Make my day punk! -Dissertation Detectives October 11, 2007
Posted by Bill in : Dissertation, Outdoor Learning , add a comment
I have been at Sheffield Hallam University for the last couple of days on a dissertation workshop. Its been enjoyable to meet other people going through the same difficulties, hopes and aspirations in choosing research topics and research methodology. The conversations with students going through the same learning process can be very powerful as the delegates bring huge experience in a variety of fields from all over the world. ( USA, France, Mauritius, India and of course Scotland). It is certainly helping me look at my topic from different perspectives.
A one to one with inspirational Colin Beard helped focus my dissertation question.(More on this later). An excellent session by Colin using famous detectives to help us investigate different ways of consulting and researching was extremely enjoyable (I’m a big fan of the use of metaphor and analogy as a learning aid). We analysed the profiles of Dirty Harry, Columbo, Poirot and Sherlock Holmes and nomothemic and ideographic approaches The session certainly helped focus our thoughts on choosing methodologies and the methodological perspective and I am now starting to look forward to the research although I might veer away from using the Dirty harry technique of detecting.
