Campus Session: Discussing Part 6- Tools

Timeline

We began the session by creating a timeline from our teens to present day.  This timeline could include any significant events that may have stood out, positive or negative.  This actually proved more difficult than I expected and took me a good five minutes to actually get something down on paper.  However, once I got started this task became easier.

I was glad to see that the majority of my entries were positive, not sure that was because of the frame of mind i was in or whether the positives overtook the negatives as Id like to think I am more of a positive person.  As my written timeline finished as a complete mess of notes I have recreated my timeline below.

My timeline to represent significant events in my life

I am sure that on a different day I may have come up with different events, but these are the ones which stood out at the time.  What we did find is that each others events spurred our thoughts to think of ones we may have not thought about.  Most of mine are related to my career in one way or another and have on the majority had an effect on where I am now.

I have added in certain keywords to some of these entries which related to a feeling or thought about how I relate those events to my life.

What this timeline represents is what got me to where I am now, what is relevant to where I am going and where am I going to go from here.  The next stage of this timeline is essentially the final part of Module 2 and the planning which will take me into Module 3.  I do like to plan but I know that to be successful within this course, the planning will play a major role.  

As my current career situation is very unpredictable, this may very well effect the process of my planning.  But with a basic plan in place I can use it as a guide to ensure I am sticking to the right tracks.  We discussed how there may be shifts within the planning stage but to visualise a beginning, middle and end.

So from this, the important questions to ask are:

Where do I want to be? (Planning)

How am I going to get there? (Tools)

What do I want to know? (Inquiry Questions)

How am I going to find this out? (Research)

Tools for Planning

We briefly discussed the tools which can be used for the planning stages for the final part of this Module.  The important part of this is to remember that not all these tools need to be used and to select the ones which will benefit what you want to find out.

At this stage I think it is vital to know what type of environment the inquiry needs to be based in and what ethical approaches to take within these.  Using literature relating to my inquiry, articles and journals, the next stage for me is to select some concept words that I can use to create a set of questions relating to what I want to know.

At this stage in Module 2, my next step is to really look at the literature which I have collected.  As I know the area in which I want to look at, I know need to collate some of my research to define my area of interest before planning into the next stages.