Blogging as an ethnographic tool to study PhD development Some thoughts and questions

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward2 A brief description A group of candidates at the University of Sydney (including me) are keeping weblogs on their process The blogs are behind a firewall and not open to the world at large We can post unpublished entries that are saved but not read by the others We are also reading each other’s blogs and commenting on them

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward4

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward5

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward6

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward7

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward8 What does a PhD blog look like? My public PhD blog Paul’s blog Kevin’s blog Jean’s blog Sarah’s blog

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward9 Project Product (thesis) PhD!!!!! ‘writing up’ marking doing the research reading the literature How is the PhD conceptualised?

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward10 Project Product (thesis) PhD!!!!! What else could usefully be examined?

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward11 What has been investigated? What does the process mean to –the candidate? (Lee & Green, 1999; Johnson, Lee & Green, 2000) –the supervisor? (Pearson & Brew, 2002) –the university? (Neumann, 2004; McWilliam, 202)

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward12 What I want to know is… To what extent can blogging help support candidates in the process of development that characterises the PhD?

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward13 Struggling with ethnographic methodology Is my study naturalistic or interpretive? How can I fairly represent my participants? “… ethnography inscribes the human crises of a specific culture. It endeavors to connect those crises to the public sphere, to the apparatuses of the culture that commodify the personal, turning it into a political, public spectacle.” (Denzin, 1999, p.512)

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward14 Moving ethnography online Is the internet a cultural artefact or does it constitute a culture? What are the implications of doing an ethnography among people you may never see or hear? What does it mean to join or leave a community when you’re never really ‘there’? It’s the ethnography you do by the seat of your pants…

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward15 Why blog?  to update others on activities and whereabouts  to express opinions to influence others  to seek others’ opinions and feedback  to “think by writing”  to release emotional tension (Nardi, Schiano & Gumbrecht, 2004, p4)

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward16 Why use blogs?  They are always everywhere available – literally true with the introduction of moblogging  PhD candidates already familiar with the internet as a source of information, communication, and perhaps also support and organization  Participants retain control of their blog – it won't disappear at the end of a 60-minute interview.  Blogging emphasises the idea of PhD as process rather than project.

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward17 Additionally… Blog as cyberdesk Capacity to express personality in setup, colours, pictures etc Blogging has “…the capacity to engage people in collaborative activity, knowledge sharing, reflection and debate, where complex and expensive technology has failed” (Williams & Jacobs, 2004, p232).

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward18 Postgraduate pedagogies? Development of autonomous scholar (Johnston, Lee & Green, 2002) Related to the basis of online pedagogy? Community of practice? (Boud & Lee, 2005)

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward19 Some final questions What stories (and counter-stories) need to be told? What spaces are there for different practices and voices in post-graduate contexts, including research in and for postgraduate studies and pedagogy? (Johnston, Lee & Green, 2000, p146)

Ascilite December 2006Mary-Helen Ward20 Boud, D., & Lee, A. (2005). ‘Peer learning’ as pedagogic discourse for research education. Studies in Higher Education, 30(5), Denzin, N. K. (1999). Interpretive ethnography for the next century. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 28(5), Forte, M. C. (2005). Centring the links: Understanding cybernetic patterns of Co- production, Circulation and Comsumption. In C. Hine (Ed.), Virtual methods. Oxford: Berg. Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE. Johnson, L., Lee, A., & Green, W. (2000). The PhD and the autonomous self: Gender, rationality and postgraduate pedagogy. Studies in Higher Education, 25(2), Lee, A., & Williams, C. (1999). 'Forged in Fire': Narratives of trauma in PhD supervision pedagogy. Southern Review, 32(1), McWilliam, E., Singh, P., & Taylor, P. (2002). Doctoral education, danger and risk management. Higher education research and development, 21(2), Nardi, B., Schiano, D. J., & Gumbrecht, M. (2004). Blogging as social activity, or would you let 900 million people read your diary? Paper presented at the ACM Conference of Computer-supported Cooperative Work, Chicago, Illinois. Neumann, R. (2003). The Doctoral Education Experience: Diversity and Complexity (Commonwealth Funded Report). Canberra: Department of Education, Science and Training. Pearson, M., & Brew, A. (2002). Research training and supervision development. Studies in Higher Education, 27(2),