Research Diaries

As part of the assessment for the political philosophy course that I will be teaching in the Autumn, we will be asking the students to complete a research project instead of an exam. This project will be based around a case study relevant to a particular problem or issue covered during the course. Because this will be a new form of assessment for many of the students, and also because we want them to actively reflect on their learning methods, we are going to ask them to keep research diaries during the module, and then to submit a sample or summary of the diary to be marked along with the project.
We will most likely be using the Blackboard system for our online content, and within this there is the capability to set up a diary for each student. These can be completely private, be only viewable by the student and us as course lecturers, or visible to all members of the module. There are of course advantages and disadvantages to each of these options - privacy encourages honesty, and some students will be less productive on a public forum than they will be when they are not worrying about other people's views. On the other hand, the module is trying to encourage collaborative learning, and allowing students to read and comment on each other's diaries would be one route toward this. I am however sceptical whether many level three students would take the time to do this productively.
In order to puzzle some of these issues out I've set up an online research diary for myself as a trial. I'm using Blogger at first because it is so simple to use and I already have an account. I'm going to keep it private to begin with, but I might change this later on depending on how it goes. I do already keep a research diary of sorts, in that I write dated notes to myself when I'm reading or working, and also through my record of supervision meetings. But this will be a way to keep all of these things in one place, that is accessible from both home and University (and on the move via my mobile). Hopefully it will therefore not only help with some of the teaching issues that I'm looking into but benefit my research as well!
If anyone has any thoughts about the usefullness of research diaries and the best format or location for them I'd be interested to hear them.

IBL Module

I've recently been working with a fellow PhD student on an exciting proposal for a new third-year inquiry-based learning political philosophy module in the department. The module aims to explore the gap between theory and practice in political philosophy, and to equip students with the skills to engage with real-world political problems. We're hoping to engage with different methods of learning and teaching, and to integrate new uses of IT into the learning experience. To this end, we've been awarded some development money from the university's Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sociences (CILASS). This money allows us to spend a considerable amount of time researching and developing both the content of the module and the methods of learning and teaching that we will be employing. We'll also benefit from the invaluable advice of CILASS staff.

Not so good news

So it turns out that due to some mix-up in the finance department that is too long a story to go into here I won't be teaching next semester after all. It's disappointing given how much I was looking forward to it, but as several people have pointed out to me, at least now I'll be able to concentrate on my thesis! I'm keen to re-apply to teach in the following year (Autumn 2009). and hopefully I'll have better luck next time around. I'm now aiming to have a fairly complete draft (i.e. everything done but a final check of references and typos) done by the end of the next academic year, which will be three years exactly since I started the PhD. If I can manage that then the teaching would come at a pretty good time - I could submit and job-hunt whilst still having a reasonable income.

Good News

I've recently had some good news - I've had my proposal accepted to teach a third-year course on Contemporary Global Ethics. My course will run in the Autumn semester of the next academic year, beginning in the first week of October. I'm really looking forward to teaching the course and so am thrilled to have had the proposal accepted. I will be suspending my funding and research for the duration of the semester, so now have a six-month extension on my estimated submisson date - it has moved from September 2009 to March 2010.

I'm thinking of setting up a seperate blog for the students in the style of Dave Webster's blog for his students at the University of Gloucester. I would post course materials on the site and hopefully get some good discussion going between the students. We do have a web portal - MOLE - here at Sheffield which can be used in a similar way, but in my experience the students haven't found it that helpful. If anyone has any thoughts on whether a blog would help or hinder the students please let me know...