Week Two: three a day keeps procrastination away

  This week hasn’t been as productive as last week. I did a little research to make myself comfortable with the idea of researching, and began collecting scholarly articles on the combined subject of education and photography.

Back to the book

  Last summer I took a Research Methods course. It basically prepares you for the ultimate end of a grad program: the thesis.  Rather than doing a tradition thesis, it’s encouraged we Journalism Educators opt for the master’s project instead. In a nutshell, this is a combination of a project and a research paper.

   Monday I pulled out the Communication Research: Asking Questions, Find Answers textbook that was required for the Research Methods course. It covers everything from qualitative/quantitative research to how to write a research report.       

   Reviewing the textbook definitely helps, though it’s still a little mindboggling. Take this equation I did for one of my homework assignments:

Yes, I did this myself!

Say what? Honestly, that’s just too mathematical for me, so I won’t be collecting the kind of data that requires math.

   That kind of cerebral thinking is what separates the researchers (thinkers) from the taskmasters (doing). I am a taskmaster.

3 a day

  As I stated last week, I’m supposed to cite up to 30 scholarly articles in the project proposal paper. This is part of the literature review, a formal portion of any thesis. Problem is some of these articles and research papers are more than 20 pages long! It’s time consuming and a bit of a sleeping aid. To help manage my limited time in the mornings (I have kids to care for in the morning and I work at night), I’ve committed to finding and reading three articles a day until I reach 30. But I’m already having a hard time following through this week. Yesterday I found my three articles, but only read half of one. And today, well, I've yet to even search. Sigh.

   But to be fair to myself, I’m a bit distracted right now. I bought a new RV (a 2013 Forest River Sunseeker) and we pick it up at the dealership today. But I vow to get back on track next week.

   I also have the survey/IRB packet ready to send snail mail to my committee members. In fact, I think I will do that today so I can say I’ve done something productive.

My intense journey to complete my final master's project

A course proposal:

Photography/Photojournalism CEU course for high school teachers

By Lori King

Kent State University grad student

Journalism Educators program

Week One

The justification

   I wish I had stats to state on why a continuous education unit (CEU) course on photography for high school teachers is a good idea, but I don’t. I just have a gut feeling that it is.

   I’ve yet to collect research to justify the course because I’m only at the starting gate for a race to finish my master’s project proposal by July 15. A master’s project is similar to a thesis, except I’m actually accomplishing a concrete goal of providing a real service to high school teachers who will benefit from my final project.

   My idea germinated during my first semester at KSU more than three years ago. I was taking a law and ethics class and I learned that too many high school journalism teachers/advisers are actually English teachers thrown into the position because it was the closest subject to journalism. After all, they both involve writing, right?  That logic is flawed, and is harmful to the future of journalism.

   My initial idea was to do something involving law and ethics, which are fundamental. I’m always surprised when a working journalist/pj breaks our code of ethics. The result is an eroding trust in a once-proud profession.

Keeping it simple

   At first I wanted to offer something like a journalism boot camp: a workshop that covered many topics: law and ethics, news writing, social media, photography, news design, etc. But that would require bringing in other instructors/professionals who were experts on their topics. I quickly decided I had too little time for so much bureaucracy.

   A rule of thumb when developing a master’s project is to NARROW DOWN the focus. The boot camp idea was too ambitious, so I decided to stick with what I know: a single course on just photography and photojournalism.

The survey

   The next step was developing a survey to find out:

• which local schools have journalism, photography and/or yearbook teachers/advisers 
• which local schools have print or online newspapers
• the journalism background of journalism teacher/advisers
• how many yearbook advisers have photography experience

   I developed the survey using Survey Monkey. The first draft was too broad. The second draft narrowed it down considerably. I’m at the third draft, and am still tweaking it, but it’s pretty much complete.

A sample survey question

The IRB

     Two weeks ago I sent the survey off to my three chosen committee members at Kent State University: Candace Bowen, John Bowen and Mark Goodman. I made their recommended changes.

   Last week I took a day trip to Kent to meet with the committee members for the first time. It was a productive meeting.  They reviewed hard copies of the survey, and then gently reminded me that I need to get the survey approved by the KSU Institutional Review Board (IRB).

   I forgot about that requirement. Sigh.
   I was tempted to scrap the survey idea, but that's not an option.  I need the results of this survey to gauge what I need to focus on, and to ultimately help justify the course. .

   Because a survey involves “human research subjects,” it needs approval by the IRB. I sent off a quick email to my KSU professor who taught the research methods course I took last summer, Dr. Jeff Child, and he said I first needed to take a Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) course before I can submit my survey to the IRB. Another sigh.

   So I took the course and its quizzes, which wasn’t as bad as I feared. It only took about two hours. I printed out the curriculum completion report, which will be a part of the IRB approval package. I will send the survey, the nine-page IRB documentation I had to fill out, and the CITI report to my committee co-chair to sign, who will then forward it to the IRB. Once it’s approved (which should only take up to two weeks), I will FINALLY be able to send out the survey. In the meantime, I’m creating a database of teachers to send it to (about 40).

Scholarly research

    My committee members also told me I needed to cite about 30 scholarly articles in my proposal. THIRTY! To do that I need to connect to the Kent State library via VPN, so I installed the VPN mobile client on my desk top MAC, though I’ve yet to search a single article.

   So, that’s how my first week went.

   I’m documenting the experience for myself, and for anyone else who could use this information. As for the stats, well, those will come much later…

   I will probably post every Thursday, so stay tuned!