As a prospective student I followed your thread to see what I was letting myself in for, lol. Well done Dr :-) now onwards and upwards xxx

I'm not even on a Phd yet but I keep checking as your story has really hooked me, I'm OCD and would have totally cracked and annoyed the life out of everyone at the uni by now and probably totally blown any professional relations so well done you for remaining calm. Although I'd still be tempted to send a phishing email wishing the post grad office dealng with your submission a happy new year, ending on 'I'm looking forward to getting my results soon' or something like that, just to politely remind them you're still there and waiting. Hoping this is your week Pineapple :-)

K x

I too am having problems getting a reference from my current course as tutors are so busy and now I'm worried as I've annoyed mine by chasing it up for the last 3 months, particularly when my dissertion has yet to be marked :-(. On the plus side, your OU tutor can give you a decent detailed reference by contacting them directly regardless of if you turned up for the optional tutorials (I didn't attend one in the whole 6 years!). I got an excellent ref from mine. I hope you get your reference, good luck x

I've only posted in the past for advice on applications so have no idea yet what it's liek to do a Phd but having read your thread I agree that I would def look into the guidelines for when you are suposed to get a result. How near are you to the uni and how have you been contacting them? If it is comutable I would go down to the office and speak to someone in person, it's very easy to ignore emails and phone calls but not when you're stood there at the desk! I would personally do this ASAP otherwise like pp said, there's no way to get anyone then until at least 2nd week in Jan! Be firm and persistent. Good luck :-)

Hi Pikirkool, I'm looking at my own practice context of a work based learning provider. WBL is often (as is my case) run by a not for profit company who have bid for the contract. Most commonly, manager and senior management are not, nor have ever been teaching practitioners, yet they are expected to understand what the students want and need. They are based at a head office and have no human contact with students. 'Student voice'is mainly through statistical analysis of a questionnaire asking about student stisfaction. Students have 'centre meetings' but it's a sounding board to compain about specifc centre issues like the kitchen being dirty, going over rules and what trip they want to go on, not to shape wider policy or services.

In the UK we have a provison for students below L2 (5 good GCSE's A-C), this is the provision I work in. These students usually have some form of learning or behavioural difficulty,poor attainment and attendance and experienced difficulties in relationships with adults (recent studies have found that students poor relationships with adults, particularly teachers far outweigh any other risk factor for disengagement with education and aquired behavioural difficulties).

From my MA study I've found when students in my context have been involved in 'limited' co-production they are suspicious, reticent, feel inadequate and are adamant adults don't listen properly to what they have to say. Poor literacy and thoughts that adults don't care about their points of view often results in student voice questionnaires being inadequately completed because questions are complicated, they can't read it don't think answers will be taken seriously.

New policy in WBL states that co-production is necessary yet it is clear that in this practice context (which is fairly representative of most Entry level WBL providers) that lack of human contact between senior management and students is a major barrier to achieveving anything like co-production and systemic work practices despite the benefits of greater understanding of student need by management and increased self esteem and belief for students, being plainly obvious (well to me anyway) and this is what I will argue (with evidence, lol).

My secondary concern is that with raising the participation age to 17 (then 18) co-production in educational policy will follow paternalistic and infantilising tendancies seen in compulsory education with students gatekeepers (parents and guardians) constructed as the clients to undertake co-production with not the students themselves.

Kel :-)

Thanks, that's been really useful. I have a specific educational organisation in mind. I want to observe how senior management do or rather don't interact or engage with the students (as they currently don't and will have to adopt co-production as part of the programme from September 2013), how they can do so more effectively and why they should do so. An emirical measure would be helpful.

Thanks again

Kelly

I've just posted too about Phd applications. I see it the other way. I know I don't know enough yet and that's exactly why I am going for Phd, to learn more. I don't think its a case of being clever enough to do a Phd, it's a learning curve, you are doing it to extend your knowledge. I find the more I study, the less I realise I know and that I need to know/learn more, if that makes sense. Even after a Phd you'll still be learning so go for it.

Good luck
Kel

======= Date Modified 26 Oct 2012 09:50:12 =======
I am here to pick your brains seeing as you lot
have all submitted successful proposals. I am exploring co-production and systemic
thinking in educational contexts.  My focus is student and educational
management interaction/engagement. I've been searching the literature but can't
seem to find any studies on student/management interaction or relationships. Am
I missing something or has it really not been covered?  I don't want to be
missing a trick and find that it has been covered and there's a piece of seminal
work that's key. Anyone know of anything/can point me in the right direction?
Also the importance and study of student/teacher, teacher/teacher, and
teacher/management interaction/engagement is almost a given, due to the amount
of literature on it.  Do I just say it's a given and why or should I reference
with examples of studies, bearing in mind this is a proposal to accompany a Phd
studentship application and I'm not on a Phd yet? it's difficult as the
proposal only allows 1500 words and I'm struggling to keep it factual,
interesting and concise. Thanks in advance Kelly

Why do anything? Because I want to.

K

======= Date Modified 14 Oct 2012 22:31:43 =======
Hi, does anyone have access to this article? Thanks in advance


A Public Economy Approach to Education: Choice and Co-Production
Gina Davis and Elinor OstromInternational Political Science Review
Vol. 12, No. 4, The Public and the Private (Oct., 1991), pp. 313-335
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.

Kelly

I'm pretty cetain it is down to you in the end what you submit, they can advise but they can't do the work for you or tell you exactly what to put/or not put that's cheating! lol. I know on my MA (in the UK) we have supervision meetings and they can point you in the right direction but at the end of the day it's up to me to submit something by the deadline. I'd check with your uni but if it's submission deadline and you're happy woth what you have done, hand it in.

;-)

What angle are you coming from, for or against e-learning? Be careful of bias and what about the importance of social aspects of learning? What are you hoping to find out, is it a social exploration, psychological analysis of how the mind learns in differnt methods or are you looking at increased performance and economic outputs as implications for the school? Also which school, context will be important as you would expect differing results between different types ,Primary/Secondary, state/independant urban/rural etc.

Maybe you need to be more specific in a title and the questions will come from that. For example if you chose a student comparison between 'conventional' and 'e-learning' you're title might look something like 'Do students in an inner city secondary school report better learning experiences from e-learning compared to conventional teaching techniques? In answer to the title I will
1. Identify conventional learning methods available.
2. Explore e-learning options.
3. Compare identified conventional methods against e-learning options.
4. Specify students preferences in learning method.

Be specific with what you mean by conventional and e-learning as in context back in the 1800's chalk and board were 'conventional' then blackboards, then whiteboards. It could be argued that e-lerning through interactive boards is now conventional in some schools.

Of course you can check with the uni you are applying to how they like the research questions written some like action statements whilst other like them expresed as questions, it is also common for the questions to be re-written several times in the first year with help from your supervisor to get them just right! It's an interesting topic.
Good luck :-)

Done. Some feedback. The business flight question didn't give a 'never' option so I had to choose an alternate closest match.
Interesting stuff.
:-)

Done, good luck. You haven't asked why in any of the questions and I don't know of that will come into your dissertation. Have you thought that some sacrifice pay over working patterns because of childcare costs as sometimes you are financially better off working less to pay less childcare.

:-)

Thanks, yeah treeoflife, that's what I suspected. I've been allocated a supervisor for my MA dissertation who is a practitioner, although has some publications and is really personable and knowledgable on the practice front and I really like them, whereas the course leader who is supervising others is widely published with strong contacts at other universities. I might try and request a meeting with the course leader to try and get advice on application and references. I'm UK based and have been looking at RAE's and possible supervisors. It didn't even cross my mind they would want to look at degree transcripts with old course grades on! Mines a right mixed bunch as I was ill part way through my degree but got a 2:1. Im excited about applying and hope my dissertation, that I have sent to my supervisor today, doesn't need loads of revision as I'd like to get applications in by the usual Jan deadline. I'm not published (as yet) although I have presented my research at a national teaching event so I hope that goes in my favour.

:-)