Feb 28th

Research topic: Dream Analysis of College Students

Research Question:I have a few..

-Do college students' daily activities affect the way they dream?

-Do college students' dreams differ from adult's dreams?

-Can we control what we dream about?

- Is there a trend of dreams within college students?

Response to Mindmaps and EAA

Mindmaps:

I really enjoyed our classes where we went over each student's mindmaps. I feel like being able to view other people's, gave me about how I could go about adjusting mine. Also, when seeing students' mindmaps that had similar topics as me, it gave me some suggestions about how I could go about mine. I liked being able to hear suggestions from the professor and the students about what topics I could join together or what route I should go about when conducting my research. Those classes were extremely helpful to me and I think that it would be helpful to future students if you continued to have those days.

EAA:

I really like the approach of this packet. I feel that even though there was a lot of useful information in the packet, it was worded in a way that helped me to understand how to go about research. I liked that it didn't have advanced words that I would have needed to look up in order to see how to conduct my research. It that was the case, I could pretty much guarantee that I wouldn't even go back into the packet because it would be to complicated. I think that this will help other professors explain the research process to their students. Also, I liked how in some sections it said to refer to a chapter. I would find that very useful because I for one am the type of student that needs to review things a few times in order to understand them. I would see that insert and then refer to that chapter and then I would be fully educated on that part of the research process.

Brainstorm

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/80905482

I have made a branched out brainstorm of my main topic, which is dreams. I think I am going to be focusing in on dream analysis, but in my brainstorm I just threw some similar topics out there for me to consider. I am hoping that when we view our brainstorms in class some people can give me some input.

Creswell Exercise

I’m not sure if I’m doing this exercise correctly, but I’m going to try my best….

TOPIC: Dream Analysis

For this topic, I would use the social constructivist worldview. I chose this worldview because it involves individuals trying to understand the world they live in. This would pair nicely with trying to analyze what people’s dreams really mean. People want to understand why they are having the dreams they are having and if they really do have meaning to them. I would use the mixed method strategy of inquiry. I feel that this is the most useful type of inquiry because using quantitative and qualitative methods helps to provide the most information to back up your research. I would use the concurrent mixed method procedure because it merges both methods in order to provide the most support. The text research would help to explain the analysis of dreams while the statistics would help to give real life examples.

TOPIC: Jewelry Design

For this topic, I would take a bit of a different approach. I would use the postpositivist worldview. This uses a deterministic philosophy which is what is needed when discussing jewelry design. This topic takes a lot of effort and it needs to be explained very thoroughly so that it can be learned. I would use the qualitative method because this topic involves more text than anything else. I would use the grounded theory so that the action of completing jewelry design can be thoroughly understood. The research method I would use would be the qualitative method. This would allow me to use observation data to show others how to complete this task.

Classes so far....

I found today's class the most insightful so far because of the interaction between the students. I think that the way the class room has been set up, with us facing each other, really allows students to give input to each other and learn from each other. This has been true in my case. I came into today's class really struggling because I had absolutely no idea what topic I would do my research project on. I was most worried about this class because of all the things I would be doing on this one topic. I kept thinking to myself, "What topic could I choose that wouldn't bore me to death and I would actually enjoy doing all these projects on?" I came to the decision when Emma brought up the topic of sleep. I really enjoy dream analysis and I love learning about it. It sounds pretty dumb but I love reading the articles in Cosmo magazine about dream analysis. I mean, I understand they probably don't have the most educated in the subject reporting for them about dream analysis, especially when the only dreams they analyze are about guys or things related to that, but still. I read those articles and I can really see where they are coming from and I thought to myself today how much I would love to really understand the topic in depth. My minor is psychology so I feel like I might be studying this topic down the road anyway so I might as well get a head start to understanding how people think, right?

I also learned while reading Creswell all of the different types of research that there are. I won't go over my perspectives on those kinds again, since I did for a little in my last post, but I think that I am going to find this textbook very resourceful.

Preface and Chapter One.

I found the Preface to be really helpful. It was very different compared to what I usually find within the Preface. I really liked how it laid out each chapter and a little summary of what would be included in each and also in the format section how it tells you what the book contains. After reading over those sections, it gave me a good idea of what to expect out of the book. Also, that section would be very helpful if later in the course if I couldn't remember which chapter contained the information I needed. I could just refer to the Preface to see what chapter I should skim through.

In the section dealing with postpostivists, I really disagree with one of their points. One point states that the absolute truth can never be found in research. I can understand this point because for some cases, this may indeed be the case, but I disagree with it as a general statement. I feel that to just state that there is no definite truth in knowledge, is a little on the naive side. I would definitely say that I can relate a lot more to the social constructivists points of view. I do believe that people are always trying to understand what is going on around them and I feel that this is what makes the world as interesting as a place as it is. I say this because I feel like there will always be more out there and a person will never have the answers to everything and this is what makes life so exciting yet dangerous at the same time. The advocacy and participatory worldview is not exactly up my alley. It deals with politics and I pretty much completely live in a hole when it comes to politics. I'm not too caught up on the news dealing with them.The last worldview, the pragmatic worldview, really catches my eye. One of the statements that really intrigued me was, "Truth is what works at the time"(Creswell). I find this statement very interesting because I feel that in some cases it can be true. For an example, when researching one may think they understand the topic they are researching until one site comes along and tells them a completly different view. Now you need to decide which is more credible. You thought you knew the truth and now it could completely change.