To tell the truth, I am completely daunted, even more so after the reading, by the sheer weight of time and effort necessary to do good research. I like research. I am fascinated by the discovery of information that comes from good research – it opens up the eyes and sometimes changes my paradigms. Berg approaches the matter of research in a kind of organic manner that I appreciate but, in order to be truly effective information, it takes a great deal of effort. Triangulation helps bring validity and thoroughness to the research, but it takes an awful lot of effort and time. Of course, who doesn’t want their word to be valid? The idea of two steps forward, one step back found in the Spiraling Research Approach takes time but it sat well with me that one should do that kind of work to be truly good at researching.
Despite the time and effort necessary, the one thing I appreciated most was Berg’s very last segment. After talking us through how to design the whole of the research project, and preparing us for what we are going to do, he has a small but nonetheless significant thing to say: “Regardless of how the information is spread, it must be disseminated if it is to be considered both worthwhile and complete.” I learned in an organizational behavior class that every organization can trace its effectiveness as an organization to its knowledge capability. Knowledge capability is comprised of two things: discovery and diffusion. Discovery is, in this case, the research. Diffusion is the dissemination of information. In our classrooms, dissemination is tantamount to learning, thus we are not successful unless we can turn the process of discovery into an active diffusion of things learned. In other words, it doesn’t matter what we know if we cannot teach others. I know that the intent of the reading is to help us with doing exceptional research, but I was reminded of something very important to our study of media literacy education – we need to be able to teach others what we are learning if we are going to be effective.
One last comment: though the subject matter is not, perhaps, riveting, the reading itself was conversational in its tone and very instructional (albeit more instruction than theory). I’ll give it to Berg; he did a good job covering a lot of ground in a short amount of time – both, as he talks about in his introduction, in theory and in practice. He also applies his own treatise to his work: he is clear in his defining of word usage and also creates clear expectations and works to self-reflexively fulfill those expectations. I bring these things up because I was impressed by his style of covering his own research and conclusions. I know that does not say much about the topics, but this raises my own perceptions of his expertise concerning the subject matter. I was surprised at how specific and practical his examples were of how to do things.
word count: heck if I know! :)
4 comments:
Your word count is 505.
I’m with you regarding the style of this week’s reading. The subject could be presented in a much more cumbersome manner, and Berg says what needs to be said and is done with it, which is nice. Everything is pretty pragmatic and comprehensible too, thank heavens, even if it seems overly-simplistic at times (as I think I mentioned in my post). That being said, I’m sure it’s a good refresher for all of us.
Now, as for his section regarding dissemination, I completely agree, especially for our purposes here. But I think we’d also agree that there really are times and situations in which research is a valid endeavor without the dissemination part. Any sort of personal enrichment would fall into this category, though I realize that this is not really the purpose of the research that we will be doing in the coming two years. Or is it? This is a bit random, but does all academic research have to move the world of academia forward, or is there merit in doing truly academic research that is motivated purely by personal interest with absolutely no interest in ever publishing the findings? I think my automatic response would be, “What’s the point if you don’t disseminate?” But maybe there would be the odd occasion where there would be merit in it? I don’t know.
The thing that I really liked about the use of triangulation as Berg described it was as a means of validating qualitative research. It makes it very clear that the research is solid and reproducible and not merely the observations/findings of a single individual. I think there's real value in that.
I actually want to jump into the dissemination conversation, because I actually sort of disagree with Berg here. Yes, it's true that if we just just did research for fun (or something else?) without ever publishing, then that wouldn't help move information forward. However, I don't think that research without publication is a waste of time, and I don't think that having students create something without making it public is a waste either.
I actually do like the more fluid research model that Berg presents--I've always had a really hard time following any kind of set model because sometimes you find things through your research that makes you revisit your original assumptions entirely.
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