The final stage is here and I have booked my final meeting with Roland and Jordanne to discuss my thesis for 10:00am on Thursday, April 16th. I am relieved, nervous, and a little sad that it is actually coming to an end. I can only hope the lottery fairy hears my please to bring a big win to my home so I can come back and do my masters!
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I have spent quite a bit of time trying to determine which image I would add to my thesis to represent Kolb's (1984) Experiential Learning Cycle which I utilized as my theoretical framework in my thesis. I had found one that worked great in my presentation as it was slightly less formal but colourful and accurate. While I was happy with that for the presentation aspect, I felt that I could create an image that was equally engaging but slightly more applicable to simulation-based training than anything I could find within the creative commons options that were out there. So, I made up my own, with some help from Kolb (1984) and here is the graphic contained in my final thesis I will be submitting.
Reference Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. My final thesis presentation is going to be happening in two days and I'm finally feeling prepared for it. I'm looking forward to seeing other's presentations tonight to give me a better of idea of what to expect and prepare for during mine on the 1st of April at 9:45pm.
At this point, I have attempted to write out my entire plan to ensure that it falls within the 10 minute allotment. I chose to include a small segment of each area of my thesis but after speaking with Jordanne, I'm going to make the final presentation at least 50% about my findings and analysis as that is the majority summation of the work I have completed. Overall, I'm feeling ready to present and looking forward to being the last one. My presentation falls just about on the dot to 10 minutes and that should leave me enough time for questions, I just need to spent a bit more time preparing for those and ensuring I really know my material inside and out. So, with that said, I am off to reread my thesis again...as it stands right now...to prepare and then enjoy watching the presentations of my peers...I know they will do great! I have been spending most of my waking time away from my small children and family to hide out in the local library in an attempt to completely focus myself on my analysis and thesis writing. I will admit that it is working much better than being at home with all of the distractions and food, as I am easily distracted.
I have completed my analysis but I am still at a bit of a loss as to how I am going to turn what I have found into a logical flow of information. Jordanne has been so helpful with her suggestions of how she has approached these kinds of challenges in the past and offered some suggestions of how I can go about it, but once I'm done the meeting with her, it seems like everything that made sense that night is gone by the light of the new day and I'm overwhelmed and lost again. So, I decided to just do what my colleagues and professors have been saying all along and that is to just start writing and see what ends up on the page. As much as I was hoping to synthesis all of my findings into a logical flowing format, the content just is not lending itself to that type of writing. I feel that I'm being compelled to focus on each section of information as a topic unto itself but perhaps I can tie them all together by saying something at the start about how they each apply to simulation-based training but are not specifically simulation-based training focused. It is something along the lines of a broken thumb being a sore thing, but a sore thing is not necessarily a sore thumb. These sections are all linked to simulation-based training in one way or another, but not necessary to each other. I will keep moving forward with my writing and see what else develops. It was a very productive week and I'm happy to say that my coding (and subsequent sub-coding) are completed. I'm finding that some of the codes I expected to be using actually appeared very few times within my data and others that were near the bottom of my priority list, such as role-play vs. simulations were commented on quite often and provided a larger are of focus. I'm definitely getting the idea that as I finish up my analysis portion, some of the areas I expected to make up a large portion of my results are not going to end up that way. I'm glad I have been able to approach this with little expectation and an open mind because if I had been trying to prove something...I would be failing at it miserably right now. As it stands, I'm starting to wonder if anyone has truly spent enough time analyzing the pros and cons of simulation-based training with a customer service environment. There are a couple of people who have been very information on the subject but the information is truly few and far between, with very small piecemeal amounts of data dispersed through the readings.
Well, at least my thesis will have some humour inside of it when I finally do a presentation down the road. As it turns out, I am really bad at creating codes for my analysis. I thought it would be a simple task to use this list I already created to sift through the literature and pull out of the areas of focus that I was certain I was going to find. As it turns out, at least 3 of the codes I selected did not show up even in even on document after my full coding process was done. How is that possible? I thought that I had selected some obvious codes that would surely apply to simulation-based training with regards to customer service skills but I was incorrect. I will choose to call it a learning experience not to look for specific things in my analysis but to allow what is there to come forward itself. I went in with a plan and an expectation and the tables were turned completely on me and I have learned my lesson.
Just for interest's sake, here are the 4 codes ( I just found another) that never appeared a single time, but ended up being valuable in that they allowed me to determine what was missing from the literature for future review and research purposes. Telephone/Phone skills Reduced Training Time Online Training No Change/No Improvement I've been working on developing my list of codes for my data review. Here is what I have so far. The highlighter mishap from last week shall not be repeated again. I have switched to a simpler excel spreadsheet format to continue the process. I found a great document that I have been using for some ideas of how to proceed and it's been working great for me. The doc is: http://peoplelearn.homestead.com/MEdHOME/QUALITATIVE/Tips.AnalzQualData..pdf My spreadsheet looks like this so far... I met with Jordanne today to check on my background work for my Lit review. I've managed to chunk the information into logical and similar groups. They are:
Now, to continue to put it all together in a logical format! I've booked my final meeting with Roland, Elizabeth and Jordanne for Tuesday, Dec 9th at 3:00pm. Looking forward to discussing the overall thesis process so far. Talk about a learning experience!
I had a quick meeting with Jordanne tonight to discuss the process I've undertaken with logging my lit review on an excel spreadsheet. Jordanne feels I'm heading in the right direction, which is great news. Onward and upward!
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April 2015
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