OK - so I went to bed early cause I was tired and I have woken up early because I am stressed - so what is stressing me? Lots of things to do with the project mainly - firstly, a participant has dropped out and not returned the PDA and despite my numerous communications, did not return it on Monday as promised and has not responded to subsequent emails - so I will have to write formally which I didnt want to have to do.
Secondly, despitre numerous requests for students to blog, send me an MP3 file and publish their assets to the Gateway - only x2 have published their assets, 4 have done a blog and 5 have sent me an MP3 file...I understand that participants have comittments but they have all agreed to take part in the pilot and whilst I appreciate things might not happen straightaway it has been well over a month now, so that is frustrating and stressful.
I was going to submit an HEA bid for some funds to do some work in relation to extending the project which is going to feed into a new module I am designing (it wil be interesting to see if particpants compliance changes if webfolios and the progression of populating assets is assessed). However, far more important people than I are going to submit a bid synthesising good practice in a collection of case studies, so I am not going to bother as I cant compete with the people involved. If it is approved the outputs will be helpful for my project but it is a bit disheartening as a new researcher to find constantly find a lack of opportunity in bidding for funds as you face competition from more experienced researchers...
I havent started my book chapter yet (eek) - the lack of assets being published and blogs is hindering this and I of course have a deadline to work to, so this is stressful for me.
On a less stressful (for now) note, Helen Whitrod Brown who is now involved in partnerships would like to meet next week to discuss the experiential learning module that I would like to write for business students and I informed that Barbara Colledge is working on something similar.
One thing I have learned this week, is that the ideas that I have had in terms of competency/skills framework, e-portfolio assessment, resuable learning objects for the proposed module etc are things that are happening in various projects across the University. The module I want to design is a synthesis of all of these things but I conceptualised the module before knowing any of this - so the work may not be as labour intensive in terms of set up as I imagined.
So this week - I still need to circulate the questionnaire I designed weeks ago to employers, find out some way of convincing participants to do the stuff I have asked - get participants to send the activity report from PebblePad showing what they have (or in most cases have not done) and start this book chapter so that I dont have a nervous breakdown in December trying to pull it all together - oh yes and I will have a mound of marking/assessing as Semester 1 exams are looming - oh the joy!
Right well, off to make a hot chocolate and get some shut eye if I can!
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