So what did I do?
podcast3 - description of podcast 3
Firstly, I conducted two small cycles of distributed research which involved intervening to build bridges between two communities, and to encourage activity around identified targets on the ukcider wiki. I then took my reflections on the way the process had gone for me, and turned them into snippets of more generalised writing for the DARwiki. I concluded that this method was a fruitful one for generating content for my proposed repository of DAR knowledge, and presented my initial ideas in an online pilot exhibition last November, to a selected audience.
This online pilot exhibition worked well in that it received plenty of useful feedback about my ideas, demonstrated the validity of the concept of an online exhibition, and triggered some valuable conversations.
As a result of this feedback and reflection on the first overall cycle, I decided to change the tentative definition of DAR, to emphasise the 'action', be more specific and narrow the focus. My early inclination had been to make it inclusive and rather all-embracing, but reaching out to other people gave me confidence that there would be sufficient interest with a narrow scope, and that it is better to be to have a smaller but clear niche than something nebulous which people find difficult to conceptualise.
So the second cycle began with an orientation towards acting to improve communities of practice rather than "internet research"
As luck would have it, an opportunity suddenly presented itself in the form of an online workshop/conference organised by CPsquare - the community of practice on communties of practice all about Web2.0 technologies and the implications thereof. This turned out to be quite a major event lasting a month which occupied a significant part of my time allocated for my continuing research, so that my emergent planning adapted largely to that scenario.
I ended up facilitating a well attended fringe event at the Web2.0 conference about Action Research, during which I was able to discuss my ideas with people who are directly involved with facilitating COPs and some who are involved in AR as well, whilst practicing some more DAR on my own developing facilitation skills.
I employed a technique called Emergent Coding Analysis to organise an unweildy chat transcript, and this provided a useful summary as well as teasing out three lines for further action.
I then refined the Emergent Coding Analysis technique and applied it to larger volumes of data - the entire fringe event discussion and my own contributions to the wider conference.
I further refined my description of DAR prompted by an invitation to submit a 100 word topic proposal about DAR for a conference in Italy in October.
I helped to precipitate a group of people to move on from the web2,0 conference and elsewhere, to attend a recommended course about Action Research as a learning group with an orientation towards Communities of Practice.
I learned about the concept of barn raising and organised a barn raising event for the DARwiki which is taking place right now alongside this exhibition.
podcast3 - description of podcast 3
Firstly, I conducted two small cycles of distributed research which involved intervening to build bridges between two communities, and to encourage activity around identified targets on the ukcider wiki. I then took my reflections on the way the process had gone for me, and turned them into snippets of more generalised writing for the DARwiki. I concluded that this method was a fruitful one for generating content for my proposed repository of DAR knowledge, and presented my initial ideas in an online pilot exhibition last November, to a selected audience.
This online pilot exhibition worked well in that it received plenty of useful feedback about my ideas, demonstrated the validity of the concept of an online exhibition, and triggered some valuable conversations.
As a result of this feedback and reflection on the first overall cycle, I decided to change the tentative definition of DAR, to emphasise the 'action', be more specific and narrow the focus. My early inclination had been to make it inclusive and rather all-embracing, but reaching out to other people gave me confidence that there would be sufficient interest with a narrow scope, and that it is better to be to have a smaller but clear niche than something nebulous which people find difficult to conceptualise.
So the second cycle began with an orientation towards acting to improve communities of practice rather than "internet research"
As luck would have it, an opportunity suddenly presented itself in the form of an online workshop/conference organised by CPsquare - the community of practice on communties of practice all about Web2.0 technologies and the implications thereof. This turned out to be quite a major event lasting a month which occupied a significant part of my time allocated for my continuing research, so that my emergent planning adapted largely to that scenario.
I ended up facilitating a well attended fringe event at the Web2.0 conference about Action Research, during which I was able to discuss my ideas with people who are directly involved with facilitating COPs and some who are involved in AR as well, whilst practicing some more DAR on my own developing facilitation skills.
I employed a technique called Emergent Coding Analysis to organise an unweildy chat transcript, and this provided a useful summary as well as teasing out three lines for further action.
I then refined the Emergent Coding Analysis technique and applied it to larger volumes of data - the entire fringe event discussion and my own contributions to the wider conference.
I further refined my description of DAR prompted by an invitation to submit a 100 word topic proposal about DAR for a conference in Italy in October.
I helped to precipitate a group of people to move on from the web2,0 conference and elsewhere, to attend a recommended course about Action Research as a learning group with an orientation towards Communities of Practice.
I learned about the concept of barn raising and organised a barn raising event for the DARwiki which is taking place right now alongside this exhibition.