i used to love fall. when i was a little nerdy kid by the time August rolled around i was so ready to go back to school, i couldn’t WAIT for fall. for the past few years though, September has mostly meant sleep deprivation. with getting back into the teaching groove and the CHI deadline every year, i don’t look forward to fall as much as i used to.

and i can’t slow down yet! the annual phd student poster session is friday, and i haven’t even thought about making a poster yet. i am also in the process of scheduling my pre-proposal meeting and proposal defense, both to take place before November. ahhh, grad school.

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