Time to put the hammer down on this thesis of mine! This last week, I signed the appropriate papers to formalize an agreement with Drs. Griff Richards and Rick Kenny, the CDE and FGS indicating that Drs. Richards and Kenny will act as co-supervisors for my MEd thesis. I am quite pleased to be kicking this into high gear over the next several months and plan to use this space to share my thoughts, frustrations and accomplishments along the way.

If you are working on your thesis through AU (or not), I'd love to hear from you. The current plan is to use The Landing as a sounding board for my ideas, so I hope you'll feel free to chime in.

I'll upload files, or maybe copy them to a wiki as I progress. In the spirit of open access, I'd like to be transparent about my methodologies and conclusions. My data won't show up here due to privacy issues and the like.

My first task is to finalize my proposal. In my Skype meeting with my supervisors last week, we decided to take a bit of a turn from what my original proposal (created in MDDE 702) stated. The original plan was to analyze some historical data using a grounded theory approach, but securing permission from the subjects seemed like it would be an unnecessarily arduous undertaking. So I will need to update my methods section quite extensively.

I will also be trimming the sails a little with respect to the foundational theory undergirding my thesis. I'll be relying much more heavily on cooperative learning theories (Johnson & Johnson, Deutsch, Slavin, etc) than written in the original draft proposal.

All for now...keep the rubber side down.

cm