Today officially began my practice, or should I say pilot study, for my data collection and analysis part of the dissertation process. I teach two Orientation 101 classes, one on Tuesdays and other on Thursdays, both 4:00-5:15 p.m. as one hour course credits. I had acquired assistance from Mrs. Aldridge from the Math Department, the computer lab technician to serve as my proxy to practice informing the students about my intentions for collecting some data for my doctoral dissertation and to invite them to sign the informed consent forms, whether they give or not give permission for their own work to be used for data collection. After today's trial of asking for students' consent, I am happy to report that all students signed yes, they give permission for their work to be used. I am looking forward to Tuesday's class to see if I get 100% permission rate as well.
As for doing any new writing lately for the dissertation proposal, I regret that I had been trying to read up for the lit review and I still need to figure out and narrow down to four-six themes to discuss in my lit review. I can pull some of the lit review I had done in the professional seminar course (AHE 601) with Dr. Bray, but I do not want more than 45% of my lit review to come from that effort. I want to be proud of my own dissertation, that I actually remember what I wrote in the lit review that accurately fits the research topic/question of "exploring first year students' perceptions on writing pedagogy as significant learning experience: A pragmatic qualitative research approach."
And I need to take advantage of the fact now I am back to teaching, that I am back to a structured routine that I can have a better state of mind, a better mentality, when it comes to pulling off a good rough draft, if not a perfect draft, of the dissertation proposal. If I was able to pull off a twenty-two page (when it should be 12-15 pages) final paper on quality online instruction a month ago while reading in rapid succession twenty-something novels to ease the anxiety that I did not feel the pressure to write the paper until the last few days before the deadline to submit. I do NOT want to do the same for my dissertation proposal.
The way I see it, I need to keep the IRB approval in mind. I must give the IRB two months to review my IRB application and approve before I can officially begin my data collection in January 2015! If I manage to submit my zero or first draft of the dissertation proposal to Dr. Major within next two weeks, it will be easier to proofread and add to it before having it professionally proofread by my cousin who makes a living proofreading proposals and documents in time for the proposal defense meeting with my dissertation chair, Dr. Major, and the dissertation committee of Dr. Hardy, Dr. Holley, Dr. Webb, and Dr. Gilchrist.
Therefore, my timeline as of now should be....
- End of August/Early September: submission of my dissertation proposal draft to Dr. Major
- Middle September: Dr. Major's feedback and requested changes
- Make corrections and have it proofread
- End of September: Second draft of dissertation proposal to Dr. Major
- Early October: Dr. Major's feedback, hopefully her approval
- Middle October: Dissertation Proposal Defense Meeting
- Middle-End of October: Submission of IRB application