Because I am working on collaboration as a topic, and more specifically collaboration borne out of participation in a specific set of MOOCs, I am looking some literature on MOOCs and some literature on collaboration.  After I finished reading a handful of books on collaboration, I've made my way to academic articles on MOOCs (before I go back to collaboration discussed in academic articles).  It's been a couple of years since I've sat down to make a concerted effort to read articles on MOOCs (given that most of my spare time was spent on class stuff).   As I am reading these newer articles on MOOCs (2014 and beyond), the obligatory 'historical' introductions (you know, where MOOCs came from), seem to be all over the place.  Some describe them in ways that  closely tie them to the OCW movement.  Others skip everything and start with Thrun and Koehler.  Others point to Siemens and other Canadian colleagues with MOOCs like CCK.  Yet others find imaginative ways to have some sort of combination of these†.

Despite these (minor?) issues in their introduction or background sections, these articles made it through the gauntlet of the peer review and go published, so they are now part of the research record.  It's not that I am hugely bothered by things that I view as historical inaccuracies in these articles. After all, the advice given to me by my mentors is to basically go to the original citation and look up the fact and underlying reasons there, instead of citing someone who cited the info.  It's a good point, and it's good to basically double check your "facts", but it really adds to the workload if you can't trust what you're reading in an article.  Does the level of detail in a literature review reflect the level of care taken to craft the methods section, data analysis, and conclusions?  Maybe it doesn't; maybe the introduction is just a short afterthought after all else is done, I don't know.

As I go through this pile of academic articles I am struck by the two warring sides in my mind.  One side wants me (the completionist daemon) to read every single word and analyze every single sentence of an article.  OK, maybe it's not painstaking analysis, but really do give each article a good portion of my mindshare in order to make sure that I am correctly getting out of the article what the authors intended me to get out of the article.  On the other side of things, I am looking at the large (digital) pile of papers to read and a more pragmatic daemon is pointing me toward more efficient‡. The efficiency that my pragmatic daemon advocates for is skimming introductory and background sessions, and really just focusing on data analysis and conclusions, so basically make an assumption that the journal editors and peer reviewers have done a good enough job so that I can reasonably assured that what I am reading is worthwhile♠.  The problem with the pragmatic daemon's approach is that in the haste to be more efficient (just the findings, ma'am) I might be making the same errors as those folks that make me roll my eyes with their (minor?) issues in their introductory and background sections (errors I don't want to make).  I am sure that there is a good middle ground, which I am intent on finding before I am done with this proposal...

How is your dissertation process going?  If you are done with your doctorate, what were your daemons?



DIGITAL MARGINALIA
† maybe it's my own bias as a MOOC follower since 2010(ish) but the only correct version of MOOC history seems to be CCK08 as the start. Yes the open movement probably influenced it a lot, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it a descendant of OCW.
‡ imagine air quotes around this word.
♠ not counting predatory journals here.