Thinking smaller

One of my consistent problems over the course of this dissertation has been one of over-reaching.

I started out with a very grand vision of what my topic could be but through a mixture of being overwhelmed by the task and cajoling from Richard, Guy and a few others the final result will be much more managable and more in keeping with the level of study.

I’m not quite sure where this over-ambition comes from. It’s quite uncharacteristic of me!

It was certainly something that came across in my latest supervisor session (‘supersesh’?) with Guy who advised me to wrap up delving into case study methodology and just get on with the case study. His advice was to think about what Robert Yin proposes, measure what I’ve been doing up against his criteria but also to provide a critique of it in light of my particualr study.

I also set my net too wide for my reading, intending to spend a portion of the lit review on the pedagogy of DS. I had thought that, as most DS activity was taking place in teacing and learning within the education sector I needed to outline this. In fact, this pedagogical perspective has very little direct influence on my study, save that it give me a source of some examples of where DS is being put into practice.

Once again, this is making my task a bit more managable.