Embarking on a journey of PhD

When I finished my MSc many of my colleagues and friends asked when are you going to start you PhD? Well my immediate response was that I needed a rest after 5 years of part time student to complete my MSc as a distance learning student. Most of that time, I was also working full time with a very heavy workload. I just wanted a break from studying and chill out. During the fourth year of my degree I had a bad car crash. Luckily I did not have a lot of physical injuries but the car was a write off. This made me look at life differently and I decided to work part time. So the last year of my masters was actually pleasurable and easier to do. So you can see I was not in a great hurray to get into another intensive course of research right away.

Also I know that I needed to have a topic for my research that would hold my attention for at least 3 to 4 years. From experience I can see that I have managed to change what I do about every 3 years. I like a challenge and working on something new. To get the new course or learning and teaching strategy going, work out the problems and get it running smoothly is so very satisfying. Once it is running smoothly I find it becomes a routine and I get restless to find something new to sink my teeth into. So I started keeping an open mind for a topic that was gripping.

A few years ago I became involved in the development of a flexible learning health and social care degree. The flexibility was of choice of modules based on their individual professional development needs, flexibility of choice of learning and teaching strategy and flexibility of time to do the degree. This was an exciting time as I was bringing together varied skills I had achieved during the masters program. Having studied at a distance I was well aware of the needs of students learning at a distance and also what was required as a tutor supporting these students.

I started running modules as open learning, some as blended learning and some eventually as e-learning. This required understanding the technology used to support online learning courses. One of the things I found hard was the lack of student motivation to carry out asynchronous discussions using the course activities and discussion board in the virtual learning environment. I had experience with using social networking tools and so decided to see if I could use the chat tool in the virtual learning environment to get students to discuss issues as well as provide support and point of contact between the students and with me. This was something most students were unfamiliar with but they were willing to try it. My familiarity with use of chat tools like ICQ, MSN and Yahoo messengers allowed me to facilitate a discussion in the chatroom for the virtual learning environment.

In 2005 I got an invite to submit a paper for the International Conference of Technology Knowledge and Society. It was going to be held in Hyderabad India. Now this was exciting as I used to live there for years and did all my basic education there. I also had trialled this new online real time discussion and support for my students so I decided to submit a paper which got accepted. So far I had gone to conferences but they had been in UK with the higher Education Academy and Nurse Education Tomorrow. So this was going to be my first major International Conference. The whole experience gave me a tremendous confidence boost and sowed the seeds of the start of my PhD.

I wanted to carry out research on synchronous online learning discussions tools and facilitation of learning when using this approach. So off I went to my colleagues who were supporting PhD programs excited about my finally finding an area of research that would keep me motivated and interested. Sadly I think I caught them on a bad day but I saw firsthand how a teacher can de-motivate someone in one sentence….. ‘so what if u have finally found a topic to do a PhD?’ I was very disappointed and left feeling totally disheartened but my husband said to look at other universities where I could do my studying.
I talked to our friend Andy who works at Exeter University and asked him if he could introduce me to someone who I could talk to as they did run PhD as a distance learning course. Thus I met up with Patrick Dillon who was enthusiastic about my research topic and felt it was a good and new area of education which needed research. I filled my forms and became a part time student again. The first meeting with my supervisor Rupert Wegerif was good even though I was nervous. It was nice that I felt comfortable and found him to be friendly. Thus started a long relationship with Rupert, Patrick, Maarten de Laat and Nasser Mansour (the last three being my second supervisors in that order).

I will continue with this journey which was exhilarating, scary, stimulating, motivating and intellectually challenging from start to finish in the next blog………….