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reflection research

Research update #27: The reframe

Just a quick note this time about the rather helpful feedback that I got from my supervisors about my evolved research question.

I was considering something like:

How do and should edvisors in H.E. ensure that their work in introducing, supporting and developing TELT practices is understood, valued and supported by academics and the institution?

Peter suggested that ‘ensure’ adds a certain amount of pressure, which is a fair call as after all, one of our ongoing challenges is achieving this and there are no guarantees that it will happen. (But I think it will eventually because it has to happen)

He proposed the following:

What strategies do edvisors in HE use to promote understanding of their role and value among academic staff, and more broadly within their institutions?

With a sub-question of:

Which among these strategies are particularly successful?

Lina chimed in with a couple more examples of sub-questions that might offer some additional directions for the research to follow.

What are the roles and values of edvisors (as they seen from their perspective)
How those roles and values are seen from the institutional (aka client) perspective?

Pretty hard to escape those perspective-oriented questions but in this context, where so much seems to be about perspectives shaping a workplace reality, it makes sense.

On a separate note, our short paper was accepted for ASCILITE 2017. One of the reviewers seemed to expect a lot of detail from something that we had to cram into 5 pages (down from 17ish) but the feedback was helpful and offers some ideas about ways to expand the work. (The second reviewer didn’t seem to share any of their concerns, so that’s a good lesson perhaps about the nature of the review process). Overall, I take the feedback to be a good sign that we’re exploring an area where there is some interest and something of a gap in the literature.