group meeting report on Oct.14th‏

Dear Superwriters,

Sorry for the belated submission of report on two weeks ago, I will give a brief account on what we did on Oct.14th.

There are 7.5 members, Alam, Jessica Wan, mother-to-be Iris and her cute baby, Nicol, Jun, Lucia and Rina attend the meeting. We firstly shared our progress in the past week. Then Lucia shared with us her pilot study in 5 schooles including EBD(emotional behavior dissable) schools in Xiamen, China.

As Lucia introduced, most studens in EBD school are under-achievers, and they have some kind of emotional behavior dissabilities. They go to school to get used to the social enviornment.The academic atmosphere there is less oppressive, and more "nature".

We discussed some issues like how to handle the ethical issue when facing the EBD students, how to lessen the negative impact on participants, can we lie or not?

Iris shared her experience that sometimes, to get the reality, we may not expose our intention at the beginning ,but should tell the participants at the end. they may be more familiar with us and our research, and then they can understand and accept what we have done.

Lucia also focused on whether how many cases are enough in each school level. should she increase case amount to assure the research validity? if you have more idea or suggesions on this topic, please tell Lucia.

Wish everybody happy learning , good appetite and sweet dream everyday:)

Cheers,

Rina

Report on Superwriter meeting_Oct 21, 2008

Dear Superwriters,
Sorry for the belated submission of report on last meeting, for the ex-chairperson is 'killing' the deadline. So please allow me to give a brief account on what we did last Tuesday.There are 6.5 members, Alam, Jessica, mother-to-be Iris and her cute babe, Nicol, Jun, and Lucia attend the meeting, we firstly share our progress in the past week. Then Alam share with us part of his research from the cultural perspective, which is very refreshing and thought-provoking. Through his presentation, we have gained some knowledge about the cultural, custom and education situation in Bangladesh, which share some commonness with China in terms of the agricultural origin, the trajectory of developing towards a industrial/post-industrial society, traditional gender role of the women, the emphasis of education and so on, yet it also has its uniqueness. I hope some day we can arrange a tour to Alam's hometown, for fresh air, boundless farmland and, most attractively, tasty mango:)
Wish everybody a fruitful week!

Report on Super Writer Meeting of This Week Sep 23, 2008

Dear all,

In this week’s meeting, Rina, Wenyu, June, Issa and Xiuli were present. A special guest Doris (YANG Dongsheng) who serves as coordinator of rpg students also attended.

The main topic of this meeting was Rina’s research. Rina herself had an excellent preparation for the meeting by offering everybody a handout of her research outline. The primary problem which emerged in the discussion about Rina’s research was how to distinct different categories of forgiveness. In Rina’s original design, she didn’t have intention to differentiate forgiveness mainly due to the consideration of recruiting enough participants. The advice for Rina was to distinct different types of forgiveness, such as forgiveness in friendship, in love or in acquaintances, and to focus on one of them. So that her research question could be clearer and it’s relatively easier for her to conduct the study. Otherwise the variables in the experimental groups will be too complicated and it will be nearly impossible to compare these two models of forgiveness education programme.

Another advice is related to the translation of keywords in Rina’s research. As Issa pointed out, the concept of forgiveness was largely derived from the western literature, therefore the connotation may be quite different from such Chinese words as 宽恕、宽容、容忍、原谅, etc. Since Rina will design her questionnaire in Chinese, it’s better to offer a working definition of forgiveness in the questionnaire so that the participants can be ensured what are the researcher really intended for.

In the section of progress report, Wenyu mentioned her incompetence to write in an academic way as her supervisor contended. As a response, Issa generously shared with us her strategy to read and write efficiently. Her method is to organize the reading in a systematic table as follows:

Author Research Settings Theoretical Framework Key Concepts Focus and Findings
Literature A
Literature B
……
Literature X

Issa noted that the focus and findings are mainly from the abstract and it’s also a little time-consuming to input all the necessary information in the above table. But it may provide us a clear picture of what have been done on particular theme and in which context. If some findings interest us, we can turn to read it in detail, otherwise we can skip it by just read the abstract. In this sense, it’s quite a quick way to strive for the deadlineJ

In the last section, Doris asked for our opinions about whether it’s proper to inform the new rpg students the existence of Super Writer Group and welcome them participate in our activity. Doris said currently Super Writer is the only active group in our faculty (Wow, Yeah!) so she hopes that the new rpg students can also have a chance to experience it. We didn’t make a straightforward reply to Doris that day because we think it’s best to consult all super writers’ opinions. We also expressed our concerns about the stability and operation of a large group (if new members are enrolled) and Issa stressed the commitment should be undertaken by each writer if they join the group. Doris ensured us that she would emphasize the obligation of our group to the new rpg students and once they participate, they should comply with it.

Another decision was also made at the end of the meeting. In order to make the meeting time more convenient for everybody, Issa proposed to advance the meeting from 13:00 to 12:30 on every Tuesday.

Lastly, I would also like to remind that Iris (Wang Xiang) is to do her confirmation on tomorrow afternoon (16:00-17:00), which will be held in Room 403, Runme Shaw Building. All are welcome! Let us give the mum-to-be the warmest encouragement and support. Best wishes to Iris.

Look forward to Iris’ superb presentation tomorrow and best wishes also go to Rina, and us all.

Xiuli

Report on super writers meeting - Today (on 16th Sept)

Dear all,


Today cathrine, June, Nicol, Xiuli, rina and Alam meet together in our superwriter group to (1) share with Xiuli about her research problem and puzzle; and (2) report our progress for the last weak.

In the first part, Xiuli shared with us her research proposal. Her interests is how "student teacher" develop in their teaching practice (sorry for my preliminary and shallow understanding). She want to investage the following 2 specific research questions: (1) what are the believes, attitudes of "student teacher"; (2) what is their experience in their teaching practice?

Xiuli put forward her puzzles about (1) could she include "teacher identity", "teacher coganition", "teachers professional knowledge" in her research topic? (2) how to shape her research question clearer? (3) how to use narriative inquiry in her research?

there are several important feedbacks: (1) Xiuli should narrow down her research topic based her own interests and experience; (2) She might look at her research subjects to dig out what is her real interests; or (3) She may focused on either "teacher identity" or "teacher knowledge" or "teacher belief" to narrow down her research.

We hope Xiuli could get some inspiration and help through this sharing. And We hope to hear from her soon about the progress of her research.

In the second section of our meeting, all shared our progress about the last week. We set the Xiuli as the Chairperson of the next meeting and rina as the reporter who would share her research proposal with us at the next meeting.

For the mistakes or missing points of the report above, please feel free to respond or add your points.

Cheers

Wenyu (Cathrine)

report on our super writers meeting

Date: 29th July
Venue: common room
attendents: Alam, Iris, Jessica Wan, June, Lucia, Nicol, and Wen Yu.
Chairperson: June
Topic: Alam's experience in conference

First of all, many thanks for everyone's contributions to this meeting!! Even in summer holiday, our seven group members are still coming for our meeting although I know each person has their difficulties to make it.

Alam's experience:
1. the fifth Pan-Commonwealth forum on Opening Learning in London. It is a conference to explore how open and distance learning can help achieve international development goals and education for all.
2. The preparation for conference:
submit the abstract six months earlier;
submit the paper three months earlier;
revise the paper and abstract while receiving reviewer's feedback
inform supervisor before attending the conference
3. Alam's role in conference:
be aware of the issues emerged in different sessions, and then do the summaries and recommendations for education policy based on conference, and finally implement in own country.
After conference, Alam was invited to Paris's UNESCO.
4. The information or source of conference (how to choose the suitable conferences to attend?)
asking supervisor for advised conferences;
conferences alert in Internet;
check the key speakers in conference.

We are so happy to receive Alam's souvenir: Bookmarks and cute ballpoint pens with Eiffel sign, Many thanks for Alam's considerations!!

The next meeting is finally considered, and we are looking forward to hearing from Jessica Deng to see if our trip in Guangzhou is still being arranged. 15th and 16th August are our preference.

Have a enjoyable summer holiday!

Best,
June

report on our super writer meeting this week

Dear super writers,

I am very glad to report our meeting this week.

Date: 8th July
Venue: common room
attendents: Wen Yu, June, Issa, Jessica Deng, Iris and Alam
Chairperson: Jesscia (Chunrao)
Topic: how to prepare for the comfirmation seminar (Experience sharing by June)

Main ideas from June's sharing:
1.Try to convince the panel that you have solid knowledge in your field, a good
literature review and methodology. But do not be too defensive in the panel meeting.

2. Some questions in the panel meeting could be very challenging. These are questions you might need to prepare before the meeting, such as questions related to your RQs, your framework, the rational of your study, and research methodology.

3.Don't feel bad if you feel you are not "ready" because nothing is perfect. It's very normal that people never feel "ready" and the time they have to face the problem is the deadline. "Deadline" is the time that things are ready.

4.It is a good idea to record the conversation in the panel meeting and the presentation because these are the perfect times for you to invite comments from the people who are not your own supervisor. It is a free consultation. Also, the panel will feel good when you regard their comments very seriously.

5.Panel members might not have time to read your materials very carefully in advance, so your introduction chapter is very important. Try to impress them at their beginning stage of reading your materials. A good introduction chapter leads to good impression.

6.For upgrading seminar (for Mphil students), it is a good idea to write a progress
report (something like cover letter in your materials) to save the panel's time. In the report, show them the things you have done since the comfirmation, your main achievment and progress, etc. This report should not be too long, about 2 or 3 pages would be OK.

Other things we discussed:
1.we suggest that we can share our draft in our meeting. Jessica is willing to share her accepted abstract for a Journal article next time. Every one is welcome to share his/her writing of any kind in our meetings in the future. But we want to make it clear that no one should send the drafts to anybody to avoid the problem of plagiarism.

2. The super writer meeting will be stopped for two weeks because of the summer holiday. The next meeting will be on 29th July.

3.Jessica invites people to her house in August. All are welcome. We want to know your opinions on date, activities, how to go there, etc.

Date:9th-10th August or 16th-17th August (please pick one)
Activities: foot massage, spa, shopping, sports, going to the park (swimming, badminton, PingPong)...(if you have any other suggestions, please write to Jessica) Please tell Jessica if you will go so that she can know how many people will be there.

Thank you for June's sharing in this meeting. Looking forward to seeing you in the next meeting.

Best regards,
Jessica Deng

Report on our 1st annual conference :)

I am very glad to report that we held the First "Annual" Super Writers Conference in Shenzhen in the past Monday & Tuesday, which was a very successful and happy event. The attendants include: Alam, Chun-Rao (Jessica), Dan-Jun (Issa), JinJun, Ming-Xia (Rina), Wang Xiang (Iris), Wen-Yu (Catherin) and Xiu-Li (Shirley). Some members of Super Writers who could not attend this conference sent their greetings, Lucia also sent a bouquet of gorgeous flowers We were also honoured to have two special guests: Wen-Yu's husband, Mr. Xian Niu and Xiang's husband, Mr. Wen Yi. The conference schedule was as follows:

Monday, 30-June-2008
14:30-15:00 Registion
15:00-16:00 Super Writers Meeting
16:00-17:30 Tea Break
18:00-19:40 Dinner
20:00-23:30 Entertainment: Karaoke

Tuesday, 1-July-2008
01:30-9:30 / 10:00/11:30 Sleep (Although many people had to sleep on sofa or hard bed or even floor, nobody seemed to have any complaint :P On the contrary, somebody felt secretely excited that they had chance to see other fellow students in their pyjamas and evening gowns :P)

Excursion & Entertainment
Route 1: Alam, Jun & Rina: China Folk Culture Villege Park, CoCo Park
Route 2: Local food, shopping at Zero-One
Route 3: Hair Saloon
Route 4: Foot Massage

Now, let me, the chairperson of this Super Writers' Meeting report the content of our discussions in the meeting.

In the first half of the meeting, Issa, who just returned from Holland, shared her
experiences about how to apply for the scholarship of studying abroad. The key points include:
1. Obtain the HKU supervisor's approval and support first of all. Try to convince your supervisor that this experience is relevant to and valuable to your current research.
2. Do some research about the local supervisors in the target universities. Learn about their academic interest and their key publications.
3. Correspondance with the local supervisors (one by one). The 1st email is of vital importance, in which we should briefly explain who we are, what our research interest / area is, why we want him / her to be our supervisor, what we are proposing to do if we go there. We should show our respect to him / her while at the same time not exaggerating the compliment too much. We may also attach a detailed proposal to the 1st email.
4. Once the local supervisor responds to our 1st email and shows interest in us, we can have further discussion with him / her about the arrangement, e.g. we can ask what he / she expect from us.All these things need to be done in a quite short period of time, say, 3 weeks. So we may need to prepare our profiles, CV, proposal etc. at usual time.

In short, it involves a lot of hard work, as Issa said, the application process itself is a very valuable learning process.

Jessica has very successfully completed her MPhil confirmation presentation and PhD upgrading presentation. So with our invitation, she shared with us her experiences and observation concerning how to manage the panel committee and how to make give effective presentation.

First of all, Jessica suggested that the panel committee is there to help us, so in the panel meeting, we should not be too defensive to their questions and challenges. If we do not understand their questions, don't feel bad or pretend that we know the answers. Giving a bad anwer is worse than no answer. We can regard the panel meeting as a learning opportunity so we can even ask the panel members questions and for their suggestions.

As for the presentation, Jessica mentioned the following tips:
1. Rehearsal is very important.
2. Prepare a PPT or other visul aids to help the comprehension of audience. Reading from the paper only is not a good idea.
3. Be careful with the format and layout of the PPT. Make it academic. It is not good practice to change the template for every slide.
4. Be interactive and communicative with the audience. Pay attention to our posture, gesture, and facial experessions. For example, have constant eye contact with the
audience; do not make face while giving presentation.
5. Pay attention to our language. Do not use certain expressions repeatedly; change the wording from time to time.
6. In Q&A session, keep the answer concisely.

Finally, Jessica concluded that many of the tips seem to be common sense that everybody should know, but in fact, many people still make these simple mistakes. We need to be fully aware of these points and improve our presentation skills consistently from
practice.

If you feel that I missed something here, which I am sure that I did, or if you want to add anything else or any comments, you are more than welcome to do so :)

Thank you very much for reading this long report! Have a good weekend :)

Best,

Xiang / Iris

Report of Super Writers Meeting on 1st April 2008

It was enjoyable to talk among group members (Catherine, Iris, Jun, Lucia and Nicol). The topics are briefly presented below,

1. Tibet issue and racism in the world. (It seems this topic is totally unrelated to our group purpose, but it is a nice 'starter' for thinking the society (including our small educational society) deeply and critically.

2. 'Main course' is certainly individual writing progress and goal.

3. 'Dessert' is very tasty.
a. BBC Program 'climate change' is suggested by Nicol. We propose to watch this program the week after next and discuss later on.
b. Discussion about individual research each week. It seems every group member has struggled during process of research, so we propose to discuss one research topic (around 30 minutes) every session, and group members can share our opinions or give some suggestions at that moment.
c. Professor Thérèse Laferrière will join us next Tuesday, and we can be free to ask any question about writing or research.
Prof Laferrière is full professor of Pedagogy, Department of Studies in Teaching and Learning, Laval University. Her research activities focus on networked learning environments and especially participants.

our meeting on Mar 11

Dear super writers,

First of all, I'd like to express my deep sorry for my procrastination of writing the summary of our meeting on this Tuesday. And I hope my delay doesn't affect your progress of writing during this week.

We had a pretty ardent discussion and sincere sharing on Mar 11. Jinjun read books and wrote some summary during last week. She also worked on her research ethics form. Her goal for the coming week is to finish the assignment of a faculty course on discourse analysis. In addition to that, she will keep on reading some literature. Iris downloaded some articles (actually it's a bunch of articles as she took to the common room rather than 'some') on her literature review. Iris has been corresponding with her potential participants and managed to involve three teachers in her pilot study up to now. Congratulations, Iris! However, there's also some negative feedback from one of Iris's potential participants. This teacher has consented to participate in Iris's pilot study at first but later on, when she got the research plan in detail from Iris, she changed her idea. Concerning the rights and obligations of potential or/and real participants, we had a small discussion. Nicole mentioned teachers are very cautious about the right/obligation thing in the process of being researched. She thought it's better for the researcher to be informed that the participant intends to quit at the outset rather than on the way, particularly for ethnography research. If the participant withdraws on the way, it's a 'disaster' for the researcher. So in this sense, I think the withdrawal of this teacher, is not a bad news for Iris, because neither of the researcher nor the participants devote too much so far. Anyway, good luck to Iris to find more participants. And the best wishes also extend to all of us!

Nicole completed writing assignments for thesis writing and also the part of her literature review in previous week. Her new goal is to finish two abstracts for a conference. In reference to conference, super writers also showed great interest, which led us into another small discussion. Wenyu mentioned the difference between conference paper and journal paper. She thought journal paper is liable to be revised and touched up, thus eventually it turns out to be a journal paper. So it's best for us to get some feedback on the conference, which will definitely be beneficial to the improvement of our paper. We also talked of a consequential question, that is, whether do we need to inform our supervisors the submitting of any abstract or/and paper before conference or/and journal? It seems that most of us have no awareness of informing our supervisors such kind of academic attempts. Both Iris and Shirley forgot to tell their supervisors the submission of abstracts for conferences, since all these abstracts are based on their previous research in their M.A. study. Jinjun also mentioned she wouldn't tell her supervisor what she submitted until she got the positive feedback from the organizer of the conference. However, Nicole thought it's better to let our supervisor know what we seek to do, in this case it's our attempt to submit abstract for conference. She thought our supervisor would give us some useful information and helpful advice in terms of the prestigiousness of conference. Supervisors may advise us whether the conference we should go to or not. Nicole also suggested that we should relieve ourselves from the Chinese thinking (Chinese mindset?), that is, not just to present the best of our research to the supervisor. We should be brave enough to show our weakness of research to our supervisor. That's where they are here and how we can make progress.
As for Lucia, she finished two pages of outline of her project and submitted to her supervisor. She was waiting for her supervisor's feedback and relevant articles. Lucia's new goal is to write three pages of transcription of field work. Wenyu has finished three or four pages on her literature review. She also searched journal articles on her research topic and categorize them, and have read about half of these articles. Her next target is to finish the literature part before she meets her supervisor on this Friday (March 14). In addition, she also needs to finish the assignment of thesis writing and how to present effectively, which are two courses she selected this semester.
We also talked about the position we should take as a researcher while Lucia mentioned her intent to become a teacher for some time during her study. Whether we should be a so-called 'insider' or 'outsider'? How can we keep the neutrality as a researcher? Is it necessary for us to be a teacher while we interact with students (who are the participants of our research?) Can we learn students better if we are their real teacher or we can explore the interaction more objectively if we are a mere researcher? All the super writers showed great interest in this kind of question and also feel a bit puzzled which stance we should take in the process of research. Therefore, it is suggested the next discussion topic will be the research ethics and position of the researcher after the Easter Day.
The summary is based on my notes taken in last meeting. Due to my poor English and my delay, I maybe missed some points or misunderstood some of your views. Obviously, all mistakes in this summary are mine.
Lastly, I'd like to thank Issa for her regards from Netherland. The book you introduced ''How to write more'' is really insightful and encouraging. Great thanks, Issa! Wish you have a happy, smooth and fruitful study in Netherland. Iris has passed a copy to me after the meeting. All are welcome to make copy from it. Many thanks, Iris!

The meeting on Feb. 26

Dear all,

I am terribly sorry for the late uploading of the report on the meeting on Feb. 26.

Four of us attended this meeting, Wenyu, Rina, Jin Jun and I. We reflected on our writings and set the goals for the following week. Then, we shared our experience of application and reasons of doing our own research. Some took it as a continuous journey of MA. Some followed supervisor's interest and instruction. Some made it out of working experience. It was very interesting to observe how everybody started their journey of MPhil or PhD. Since many others hadn't shared their research, we suggested that we could continue with this topic next meeting.

Lucia's New Goal

Translate one chapters (around 5 pages) of my dissertation.
No delay task: Read at least one chapter of Life in schools : an introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education by Peter McLaren. (Many thanks should be given to Nicol for introducing it to me! )

A Review on Today's Meeting

On our first Super Writers Meeting after Chinese New Year, we ate some desserts and discussed several issues.

Since we all came back from a relaxed vacation being together with our family, the production is not much and it seemed like a confession meeting at first. But you know, it is quite understandable and reasonable to rejoin in the family in this traditional festival since we've been apart so long. So needless to feel guilty, just catch up! (Haha, Lucia always can find an excuss to rationalize laziness:P)

The construction of new campus brought out by Nicol arose heated discussion later on. Some ridiculous arrangement of classroom design workshop and the huge gap between ideal vision and practical measure was identified. It is problematic that the immediate users of classroom were left out in the decision-making procedure and the bureaucracy blocked the full participation of people who are interested in or whose specialty is relevant to the issue. Many insightful opinions were brought about by our super writers, pity we didn't keep a record. That's why Issa suggeted we record our discussion every time for possible reference in future. Given the complex nature of the problem such as research ethic, privacy etc. we will discuss it in next meeting to find out a good solution. If you have any idea on it, please put forward on the blog or the meeting next time.

We also share some strategies for time management and avoid procrastination. Issa will kindly help to scan and circulate a handout from a workshop Lucia attended, which lists the common reasons for us to put off things. Maybe it can help you to reflex on your own habit and try to change.

Last but not least, do remember to 'Have the passion on your postgraduate study and your research!' This is what we agreed on in the meeting:)

Google Notebook

Actually, I found google notebook a better platform to organize my web readings, you can also share your notebook with others. and you can create multiple notebooks for different topics. Of course del.icio.us is faster and more convenient. so try and see which suits your need the best!


http://www.google.com/notebook/

Jan 22 meeting minutes

In our Jan 22 meeting, a number of problems relating to writing the dissertation at various stages were raised, they are:

1. Difficulty finding the right papers, journal articles related to one's study. Things we need to check such as are we looking in the right database? Are we using the right keywords for search? Some people suggest that we can book an appointment with an librarian to shape up our information searching skills

2. Strategies for reading/writing in the beginning. We can start by reading without a clear purpose, which takes longer but will allow one to have a broader understanding on topics. We can also start by reading with clear purpose such as reading in order to finish writing a chapter. A chapter outline will help in this case, to focus your reading on specific topics. This way is more efficient, but will certainly narrow your perspective.

3. Transcribing and translating non English medium data. Since most of the group memebers' data will come from Chinese language sources, such as interviews, the question was do we need to translate all the data into English in the very beginning. This is actually not necessary, even during the data analysis stage. You should analyze your data in its most raw/original format. And not until you are going to write about them, then you select the segments you need to demonstrate in your paper and translate them into English.

4. How to write a good discussion and conclusion based on the analysis findings. Some suggest that we may need further reading, and revisit our original research questions to find a focus for the paper conclusion.

Iris made a good suggestion that for future meetings, we can pick a particular theme to talk about, such as how to write a good lit review. The idea was to spend the 1st half of the meeting to report our progress, then the 2nd half to discuss the selected theme. So for our next meeting, the group has decided that we find some material or info on how to conduct good information search. If you have personal experience or you have come across material that you think would be useful for our next meeting theme, please do bring them with you next time!

Dear all,

First of all, thank the guys who have accepted my invitation to have a dinner party at my home this Saturday. I am heartily looking forward to sharing with you wonderful food, talk, and thought. For those who cannot come, I do hope that we have further opportunities to be together in the future :)

I set my goal to revise a paper last Tuesday. I have done it but was just told by my pervious supervisor that it was unnecessary :( Anyhow, I think that my work won't be wasted; at least I've done some writing and thinking :P I'd like to set myself a new goal: take notes and write summary at least for one article by next Tuesday meeting.

Finally, many thanks to Nicol who introducing the valuable learning web to us. I'd like to follow Nicol's example by sharing with you an article about procrastination since many of us claim that it is one of our biggest weaknesses :P http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

The beginnig of the article is like this :

"I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. "

Hey, happy to be the first one to post something on the blog. Frankly, I am the slowest one in our group and this surely is not a modest parlance. But thank you for all of you giving me the chance to grow gradually:) Responding to some of our members' request, I am advertising here for Cheng Kai Ming's course- Culture perspectives on Educational Studies, which is going to have the second session at 5:30pm tomorrow, the venue is Main Building Room 141, come if you are interested in:)

And my next goal will be, as I have said, translate one chapter of my master dissertation, which is around 3 pages. Considering my weak self-discipline, I think it's useful to set a small goal each time so that it is easy to fulfill and the outcome would be encouraging for me to keep working.

That's all, see you on Saturday and please remember to ask me how I am working on my task:)
By the way, I guess my dish that day will be some greenstuff cause I am a semi-vegetarian, but don't worry, I will try to make it look delicious, haha.

Some advice on lit review

The problem of reading and writing for your study comes up again and again. I found a good webpage that talks about lit review. Below is a short excerpt on the balance of reading and writing. You can go here for a full reading.

Excerpt:

When you read for your literature review, you are actually doing two things at the same time (which makes things more difficult for you!):

1. you are trying to define your research problem: finding a gap, asking a question, continuing previous research, counter-claiming (see the introductions page);
2. you are trying to read every source relevant to your research problem.

Naturally, until you have defined your problem, you will find that there are hundreds of sources that seem relevant. However, you cannot define your problem until you read around your research area. This seems a vicious circle, but what should happen is that as you read you define your problem, and as you define your problem you will more easily be able to decide what to read and what to ignore.

Discussions in Today's Meeting

Dear Super Writers,

First, congratulations on all those who have submitted the assignments and good luck to all those that are going to (Go! Go! You are almost there!) :P

Jessica, Nicol, Issa, Jun, Lucia, Wen Yu and Iris attended today’s meeting. We began with sharing our stories about how we managed to finish our assignments in the last week. Under the pressure of deadline, our “small universe” all exerted extraordinary power, some of us had to stay up for a few nights (such as me :P). But we all agreed that it was not desirable at all, especially at the cost of health and beauty J Surprisingly, the majority of our writing goals for next week were to revise and improve our assignments, that is to say, we regarded our submitted assignments as DRAFTS. Does itindicate the quality of our assignments is not satisfactory (to our standards)? Maybe. Anyhow, keeping on revising and improving our writing is always a good thing, isn’t it?

We also decide to take the advice by Nicol and Issa: if any of us wants to share and get feedback on our draft writing from other group members, we may circulate the piece of writing (e.g. drafts of thesis chapters) among our group through EMAILS (NOT Blog for the confidentiality reason). The other members are free to decide whether s/he will read / respond to it or not. But one important thing is – to show our respect to others’ hard work and our good sense of ethics :P – please don’t keep or circulate the others’ writing; delete it as soon as you finish reading it.

Last but not the least, let’s welcome Nicole to be our Chairperson for the next meeting J

Iris

My Wriing Goal (From 8 January to 15 January)

Hello everyone, my writing goal for this time is very clear: to finish one assignment of MEDD courses: globalization and educational policymaking in Mainland China.

Report of Super Writers Meeting on 8th Jan. 2008

It was nice to have our fist meeting in new year 2008, and thanks to everyone for contributing our group today: Alam, Catherine, Iris, Issa, Jessica, Jun, and Lucia. It is good to see many of group members are changing or reshaping the writing habit in better way!

The reflection and suggestions from group members are collected as following,
- a good piece of writing come from revision, which may develops your ideas while you write.(Issa)
- Write few paragraph everyday and then develop the ideas (Issa)
- Begin to write thesis in early stage: once you read or write, put the writing into the related parts of thesis (Iris’ supervisor)
- Need to know more about taking note in Endnote (Iris & Jessica)
- Mapping out how to use computer in efficient way (Issa)
- Thinking of framework in the mind at night and do it according to the framework the next day (Alam)
- If you have no idea about research, you’d better go out and talk to people, or collect data early (K.M.Cheng’s opinion from Iris & Alam)

Please be free to make comments!

A Brief introduction of Iris's Research Topic

Hi, dear all, long time no see you, how rrrrrrrr uuuuuuu ? Looking forward to seeing you guys tomorrow. By tomorrow's meeting, I expect that I will have written a few pages for one of my assignments. Regarding to the suggestion raised by some of you that we should publish the abstract of our research study here so that we can help each other better, I think that this is a great idea. Here is a brief introduction of my research topic:

My research topic is concerning the implementation of formative assessment in the undergraduate EAP (English for academic purposes) classroom in the continuous assessment context in HK(U). According to Black & Wiliam (1998), who initiated the increasingly hot discussion on this topic about ten years ago, formative assessment refers to “all those activities undertaken by teachers, and by the students in assessing themselves, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged” (p.2). It is believed that this type of assessment which is indeed a normal pedagogic practice in almost every classroom, if applied appropriately, can be very useful in helping students’ learning. But it is still not very clear that under what conditions and by what means formative assessment can be implemented effectively so that students’ learning can benefit from it. Through the preliminary investigation, I have found that continuous assessment approach is widely employed in the undergraduate EAP courses in HK, which makes the proposed study even more interesting because the literature has quite different opinions about the impact of continuous assessment on formative assessment. Some researchers believe that continuous assessment provides an ideal environment for the implementation of formative assessment; the others, on the contrary, hold that continuous assessment works again formative assessment. Therefore, I’d like to conduct a study investigating a) how formative assessment is implemented in the continuous assessment context in undergraduate EAP classrooms at Hong Kong universities and b) what background factors might influence the effectiveness of formative assessment on the students' academic English learning.

Any suggestions, comments, or questions concerning my research study from you is a great favor for me and very very welcome :)

Writing goal

Very much in Holiday mood, but try to finish: 1) a summary of some articles on identity; 2) revise paper; and 3) plan for the coming semester. Issa

Research topic & abstract

Title
In Search of Self: Understanding Teachers’ Professional Learning in the Community of TATEAL
Abstract
This study is concerned with an emerging community in southern China identifiable as Teachers and Teacher Educators in Action Learning (TATEAL), which has been a proactive force in the support of teacher learning and professional development across institutional boundaries for about seven years. Taking a microethnographic perspective to the discourse of the annual activities conducted in the community of TATEAL, this study intends to explore: 1) how teacher learning in TATEAL is discursively constructed in terms of knowledge and belief, social relations, and identity; and 2) what are the enablements and constraints to teacher learning in TATEAL. Narrative and discourse (specifically Foucault’s genealogical approach) are both used to understand teachers’ lived experiences from individual, collaborative and cultural perspectives in TATEAL, as well as to investigate the relations between discourse, power and knowledge of teacher learning in such context.
Issa

Karri's research topic and abstract

Peer- and self-assessment as tools to develop awareness of students’ oral communication strategies

Karri Lam

Abstract

The action research focuses on how peer- and self-assessments can develop the awareness of students’ oral communication strategies in group interactions. Three Hong Kong secondary teachers were involved in the study, two teaching secondary 1 and one teaching secondary 2. Similar processes were used throughout two cycles of the action research.

The research project consisted of a communication strategy worksheet and videos of sample oral discussion to stimulate student identification of suitable and unsuitable communication strategies in group interactions; the development of peer- and self- assessment worksheets for classroom use; and target setting with students focusing on areas such as eye contact, clarity and fluency of speech, and interaction with classmates.

The main means of data collection were classroom videos, student completion of peer- and self-evaluation forms, and focus group interviews with teachers and students. The expected findings may include: increased student awareness of the need to respond actively to other students’ utterances; the need for teacher guidiance in target setting; and increased confidence in students’ spoken English, although it was too soon to identify significant learning gains.

Jun's research topic and abstract

Research Topic: Students’ Perception of Spoken English Interaction at an EMI University in Asia
Research Abstract: English used as a medium of instruction plays an important role in internationalisation of tertiary education. An English-medium of instruction (EMI) tertiary institution, such as the University of Hong Kong, is ‘an international university with a multicultural and multilingual community’. The aim of the present research is to explore the role of spoken English for communication, learning and identity at an EMI university in Asia through case studies. Based on the analysis of a substantial body of qualitative data, it may be possible to a) understand and improve the spoken English interaction for Chinese students in terms of language development and the use of language, and b) equip teaching staff and education policy makers with useful information about, and better skills to deal with, Chinese learners in an EMI context.

Nicol's research topic and abstract

Topic: Pedagogical bodies & technological spaces: a critical study of ‘learning commons’ as a site for both collaborative learning and social interaction

Abstract: This study will investigate how the designated sites/areas carrying the function of ‘learning commons’ are used by teachers and students at the University of Hong Kong. The purpose of the study is to provide an in-depth and comprehensive review, examining aspects of usage, satisfaction, culture, and pedagogical effects arising from the experiences of teachers, and students who use and dwell in such a space. The study will address issues within four research foci, namely: pedagogical practice, cultural practice, social interactions and techno-spatial framework.


Definition of Learning Commons: ‘Learning Commons’ is described by the University of Hong Kong’s Knowledge Team as “an emerging concept in university communities around the world. In some places, they are called Information Commons. Learning Commons serve a one-stop shop location where students can study, learn, discuss, interact, and relax. The basic components of Learning Commons usually include reference and student workstations, collaborative learning rooms, electronic classrooms, multimedia workstations, consultation stations, writing lab and lounge. They are also open for extended hours, sometimes 24x7.” Also stated in the Executive Summary of the Knowledge Team’s report and recommendation (2006), the major goal of a Learning Commons is “to transform the educational experience given its undergraduates, to give them opportunities to learn skills needed to compete in our rapidly changing environment, to be able to engage in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration, to be able to interact with the world outside the University, to learn democratic values, and to learn critical language and ICT skills.” (p. 2). The Learning Commons is therefore, envisioned by the University governing bodies as a physical facility that support the above mentioned kinds of ‘student-centered’ or ‘learner-centered’ approach to teaching and learning in higher education

Greetings and my goal from 1st, Jan ---6th,Jan

Dear All:

How are you? Haven't met you for quite a long time. Wish all of you a nice new year!

In the past 10 days, i actually idled a lot, and i feel much guilty now. I will meet my supervisor on 8th, Jan, so i guess i'd better post my goals for next week here and make learning a daily routine.

My goals are as follows:

1.Finish a refined chapter of possible research methodology.
2. Finish reading a book which will soon be overdue.

Please ask me whether i have achieved my goals next time when we meet:). Thanks.


JESSICA