Nia Wearn's Research & Tech for Teaching

 

I’m much more used to Academic Games Conferences, but since that’s only a part of my Phd study I submitted an abstract to the British Educational Researchers Association  (http://www.bera.ac.uk/) fully expecting to be turned away for not knowing enough big words, but it it turns out titles like “Creativity in Ludoliteracy, Games Development and Games Studies in the UK” sound grown-up enough to let me present, which I did as part of the Early Careers Research Conference.

 

What was also very nice was to put on my researcher brain into gear, after a week of dealing with emails / spreadsheets / SITS / Facebook etc etc dipping in and out of different Special Interest Groups and Presentations (the choice was huge) felt a wonderful change of pace – and an nice balance to the start of teaching. My presentation is below, if I get a chance (hah!) I’ll turn it into an actual paper and things…

I have pretty much vanquished the PGCERT – All I need to do now is some paperwork and that’s done and dusted! Woohoo!!

Next stop is the RDC-1 form, although my very drafty version is already proving useful, since it forced me to think about that I was doing and how I might be doing it. So for now, here is my draft title:

“Identifying commonalities in the working practices of students during a Global Games Jam event in line with their education at Staffordshire University.

I imagine when this is all bound that will bear no relation to the final title, but we can look back at this post and laugh at it’s naivety.

This also means I’m starting to plan actual approaches, and chapters, and things. Behold – Planning tools!

Methods Planning

I can not tell you how useful mindmaps have being, I’m currently using M8! on my little touch screen netbook and it’s awesome. It’s wierd, seeing it broken all up into Trello Boards and Mindmaps makes it seems infinitely do-able and exciting too. Yeah Research!!

I know I’ve said it before, but I really am kicking my phd into gear this year. Having spent a lot of time floating around, first off with an idea I didn’t really gel with or think I could do (and has now been awesomely done by people who can actually code) because it fitted in with the engineering faculty of old, to being told that not caring about the making, and caring about the product, and the users was just fine to getting settled in our new home in the school of art & design to where I am now.

So now I’m studying a phd in the field of Digital Design & Technologies, specifically doing observations at our annual Global Game Jam event, on if any of what we teach the students is reflected in the compressed nature of the jam.

I’ve got an awesome supervisory team, I finally understand what I need to do for the first year of ‘modules’ for the PGCERT and I actually think its doable- it might even be fun, but it’s a long slog doing it part time alongside everything else.

I’ve also been a better student then I ever have before – if nothing else I’m super organised (on a given day I’ll use Google Docs, Dropbox, Trello & Evernote with a sprinkling on Wünderlist, Cal & any.do to keep things moving) I can get to all of my notes, at any time on my phone, my iPad or online and so far, it’s working. I can’t stress how much this has helped.

This and twitter (and Facebook) but really twitter is amazing for connecting with people in so many fields, and a massive thanks to my 2nd supervisors Katy for getting me familiar with @phdforum. And this is where the hipster phd thing comes from, people are doing work in the most awesome fields, 3d printing alloys, squishing stem cells etc – it’s so exciting to know I’m a tiny part of pushing the envelop forward.