Finish...start
Is this the start? Is it the end? Or is it somewhere in between?
In some ways it is all three. It is the end of my required posting for this class. But I think I'm going to continue this if only as a form of journaling or maybe, just maybe it might help somebody out who is going down the same path.
I'm going to reflect on what we've done so far. In a matter of a few short weeks I have gone from a scotch-taped idea of problem-based learning in medical education to a now completed 23 page lit review of the subject which I might present at a conference next February. That's just amazing and pretty cool! Dr. Weaver has been great throughout the process and encouraged all of us to develop new insights and ideas.
Some things I wish I would have known at the beginning.
When starting my annotated bibliography I wish I would have labelled each entry with the question stem (s) I thought I would use the citation for. This could have been done with tags as well.
I am not an outline kinda person but I need to be especially going forward with my dissertation as I think it will help me stay afloat while I try to work full-time, be a dad, husband, and have some sense of life.
Have more of a concrete idea as to what my dissertation is going to be? Do other's do it this way? That is to say, have an idea of what you are interested in, research that area, create a lit review, and then figure out a dissertation? Just wondering....
What I found useful:
I used Papers for Mac as my citation manager which I highly recommend. It's built in search engine, tagging, and annotation were key for me. There is more to the program that I need to learn but for this part of my project it was helpful and the learning curve wasn't that bad. If you want a more detailed review let me know via a comment.
For writing and organizing I use Scrivener and it is simply the best writing software on the market and I can't say enough about it. Again this could be a separate blog post so if you are interested let me know, via comments.
I would also highly recommend OmniOrganizer 2 for keeping me on task and organizing what needs to be done.
Thanks for a great class Dr. Weaver.
I will be keeping this going as it seems there is someone in Alaska who is reading this or maybe that's just Russian hackers.... who knows?