DD Shift

I’m hearing the song “Walt Whitman’s Niece” performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco.  It was originally written by Woody Guthrie.

For the entry, I have reviewed a website from the American University Library on Literature Reviews.  This entry will be relatively short because the site is excellent at succintly summarizing the key points that a person needs to know about a literature review.

It seems that a literature review needs to take place prior to performing a case study or any practical research.  This, of course, seems obvious given the fact that you should have some sort of theoretical or practical basis for your research.  This is moderately problematic for me because my research needs to be done very rapidly because of scheduling, and I have to work remotely (I will not have access to an English-speaking library).  I could always do research in the German university library near me, but that will be a challenge in that I don’t know the vocabulary in my particular area of research (of course this would be an excellent chance to learn it).

The things that I found helpful from this site had to do with:

• steps getting started,
• critical questions to ask yourself when working with different sources and
• stages of a literature review.

One thing that stands out for me is that none of the guiding questions that I have posted thusfar actually have any real theoretical basis.  At least, there is no core piece of literature from which my ideas for investigation actually originate.  So, I’m not 100% sure that I am going to find any research that will either support or negate my initial interests.

One place where I might have some interest investigating is the very public (and very uncritically accepted) ideas from Marc Prensky.  This is a place where I have read through some of the original literature and have a position on the matter.  Actually, I recently suggested this as a path for a friend of mine who was looking for ideas on a dissertation.  As I was working through the idea, it sounded like something that might be appealing for me– perhaps engaging in a critical instance case study investingating a very specific aspect of his claims.

One thing that freaks me out is that the example literature review  that they have is nineteen pages long.  Nineteen pages!  I don’t know that I can put together something that comprehensive in the next couple of weeks and then put together a case study that fits what I have found.  I will have to finish up my readings more quickly (perhaps by end of day tomorrow) and then start my research on Friday.