With the dissertation submitted it’s time to reflect on the process and nearly 18 months of work. The biggest lesson is how a research project differs from study. The preceding courses had material to learn, assignments with questions and exams all of which required using existing study skills. Research has no material, no right or wrong answers and required a different approach. So what advice would I give to a newbie apart from go on the Residential School ~”preparing for research”?
Get ready
Do as much as you can before the course. Establish your word-processor or other tools, backups, storage and so on making sure they will be suitable. Doing this preparation helped to start the project flying and automatic backups proved a lifesaver when the hard-drive failed.
Get organised
The volume of information being handled is large and unlike a modular course it can all be needed at any time. Being very systematic about filenames, directory structures, indexes and so on becomes vital. There is no need to go overboard here, you can spend too much time keeping a system going and not enough using it! Overall I did well here.
Know your word processor
15000 words isn’t a lot of content but it’s time-consuming to get the text and diagrams neatly laid out. All those flashy bits of the word-processor you’ve never used start becoming useful. Use styles to ensure consistency and make use of automatic features such as numbering diagrams. Open Office worked well but initially proved a problem as the OU wanted the early assignments in Word format and the export wasn’t quite right. Once the assignments required PDF it was much simpler.
Use technology wisely
At first I tried to use some project planning software and keep notes online. Neither worked. Paper and pencil is a very good technology. Spreadsheets do fine for planning and lists. I’d definitely recommend a bibliographic tool, I used the free JabRef with a plugin to connect it to my Open Office word-processor which worked beautifully.
Be methodical
There are constantly decisions to be made. Should I ignore that bit of data or is it important? Is this code right? Jumping around will be fruitless, you need a clear and documented chain of reasoning, with each step a confident and reasoned one. Every bit of work or reading you do should have a point - why am I doing this? I think I could have done better on this point, being fearful of a dead-end I tended to try a lot of alternatives to ‘look ahead’ down the chain. It created more work than necessary.
Planning
You will need to. Plan and stick to it. Regularly review and amend the plan as new issues emerge, after all this is research and unexpected happenings are normal. For the first third of the project I did well, mostly because what was required (reading and organising literature) was fairly mechanical. The middle third of data collection went wobbly, mostly because a more methodical approach was needed. The final third was manic in trying to catch-up and provide some interpretation on the data. With hindsight I needed to recognise the struggle to achieve TMA04 in November was a warning sign. However once I realised (January) action was needed I changed my working practice by writing on a post-it note what I was doing next and working with paper printouts, both of which helped maintained focus. I also had to force myself to go with what data I’d got. With a deadline approaching, imperfect but completed was better than perfect but late.
Hypothesis and analysis
It all really flows from the hypothesis. A good hypothesis has a yes/no answer and it’s clear that data ‘X’ analysed with technique ‘Y’ will do that. With hindsight I’d pay a lot more attention to this overall planning stage. It would have made the latter stages more focused and easier. In conclusion I’ve learned a lot about how to do a research project (as opposed to a development project) and feel I’d do a lot better next-time and with less stress. Will there be a next-time? There is plenty of scope in my dissertation topic for a PhD which would use the same research skills, but more practical issues like income and life might deter that. Overall I’m pleased to have covered so much ground to feel knowledgeable about my topic, to have learnt new skills and to have stuck at it and got to the end.