The dilemma I’ve been having is how to go about hyperlinking to sources and yet still follow APA style, or at least the intent of APA style. I have a variety of different sources to cite in both primary (archived research data; my blog posts) and secondary (literature; websites; videos; blog posts) form and I’d rather cite-as-I-write rather than work it out later. Hence my dilemma!

• Should I include links in sentences? To source data? To secondary data? To external websites?
• Should I hyperlink in-text citations? To the end-text reference? To the original source? What about offline sources?
• Should I link to “anchors” within the text itself? When?
• Should I warn the reader/viewer that a link may take them to an external site? Should this be done by colour-coding, i.e. blue links for internal and purple for external? Orange for source (research) data? Or in some other way?
• Should I embed materials from external sites? How to caption them?
• When to hyperlink, and when not to? Just because it’s possible to hyperlink doesn’t mean that I should.
• Should I warn the reader/viewer that a link may ask them to download something, and if so, how big the file is?

These questions aren’t covered in the APA Style Guide, and I’ve asked the APA Twitter Team, but they haven’t been able to answer my questions either. It’s either new territory, or print conventions aren’t meant to apply to hypermedia situations. I think it’s more of the latter.

So where to look for guidance? in education (yes, the lowercase title is intentional) is a relatively new online, open-source, peer-reviewed journal on topics of connectivism in education. Considering the theoretical perspective and online nature of this journal, you’d expect the authors to exploit hypertext to their advantage. Unfortunately not. The articles, for the most part, conform to print APA Style standards and hyperlinks occur rarely (often only to external websites). Is it more than a little ironic that articles such as Digital Scholarship Considered: How New Technologies Could Transform Academic Work are written in a traditional style using print standards? I tend to think so.

It’s a similar situation for other prominent online journals in my field such as a href=”http://llt.msu.edu/default.html”>Language Learning & Technology (articles are in .pdf form); CALICO Journal (articles are in .html or .pdf with colour screenshots but no links); ReCALL Journal (published by Cambridge University Press in .pdf form); Computer Assisted Language Learning (published by Taylor & Francis in .pdf form); and CALL EJ Online (in .html form but no hyperlinks or hypertext – author submissions are to be made in .rtf form).

I’ve put the call out to my Twitter network to find other examples of (preferably education) journals that do use hypertext and have a style guide for authors: This will be useful indeed to inform development of my own style guide for my dissertation. In the meantime, I am going to work with Wikipedia’s Manual of Style, and adapt it to APA Style rather than footnote-endnote (or should that be APA Style adapted to Wikipedia style?).

Wikipedia:Manual of Style – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

As Wikipedia suggests, I will use “common sense in applying it”: It’s just that working out what “common sense” entails in terms of consistency is the tricky bit! For now, I will keep experimenting and playing with style, especially in my blog posts. It may be inconsistent process writing but hopefully my product writing will build on these experiences and be better for it.

I expected”research,” “ethnography,”, “data,” “qualitative,” “researcher,” “researchers,” and “ethnographic” to appear in big, bold font. But what’s interesting is looking at the smaller words, the ones that I’ve circled in black. The fact that “may” appears at all is problematic – it signifies that I am using passive language instead of active language or past-tense. As this is a report, I should be reporting on what did occur rather than what I ‘May” have intended, or intend to do (as you would in a proposal). That “experience,” “constructivism,” “perspective,” and “life” are also teeny-tiny imply that I have not drawn enough attention to them in my text. Considering that this beginning section is all about theoretical framework, epistemology, ontology, and so on, these words should be much bigger than they are.

I intend on Wordle-ing frequently as I continue to write. I’ve found it to be a great tool for both data analysis (i.e. my research data) and for writing analysis (i.e. my reporting) because it forces me to look at the source text in a different way and brings things to the fore (literally) that I may not have thought to look at.

Plus it’s pretty :)

I have named a more extreme version of this problem [inefficient writing] “the Penelope Syndrome.” Penelope, you probably remember, spent the days of Odysseus’s absence weaving and the nights unweaving in order to hold off the suitors who were harassing her. For a multitude of other reasons, some dissertation writers act like Penelope: they write a few decent paragraphs, and then a day or a week later they decide that what they have written is not any good at all, and they toss it. They do this over, and over, and over again, so that the stack of completed pages remains exactly the same height over time. If you’re doing this, you may be overly perfectionistic, or maybe you have a screwy idea of how one writes or, on some deeper level, you may be very conflicted over finishing your degree. If you recognize yourself as a Penelope type, try forcing yourself to move forward (Bolker, 1998, pp. 71-72).

I don’t consider myself to be a “Penelope type,” even though it is my name (!), rather my problem seems to be actually writing anything at all. I’ve never had this much difficulty sitting down and writing before! I seem to be doing all of the “right things:” going to writers groups; setting up a regular schedule; making deadlines; eating properly and yet… it’s still not happening. Although, I do get extremely distracted (side-tracked) by information online. My filters, RSS feeds, and email work a little too well: everything I receive through my PLN is very interesting to me and hence very distracting. And so I’ve made the commitment to follow Bolker’s other excellent advice and write first. I usually begin my day by checking email – this has to stop. I need to write first. If I don’t write first, then I need to exercise first (another big hole in my life right now). I think by tackling the writing and exercise I will be more productive, happier, and get the damn thing done!

But oh, to be a “Penelope type”. At least I’d have some writing done!

In beginning my “research journey” (oh how I hate that term but here I am using it again), I had no idea how important my PLN would become or what an influence it would have on my work at all stages of the “journey”. At the time I considered my PLN to be quite peripheral to my work or “core business” (being research) and perhaps I thought it unnecessary to mention. After all, you wouldn’t necessarily describe your intended use of a pen, email or telephone in a research proposal. But over time it has become much more central, especially this writing (and thinking) stage, and I realise just how much it has shaped my readings, understandings, and subsequent analyses of “What is going on here”: my central research question.

A personal learning network is part of a personal learning environment (PLE). The two terms are often used interchangeably, but I distinguish between the two because I feel that the PLE encompasses everything I use in learning and researching (the total environment), whereas the PLN is the networked component, with an emphasis on connections, particularly ones to do with people. So in my PLE I include learning from books, journal articles and other scholarly works; lectures; conferences; fieldwork; and data analysis (just to start! There’s far more than this in my PLE!) whereas my PLN is largely based on Social Network Systems (SNS’s) such as Twitter, Facebook and Skype; chats with peers, friends, and my supervisors (technology-mediated or not); and the chance meetings and conversations at conferences that occur outside of formal sessions. It’s about conversations.  I count RSS feeds (to blog posts, magazines, articles, podcasts, etc.) as part of my PLN as well because although the way I read them is part of my learning environment (i.e. computer-mediated), the content is networked (through use of hyperlinks, track-backs, and RSS) and written for a networked audience. The information I access through RSS is designed to be a conversation (even if I don’t engage in it conversing back), and it is informal literature even though it is, in a sense, peer-reviewed. Essentially, though, when I think “PLN,” I think of the not-quite-synchronous-but-potentially-not-asynchronous conversations I have with people through SNS’s.

Follow this link to see different ways people have envisaged their PLN.

Or view this great presentation by the same author, Joyce Seitzinger:

Engaging with the not-quite-synchronous form of communication enabled through many SNS’s has been termed as communicating in the “nearly now.” Using Short Message Service (SMS) on mobile phones is a good example of this form of communication: The SMS may  be sent “now” and there’s a chance someone will respond immediately, but there is usually a lag. It is not as sychronous as a telephone conversation, but it is not as asychronous as email or letter writing either.

As a teenager, I was heavily involved in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and ran one of the Australian-based largest chat channels. IRC was a big part of my PLN because it allowed me to network with other high school students at other schools who were studying the same TEE subjects.  Nowadays, I mainly use Twitter and Facebook as SNS’s-of-choice. Twitter is my “professional” SNS, Facebook is my “social” SNS. I have made an active effort to follow colleagues and leaders in educational technologies/languages on Twitter, keeping it as “professional space,” and I’ve tried to keep Facebook as “social space.” Although the two virtual spaces do overlap from time to time, I see this akin to what occurs in physical space: You may run into colleagues and frolleagues at the pub (social space) but you wouldn’t necessarily go there for a seminar or for work (professional space). Then again, that pub may have a function room for hire, and so sometimes it might be appropriate for social space to become professional space (like joining a common professional-interest group on Facebook).

It is through these spaces (or networks) that a lot of my learning occurs, and through which my learning is filtered. This is both professional learning and social learning: Professional learning being that which I associate with “work” or “research;” and social learning being that I associate with friends, family, and hobbies. For example, I recently learned that Voki have started up an educational version (professional learning) and that one of my good friends is pregnant (social learning) through the use of SNS’s. In both cases I may have learned this news through other means or media, but it would have been very asynchronous and a lot further down the track! But the major benefit of SNS’s and my PLN are the conversations. The links and suggestions are important, but the conversations moreso. For me, it’s all about the Aha! moments, those highly motivational and important moments of inspiration that come during research work. People in my social PLN may not care about those moments, but I like to think that the people in my professional PLN do. It’s like having access to a 24-hour staffroom of people who share similar (work) passions and interests as yourself, and provide useful (critical) feedback and encouragement. Even if this is only my perception of my PLN rather than the actuality, that perception is important. An imagined community is better than no community at all.

Computers won’t ever have Aha! moments; only people are capable of experiencing that joy.  However, computers will support your access to previous work, consultation with peers and mentors, rapid generation and exploration of proposed solutions, and dissemination within the field.  They can help make more people more creative more of the time (Shneiderman,  2002, p. 17).

I do feel that my PLN helps me be more creative in terms of thinking and producing. I often send out questions regarding everything from opinion-seeking (“do you think language teachers should….”), to practice-seeking (“do you give homework to students?”), to website design/coding questions (“How do I….”), to asking for advice on thesis writing itself (“When using APA style…”). It really is a network of support, and a very effective one (yes, I do get @replies!). One constraint, though, is that it can be a bit of an echo chamber in that I follow like-minded people who in turn follow similar things as myself. Although this is useful in getting timely access to information-of-interest (filtering the internet) it also means that I may miss out on contrary and alternate views and information sources. And so it’s important to recognise that a PLN is not a PLE – it is only one component, and complements and extends other sources of information. Those other sources of information are also very, very important.

My research would not be the same without my (online) PLN. The conclusions I am coming to, the recommendations I will make, and the style in which I write have been and will be influenced by the connections I have in my PLN and throughout my PLE. It is a constant source of support, information, and motivation and forces me to reflect on and extend my learning in ways I would not when working in isolation. I do worry about how I will “disconnect” from my PLN when the time comes to submit but it is far more likely that my PLN will evolve to suit my new professional learning context, whatever that may be!

References:

Hmm.

When I first pitched the idea to develop my doctoral dissertation as a hypertext in website form, I had no idea that this request would be considered unusual. I also had no idea that it had not been done before at my institution (that we know of), nor that the librarians would be unable to find any other local examples. This surprised me because there are strong Arts, Media andte Communications, Computing, and Engineering faculties and schools at my university and at others nearby. Research in these areas surely lends towards presentation and representation of data in digital form, especially when the research itself is based on digital methods, and yet it’s just not done. The book-bound thesis is the dominant form, even when a creative or production component is part of the submission. Certainly, students must submit a digital thesis as well as a paper copy for archival purposes but this is generally an electronic copy of their printed text rather than a digital text authored with the intent of being accessed and read in digital form. In terms of style, format and binding of a thesis at Murdoch University (where I am currently studying), the Postgraduate Research Degree Regulation 28 stipulates that a thesis:

a.	may consist partly of published work;
b.	may consist predominantly of published work, provided that the thesis also includes material that provides coherence to the thesis as an integrated work;
c.	may include non-text materials, such as performances, exhibitions of works of art, musical compositions, films or videos subject to the approval of the Director of Postgraduate Studies (after consultation with the member of the Committee whose academic area is closest to that of the thesis) and to the written component constituting the major part of the thesis;
d.	may describe work done in conjunction with the supervisor or other persons, provided that the candidate’s personal share in the investigation is clearly stated, and that this statement is certified by the supervisor;
e.	must be written in clear and concise language and in English (unless the Director of Postgraduate Studies has given approval for it to be in another language);
f.	must conform to scholarly standards of presentation, citation and referencing for the discipline;
g.	must include an abstract of approximately 300 words;
h.	must include a declaration by the candidate that it is her or his own account of the research, the extent to which the work of others has been used, and (except for a resubmitted thesis) contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any University;
i.	must not exceed 100,000 words, excluding maps, diagrams and bibliography, unless otherwise approved by the Director of Postgraduate Studies on the recommendation of the supervisor;
j.	must be in double-spaced typescript; and
k.	must conform with any physical specifications approved by the Committee.

So it seems that submitting a thesis in digital form, with the intent that it be read in that form, would meet these criteria bar (j) (reading double-spaced script is very difficult on-screen!). That it must “conform with any physical specifications approved by the Committee” may also be problematic if those ‘physical specifications’ are that it must be printed and bound because I do not intend for thesis to be a print text. Instead, I envisage my thesis as a digital, online text: a website and ethnographic hypermedia environment, or EHE (Dicks et al., 2005). In this way, it would constitute an electronic thesis and dissertation or ETD:

There are two types of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) – those that are born digital and those that are scanned versions of paper originals. The former may have multimedia components such as audio or video or utilise some other digital component such as virtual reality (National Library of Australia)

The National Library archives digital theses, but the main project in Australia is the Australiasian Digital Theses Program “which is building a distributed database of digital versions of theses produced by Higher Degree by research students at participating institutions” (Murdoch University, n.d.). However, it is rare to find a ‘native’ digital thesis in these archives, as they are mainly of the second type defined above. In the United States, Virginia Tech. is a pioneer of ETDs and since 1997 all theses submitted in doctoral programs there must be in ETD form. Many other universities have followed their lead (for a good overview and history see Pavani, 2007) , and have based their rationale and definition of ETD on Virginia Tech.’s lead:

An ETD is a document that explains the research or scholarship of a graduate student. It is expressed in a form simultaneously suitable for machine archives and world-wide retrieval. The ETD is similar to its paper predecessor. It documents the author’s years of academic commitment. It describes why the work was done, how the research relates to previous work as recorded in the literature, the research methods used, the results, and the interpretation and discussion of the results, and a summary with conclusions. The ETD is different, however as it provides a technologically advanced medium for expressing your ideas (Montana State University, 2007).

Another strong promoter of the ETD is UNESCO (the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation) who have formed the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), “an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination and preservation of electronic analogues to the traditional paper-based theses and dissertations.” There are currently over 140 member universities and the NDLTD hold regular conferences and produce support materials for institutions, researchers, and students alike as part of UNESCO’s wider goals. There are no Australian universities listed as members, but the 8th international symposium on ETDs was held in Sydney and a number of prize winners for innovative ETDs and leadership in ETDs have been Australians.

Why Appropriate?

There are many benefits in authoring a dissertation as an electronic and digital text.

Firstly, it is an opportunity to engage in digital publishing and gain experience in this medium. Although there are many established members of academia resistant to ETDs and digital texts,

The good news will be that, even in the most technology-resistant areas of the humanities, changes in the structure of universities, and a shift towards more online course delivery, will increase the value of students who show that they can work deftly with hypermedia by producing innovative hypermedia ETDs. Not too long from now, the most successful candidates for jobs, tenure, and promotion will likely be those who create innovative hypermedia ETDs who are comfortable producing, revising, and using highly flexible electronic publications in their teaching and research” (Katz, 2004, p. 10).

Web-based tools are rapidly becoming the standard, both in education and in the workplace. More and more scholarly publications are being released and accessed in digital form (think e-books and online journals) and likewise authoring an ETD increases its potential audience by making it more widely accessible than the traditional book-bound dissertationt. Moreover authoring the ETD using common web standards rather than print-text standards (i.e. html and xml) means that it can be accessed on a variety of devices and is archival-able. Although an internet connection is necessary, having access to the internet is becoming more common than having access to other storage devices such as CD-ROMs and hard disks. Many netbooks, for example, do not have optical drives. As webtops become more commonly used than desktops, an online ETD will have greater longetivity as well as accessibility than both the book-bound dissertation or even an ETD authored as a .pdf with supplementary media available on a disk will have.

The use of hyperlinks in an ETD also allows for authorship of a very rich description. Not only can audio-visual materials extend and give greater depth to written descriptions, but hypermedia authorship also makes the process of qualitative data analysis more transparent by making it potentially possible to link to primary data sources. The reader does not necessarily have to trust the author’s summaries and synthesis of information: They can click through to the primary source data and view it in or out of context for themselves. Further, it is possible to present to the reader all of the data that have been generated, rather than only those data that are being used to support a particular analytical argument, and hence may facilitate the secondary analysis of qualitative data (Dicks et al., 2005). The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) is currently producing best practice guidelines for data archival in digital form and they are also advocating for research data to be considered a ‘research output’ in and of itself. Authoring a hypertextual ETD means considering data processing and accessibility at all stages of the research process, and so the production of an accessible data set can be seen as both something for the ETD and of the ETD. The dissertation may be based on research data, but it also facilitates (greater) access to research data, well above and beyond what can be achieved with a paper-based document. Descriptions can become very rich (perhaps too rich!) but so too can the reader’s understanding.

There are many ethical considerations to be had when authoring an ETD that does make use of and hyperlink to primary data sources. Authoring an ETD as an online text means that it is possible to control access by user permissions. This means that, via a login and password system, access can be restricted to the ETD as a whole or parts of it. It may not be appropriate for some readers to have access to the entire dissertation or, due to confidentiality agreements, some restrictions must be imposed. One concern with ETDs is that they are too accessible: .pdfs may be shared and reproduced with ease. An online hypertextual ETD, however, is not so easily reproduced nor shared if it incorporates user permissions. It also means that, potentially, different readers can have access to different versions of the same ETD. A public user, for instance, may only be able to access summary chapters. Research participants may only be able to access their own data and writings related to their contributions. An examiner of the dissertation, on the other hand, may access the entire data set and writings. This does mean that the ETD version changes depending on audience, which can be seen as both a benefit and as a disadvantage, but accessibility is much easier to manage in an online format than offline. It also means that access control will always be with the research team rather than with whoever has a physical copy of the dissertation.

Ultimately, whether an ETD format (online or offline) is appropriate for a research study depends on the purpose of the study itself, and the data used to generate and support the thesis. If the methodology and methods used were highly digital, then it follows that an ETD format may do best justice to presentation, justification, and re-presentation of the thesis. Having to produce a book-bound paper thesis can be restrictive and limiting, especially when cited data are highly audio-visual. Having to refer to a supplementary website or disk in order to access audio-visual materials whilst reading a print text can also severely interrupt flow and sense-making. Indeed, the process of engaging with an electronic text is qualitatively different from the experience offered by print technology. Although some readers may not prefer accessing extended written work on a screen, it is becoming more common (especially with the development of the Kindle and the iPad), more accepted, and morese people are becoming more skilled in doing so. While it is technically feasible to print out the contents of a hypertext, “such a print version suffers the same result as a filmed version of a novel: inevitably, changing the medium changes the text” (Thomson, 1997). An ETD that makes purposeful use of hypermedia is best experienced on-screen, and the benefits of doing so far outweigh the disadvantages.

Examples of ETDs

There is great potential for ETDs to take full advantage of hypertext and hypermedia, but in practice there is a lot of ‘hype’ and not many texts. On the whole, online journals and online ETD databases have used the web simply as a storage medium and attempted to re-create a paper format online. “Although taking this approach has some obvious merits, it serves to underline the extent to which academic writing, on the whole, has so far failed to take real advantage of the Web as creative medium” (Dicks et al, 2005, p. 59). There are some exceptions to this, however, and what follows is a snapshot of some of the more ‘hypertextual’ ETDs that are publicly available. There are many more examples than these, available through the digital theses archives of most major universities, but the table below (Figure 1) is a brief attempt to show the development of hypertextual ETDs over time.

	Fishman, B. J. (1989)Graham Swift, The Victorian Web http://www.victorianweb.org/neovictorian/gswift/htplan.html	Fishman authored his undergraduate dissertation at Brown University in 1988 using Intermedia, an early hypertext authoring program, to present a thesis on Victorian novelist Graham Swift. This dissertation became part of The Victorian Web, a collaboration and teaching space at Brown University. The Victorian Web was transferred to StorySpace in 1992, and then to the world wide web in 1993. Major revisions and additions were undertaken by further students in 1994, and so it continued and continues. Fishman’s work is one of the earliest examples of an ETD.
	Halaska, R. C. (1998) Budget Builder Analysis http://www.socialdesign.org/bbanalysis/	An example of an early online dissertation. The dissertation has been written as a hypertext to present findings about a website project. The Budget Busters website was developed as part of this research project and the author has an annotated version available to complement his thesis.
	Thomson, D. (2001) Tracing the networks of postmodernity : media and technology in the novels of Martin Amis and Don Delillo. http://circle.ubc.ca	“My doctoral thesis on the work of two postmodern novelists, Martin Amis and Don DeLillo, explores the manner in which discourses of technology inform their work. My motivation for moving a part of the thesis to hypertext resulted from the realization that an increasing number of useful resources and texts were becoming available on the World Wide Web, and once I began to think about what a hypertext version of my thesis might look like, other possibilities suggested themselves” (Thomson, 1997)
	Bellamy, C. (2002) Milkbar.com.au: The Everyday City and Globalisation http://www.milkbar.com.au	“Milkbar.com.au: The Everyday City and Globalisation is a project that seeks to uncover the stories and concerns of some of the local residents of Fitzroy; an inner city Australian community (completed October 2002). A number of characters within the suburb were first interviewed with a video camera and then the interviews were indexed and contextualised within a ‘globalisation analysis engine’ (for lack of a better description). The video can be searched and arranged and then rearranged to uncover some of the mythologies of Fitzroy within the larger discussions of ‘globalisation’. In essence, the purpose of the project is to create an ‘interactive-video-documentary’ of a local, inner-city community in a significant period of change and to try and understand much of this change. It is an attempt to critically objectify ‘globalisation’ at a local level through some of the (heuristic) mechanisms of new media tools and to try and advance the hypertextual practice of using these tools for online oral history.”
	Marshall, S. (2003) Exploring Change: The creation of a hypermedia ethnography for the presentation and ‘re-presentation’ of research on distance education in Swaziland. Central Queensland University	“This thesis addresses the role that hypermedia can play in an ethnographic study of the introduction of distance education in Swaziland. The thesis itself comprises a mixed-genre hypermedia ethnography. It is a “re-presentation” of a portion of the world populated with many voices and stories speaking to us about the introduction of distance education at the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) during 1996 to 1998. … As a bricoleur theorist, I used hypermedia as the tool with which to explore, “cobble” and “assemble” a mixed genre ethnographic bricolage. I called this the “Swazi Econet” – in which polyvocality and multiple perceptions of the project reality are “re-presented” in a complex web with data (voices) hyperlinked to the various interpretations (stories). The voices and stories are presented in various genres and media. Thus, the Swazi Econet is an interactive, hypermedia, multi-vocal, multi-media, mixed genre ethnography.”
	Crickenberger, H. M. (2007). The Arcades Project http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/	“This essay introduces an online experiment in the composition of scholarly hypertext that resulted in a website entitled The Arcades Project. … [This website] serves as an example of what Benjamin identifies as “the structure of awakening.” This concept of structure is then combined with the call by many Benjamin scholars to respond to his work, not through analysis and argument, but through continuation. My response takes the form of this website.”
	Vaillancourt, G. (2009). Mentoring Apprentice Music Therapists for Peace and Social Justice through Community Music Therapy: An Arts-Based Study http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/	Winner of an NDLTD ETD Award in 2009 this thesis uses audio and visual files throughout the thesis in order to reveal: ” …some of the critical themes in the experiences and relationships that apprentice music therapists have with community music therapy, peace, social justice, leadership, and mentorship. Individual interviews were conducted with apprentice music therapists who participated in a co-researchers’ group experience using arts-based research (ABR) and participatory action research (PAR). Principles and foundations for a future model of practice in CoMT for peace and social justice emerged through ABR and phenomenology.”

Examples of Ethnographic Hypermedia Environments

The Cardiff School of Social Sicences Hypermedia and Qualitative Research (Figure 2) have produced examples of ethnographic hypermedia environments (EHEs) that form invaluable models for what an EHE may look like and how it may be re-presented in a dissertation or other scholarly work. Their work is quite significant because ethnographic studies as a whole are underrepresented online. When they are online, it is often supplementary to a book text (such as Points of Viewing Children’s Thinking, see Figure 2) or in the form of teaching/learning materials (such as in the case of many digital histories). Ethnographies such as Folkvine: Florida’s Art and Artists on the Web are quite unique although archives of ‘raw’ qualitative data are becoming more popular (see for example ESDS Qualidata and Nines.org). However, a data archive alone is not an ethnography (EHE or otherwise), even if those data were collected and collated using ethnographic methods. There must also be some level of authorship (analysis and synthesis) of those data in order to (re)present an ethnography.

There are many possible reasons for the scarcity of publicly accessible hypermedia ethnographies, in the form of dissertations or other academic texts. It could be because it is a fairly new medium and ethnographies take a long time to construct; certain design and web skills are needed by the research team; confidentiality agreements and privacy concerns may influence the ethnographer’s choice of publication; and/or the research purpose and questions may not be best served as an online text. Or, it could also be because the EHE itself is often treated as data and something to be referred to in an analytic text, rather than something to be presented in its entirety as a research product in and of itself. In other words, the EHE may be treated solely as an archival and analysis tool rather than as a presentation and re-presentation tool as well.

The distinction between what is an ethnography and what is a digital history is also blurred in online environments. Many digital histories, such as those produced by The Centre of History and New Media at George Mason University, present exhibits based on primary sources in a data archive. Analysis and synthesis of those data may be in a variety of forms, including essay, narrative, play and/or other descriptive texts. A distinction may be that an ethnography is based on and represents the present and not the past, but how quickly time flies! What is a representation of life today may well be a preservation of today’s life for tomorrow. In any case, both ‘true’ online ethnographies (identified as such by the author) and digital histories form useful models for the presentation and representation of research data produced or obtained through ethnographic methods. With some stylistic and structural changes, these texts may also form useful models for an innovative ETD.

	Cardiff School of Social Sciences Hypermedia and Qualitative Research http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/hyper/index.html	The Cardiff School of Social Sciences Hypermedia and Qualitative Research is the ‘home’ of hypermedia ethngraphy and project teams there have developed (and used!) hypermedia ethnographies in their educational research. Their website contains information on three projects: The Production of Hypermedia Ethnography by Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Bella Dicks and Bruce Mason. This project ran between 1997-1999 and aimed to explore the implications of applying a “hypertext strategy” to all phases of qualitative research. Ethnography for the Digital Age by Amanda Coffey, Bella Dicks, Bruce Mason, Emma Renold, Bambo Soyinka and Matthew Williams. The aim of this project was to “address the theoretical, methodological and empirical implications for undertaking substantive qualitative research that exploits the full possibilities of contemporary information and communication technologies”. The project ran from 2002-2004. Methodological Issues in Qualitative Data Sharing and Archiving by Amanda Coffey, Bella Dicks, Matthew Williams and Bruce Mason. This is the most recent project of the school and it aims to explore and develop protocols for the archiving and sharing of qualitative multi-media datasets. Various examples of EHEs developed for The Projection of Hypermedia Ethnography project are available through this site.
	Nines.orgNineteenth Century Scholarship Online http://www.nines.org	Nines.org is a collection of online projects related to nineteenth century scholarship. There are many examples within this database of online ethnographies in the form of digital histories. Some of the projects are just archives of data, others have ‘exhibits’ presenting guided readings of the data.
	Goldman-Segall, R. (1997) Points of Viewing Children’s Thinking. http://www.pointsofviewing.com/index.html	Points of Viewing Children’s Thinking is an ethnographic study of the computer culture of school children. As a visual ethnographer, Goldman-Segall wanted her ethnography to extend beyond the book by the use of audio-visual materials that allow the reader to gain more of an insight to the scene. To do this she created an associated website with extensive video clips. A reader can visit the site, type in the page number of the reference, and watch the relevant video clip. It is also possible to leave comments about the video clip for future viewers directly on the website. This is an example of a website acting as a ‘digital appendix’ to the print text.
	Folkvine: Florida’s Art and Artists on the Web http://www.folkvine.ucf.edu	Folkvine is an excellent example of a highly visual online ethnography and archive of artists in Florida. In the first two years, the authors documented the work and lives of seven different artists. It has since been extended to include guides to assist readers of the ethnography, and profiles of further artists. “Folkvine’s goal is to find ways to open up the experience of Florida art and artists to a wider audience through the innovative use of community gatherings and the web. The group hopes to change the sometimes isolating way we think about art and how we present the stories of artists’ lives and their work.”
	Centre for History and New Media at George Mason University http://chnm.gmu.edu/	The Centre for History and New Media at George Mason University have developed a number of digital histories in the form of interactive website. Not only are primary sources searchable, but users can also construct their own histories or view guided interpretations (secondary analyses or case studies) of the data.

My contribution

I intend to author an innovative ETD that takes advantage of Web 2.0 technologies. This extends and builds upon examples of ETDs produced by doctoral candidates in the past, and also the work of ethnographers who have produced hypermedia texts (such as the Cardiff School) by taking both the writing process and the writing product online. Katz (2004, p. 9) defines innovative ETDs as “those that are full-blown innovative hypermedia documents including text integrated with sounds, movies, or simulations.” This extends the definition of ETDs given by the National Library of Australia above because there is an emphasis on the integration of digital materials. They are part of the text itself and are designed to be read’as such rather than being add-ons or optional extras (such as in an appendix or accompanying CD-ROM). My ETD will be designed to be read online and will make use of Web 2.0 technologies in order to enhance interactivity and opportunities for reader-authorship. I am also writing it online (in the ‘cloud’) and so it is very much a ‘net native’ ETD in terms of both process and product. Data for my research project have been archived in an online database powered by Omeka using Dublin Core metadata standards. All data are in common web-friendly formats and can be ‘mashed up’ in a variety of ways, allowing me not only to hyperlink but also to embed those data in the text itself if appropriate. The use of flexible formats and a content management system like Omeka for not only data archival but also exhibition also allows for different styles of readership, and opens up possibilities for reader-authorship.

There will be three methods of ‘reading’ my ETD, each with different levels of guidance. Firstly, readers may access it as a linear text (following a ‘traditional’ dissertation format but with integrated audio-visual materials and hyperlinks to source data). Secondly, they may read summaries and ‘snapshots’ of the research findings, allowing for quick exploration of key themes. Finally, they may choose to explore the data unguided and author their own ethnography by ‘favouriting’ certain elements and creating a ‘poster’ of their findings. The first ‘reading style’ will adhere to established doctoral dissertation conventions for examination purposes (with an online twist), and the second will be very similar to websites that often accompany research projects. The third style, however, is where my ETD will be quite innovative and ‘push the boundaries’ of how we define theses and dissertations. The boundaries between data, analysis and synthesis are certainly blurred in this approach, but it is in keeping with the purpose of my research study, which was to explore the use of ICTs for learning and teaching Languages in technology-enhanced public schools. My ETD will invite the reader to explore the research questions either by being directly lead by the author, by reading alongside the author, or by becoming authors themselves.

Problems and issues

The purpose of writing a dissertation as a doctoral student is to demonstrate one’s scholarly aptitude and make a potential ‘contribution to knowledge.’ The dissertation presents the author’s research and findings in support of candidature for a degree or professional qualification and it is an examinable text. A potential problem in choosing an ETD format then, particularly an online hypertextual one, is that the examiners must be willing and able to read the ETD in that form and examine it. Navigational aids must also be very clear so that the thesis is presented clearly throughout the dissertation, no matter the path the examiner may take.

Hypertext potentially opens up the text through multiple linking, allowing the reader the opportunity to generate unpredictable reading paths. Given this, how does an author, especially one dealing with academic argumentation, simultaneously orient a reader towards intended readings as well as allow a reader to discover his or her own pathways through the hypertext? (Dicks et al., 2004, p. 64)

I intend to achieve this by having three clearly defined reading pathways through the ETD, as outlined earlier. The first, fully-lead version, will be the one intended for examination. Whether the examiner chooses to read it as a linear text or to explore some of the hyperlinks and embedded materials is akin to them flipping backwards and forwards through a printed book. A second area of concern is the rate of technological change in the field. The content management system and the associated plugins I am currently using for writing and displaying my research did not exist when I began my studies three years ago. What is possible (and easy) to do on the web is always changing, and so too are readers’ expectations. As Thomson lamented in 1996, “A decision to create a thesis in HTML optimized for viewing using Netscape Navigator will probably seem quaint or perhaps willfully peverse in ten years – or five, or two…” I feel much the same way about using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and (X)HTML! Thomson goes on to explain that, “There is also the possibility that even if a hypertext thesis survives in an accessible form, the various external texts to which it is linked may not — and it may be impossible to relocate them. In this regard the materiality of printed works does have its advantages.” This is a recognised problem in online hypermedia authoring, and although it is possible to automate routine checking of hyperlinks, no doubt some links will die. I do not anticipate this being too much of a problem, however, because a) it is possible to view archived versions of websites through Google’s services, and b) my thesis is based on primary data, which are archived as part of the ETD itself, and does not rely on secondary online sources alone.

Concluding thoughts

Each year, the New Media Consortium produces The Horizon Report in which the authors identify and describe six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within the next one, two-to three, and five years. When I began my ‘research journey’ in 2008, I used this report to guide my proposed research methods (especially in terms of specific tools) and to help me ‘think forward’ as to how my dissertation might best make a ‘contribution to knowledge’. The 2008 Horizon Report drew attention to grass roots video and collaboration webs (one year or less); mobile broadband and data mashups (two to three years); collective intelligence and social operating systems (four to five years). It seemed that exploring these tools (methodology) as well as exploring the setting (case studies) would be a good ‘contribution,’ especially since research on technology settings is so quickly outdated: My contribution would be more valuable if it were both methodological and substantive. And so to explore the use of technology to research technology, I used each of the tools predicted by the Horizon Report (amongst others) in different ways during my research. Now when it comes time to re-presenting the findings on both methodology and case studies, an ETD format is most approrpriate. The Horizon Report also pointed towards change in academic scholarship, especially in terms of digital formats being increasingly accepted and normalised, which we are beginning to see three years on. The latest report’s predictions are also in keeping with this trend. As electronic technologies develop, reading and writing are also changing, and may change yet still in unforseeable ways.

We don’t know how much new technologies will change our conception of scholarship. Only by allowing graduate students and their committees the flexibility to experiment with new forms, and by developing guidelines that can sustain change, will we find out (Weisser & Walker, 1997, para. 10 ).

Katz (2004) is more pessimistic in his advice by saying that “For the near future, arguing for the value of innovative hypermedia ETDs will, in the humanities, be a losing battle, but those who persist will, eventually, reap the rewards of foresight” (p. 18). I have found, so far, that preparing an innovative ETD has given me great experience (read: sharp learning curve!) in to web publishing; the myriad of ethical concerns and dilemmas associated with working and presenting online; and has had some very unexpected outcomes in terms of personal (learning) networking. I believe that, in the end, it does not really matter if my dissertation ends up being submitted as an innovative ETD or as a “print friendly” version alone because authoring an innovative ETD has still been a worthy exercise in scholarship for the insight the foresight has given me. The purpose of my study was to explore, and so I have, and I inite the reader to explore with me. As Denzin and Lincoln (2000) concluded in their analysis of qualitative research movements, “We are in a new age where messy, uncertain, multivoiced texts, cultural criticism, and new experimental works will become more common, as will more reflexive forms of fieldwork, analysis, and intertextual representation” (pp. 23-24). My work is certainly “messy,” “uncertain,” “multivoiced,” and “experimental.” It is only fitting that I aim to present a reflexive, analytical, and intertextual innovative electronic thesis and dissertation.

References

Crickenberger, H. M. (2007). The arcades project project or the rhetoric of hypertext. Retrieved from http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/about/about-nav.html

Dicks, B., Mason, B., Coffey, A. J., & Atkinson, P. A. (2005). Qualitative research and hypermedia: Ethnography for the digital age. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Fishman, B. J. (1989). The hypertext thesis: A first experiment. Retrieved from http://www.victorianweb.org/neovictorian/gswift/htplan.html

Fox, E. A., Moxley, J. M., & Weisser, C. R. (Eds.). (2004). Electronic theses and dissertations: A sourcebook for educators, students, and librarians. New York: Marcel Dekker Inc.

Goldman-Segall, R. (1997). Points of viewing children’s thinking. Retrieved from http://www.pointsofviewing.com/index.html

Halaska, R. C. (1998). Budget builder analysis. Retrieved from http://www.socialdesign.org/bbanalysis/

Johnson, L. F., Levine, A., & Smith, R. S. (2008). 2008 horizon report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/horizon/2008/report

Katz, S. (2004). Innovative hypermedia ETDs and employment in the humanities. In E. A. Fox, S. Feizabadi, J. M. Moxley, & C. R. Weisser (Eds.), Electronic theses and dissertations: A sourcebook for educators, students, and librarians (pp. 9-18). New York: Marcel Dekker.

Marshall, S. (2003). Exploring change: The creation of a hypermedia ethnography for the presentation and ‘re-presentation’ of research on distance education in Swaziland (Doctoral thesis, Central Queensland University, Queensland, Australia).

Montana State University. (2007). What is an ETD? Retrieved from http://www.montana.edu/etd/whatis.shtml

National Library of Australia. (n.d.). PADI: Preserving access to digital information. Retrieved from http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/topics/232.html

Pavani, A. M. B. (2007). Looking at ETDs from different points of view. Presented at the ETD 2007: Added values to e-theses conference, Uppsala, Sweden: NDLTD. Retrieved from http://epc.ub.uu.se/etd2007/files/papers/paper-50.pdf

Thomson, D. (1996). Unpacking my television: Towards a hypertextual dissertation. TEXT Technology, 6(3). Retrieved from http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/chwp/thomson/

Weisser, C. R., & Walker, J. R. (1997). Electronic theses and dissertations: Digitizng scholarship for its own sake. The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 3(2). doi:10.3998/3336451.0003.209

Vaillancourt, G. (2009). Mentoring apprentice music therapists for peace and social justice through community music therapy: An arts-based study (Doctoral thesis, Antioch University). Retrieved from http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1255546013

Penny:	So when you think of “ICTs”, what do you think of? What comes to mind?
Christy:	Computers.
Penny:	Computers? What else?
Alistair:	A lot of big work.
Penny:	Big work? What do you mean?
Alistair:	A lot, like piles on ya? Like you got these really big essays and… all sorts of things to do. It’s not like one page or anything anymoreit’s like, a mini book or something.
Penny:	Ahhh.
Courtney:	Ten pages.
Alistair:	Like ten pages.
Penny:	That’s interesting. So when you think of technologies, you think of limitless scope.
Alistair:	Yeh.
Christy:	Like lots and lots and lots and lots of work.

This sentiment was shared with other students in the other three case-study schools. Although the teachers may associate “fun” with ICTs (see my previous post on the topic), students thought “more work.” And I can see where they’re coming from! It is true, the work assigned when using ICTs is often project work. This may be due to logistical reasons (the heavily booked computer lab being reserved far in advance) or simply because the task lends itself to particular ICTs or vice versa such as creating a digital story, video recording a profile, writing an extended text and so on. These are all tasks that are made easier with ICTs and so tend to be popular. But in prioritising ICT use for such ‘”big work” and not (having the opportunity to?) normalise it in everyday learning  the students saw ICTs in the classroom as not necessarily being “Other” but as being “big work” and lots of it. Work was work was work to them – no matter whether it be with pen’n'paper, mp3 player or DVD player – but with ICTs it was often more work.

I find this sentiment (experience?) interesting, and one to keep in mind when exploring the issue of “fun”. Just because I’m writing this post on an online blog doesn’t make it more “fun” than writing it in my paper journal. Having the privilege of using a word processor to write a journal article (or thesis!) doesn’t make that task more “fun.” And as Tom Johnson recently blogged, pencils aren’t always fun either. What changes with using ICTs (and the fun part for me!) is the prospective/potential audience and the ease of editing, publishing and revis(it)ing. But it’s still big work (especially the thesis!), and there’s certainly lots of it.

One of the messages it really drives home for me is the importance of having a variety of accessible professional learning opportunities available to teachers… and having them know about them. At the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Association (AFMLTA) Conference last year, I gave a presentation on my work in progress and what I had discovered from two case study sites. I didn’t offer an analysis of the issues, rather I literally let the data speak for themselves, the data being my research participants. One issue that came across quite strongly was that they felt inadequately supported in developing their ICT skills. The Department of Education WA does actually offer a great deal of professional learning opportunities in the area of ICT and other facets of teachers’ work, especially to schools in the LwICT and SLwICT Projects. Teachers can also apply to attend external courses, conferences, and seminars etc. that they hear about. However, these opportunities are often general in nature, or unknown to the Language teacher who may be working across multiple sites and who is often independent, without a Head of Learning Area or departmental team. The flow of communication about professional learning opportunities just may not reach Language teachers if they are not proactive in seeking this information out.

So back to the video clip. Why is it particularly relevant to what I have discovered during my research? One of the strategies in place for teacher ICT skill development is through the Department’s portal. There are a variety of online courses available to all teachers, covering many topics and relate back to pedagogical skills and knowledge. It’s a fair offering. But, just like in the clip above, you need to have the ICT skills to be able to access those resources in the first place. And the time. None of my participants had been able to do so.

There simply need to be more (tailored) opportunities for Language teachers’ needs with time provided to engage in the learning. And it needs to be accessible. There is so much potential for learning and teaching languages with ICTs and the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is well established. It is a shame that it has not really been engaged with by most of the teachers involved in my study and, through them, their learners. This is something that needs to change.

One theme emerging is the idea of fun. The students talk about it, the teachers talk about it, and the literature… doesn’t talk about it (much). In fact, if you do a Google search (Scholar or not) on “fun” and “education” or “fun” and “learning,” most of the results are to do with computer games. Many others are to do with Physical Education. If you do a more refined search by learning area or discipline, you get articles related to “fun” in those areas (often because it’s in the title) but the overwhelming majority of scholarly works seem to be around games of both the virtual and physical nature. So what is meant by “fun,” then? What makes learning “fun” and why does it keep emerging in my research? And why didn’t I pick up on it sooner and ask better questions about it?

Alas, that’s the problem (beauty?) with waiting for themes to emerge rather than starting out with a testable hypothesis.  It’s never straight-forward, and oft-times leaves the researcher with more questions than answers. Many of the interview questions I did ask invited participants to talk about what they “liked” or “enjoyed” in learning/teaching languages with ICTs and so it may not be surprising that “fun” came up a lot. But it came up in interesting ways.  Teachers would use “fun” as a justification for a unit of work:

“It has, it has to hold some relevance to them. Why do I do festivals? Festivals because, you know, like it’s fun, it’s enjoyable stuff, it’s parades, it’s, you know, stuff that appeals to children.”

Or a reason for choosing one professional learning workshop over another:

“Penny: But you already know a lot about PowerPoint
Anna: Yeh I know, but like…
Penny: So why do you want to do more about PowerPoint?
Anna: Yeh but, these are like, but these are like computer games. I just thought, “Fun, computer games!” I, to be honest, I looked at voki.com and flickr.com and went, “What the hell is that?”"

But the students’ conceptualisation of “fun” was different. They didn’t equate “fun” with games, parades, and “appealing stuff” alone but rather that “fun” in class was due to variety and achieving the purpose of being there, i.e. learning the language:

“Crystal : And you don’t get stuck doing the same thing, which is like really boring after a while.
Kate: Yeh, you kind of get like a really big variety.
Penny: OK.
John: And it’s fun.
Penny: It’s fun. Yeh.
Jake: Yeh.
Kate: Yeh.
Penny: What makes it fun?
Crystal: Just learning.
Jake: Because um you learn different games and how to play. And, and it’s got language in it. We learn a different language.”

For the students interviewed, work was work. It didn’t really matter if it had flashy graphics or a cute cartoon character named Budi helping them along, it was still work.  Some of the teacher participants, however, believed that the drill-based games such as the Language Market series or games on Languages Online were “fun” (which is why they used them), and I wonder what they based their evaluations on.  These games have cutesey graphics, “motivating” sounds, and certainly “look like fun” but in my observations I noted that students were often clicking random objects and completing levels through guess-work (trial-and-error clicking) rather than actually engaging in the intended vocabulary practice and testing. Students rarely described these computer games as “fun” (although the physical games were certainly described as such!!) but rather described their enjoyment of more active tasks where they were required to produce something of their own (e.g. a video, a presentation) and interact with others. They enjoyed acting and interacting with heaps of variety – that’s what made learning “fun”.

Screen shot from The Language Market Stage A for Indonesian. http://www.thelanguagemarket.com/ This software was used by all Indonesian classes observed in this research project.

Back to the literature. What do others have to say about “fun”? Malone (1981), in his work on computer games and fun, tells us that attributes of challenge, fantasy and curiosity are key components of “fun” which in turn inform his theory of intrinsically motivating instruction.  This work has been extended by other authors (Carroll 2004; Draper, 1999; MacFarlane et al., 2005), and attributes of immersion, reflection, play and flow, collaboration, learner control, curiosity, fantasy, and challenge have further been identified as key elements of “fun”.  Going into these attributes is beyond the scope of this blog post (!) but I find it interesting to think about these attributes in relation to what I have observed in classrooms, what teachers and students have told me in interviews, and what they describe as “fun” and why.  There certainly seems to be a divide between what the teachers percieve to be fun, and what the students do.  Draper’s (1999) work in which he analyses fun as a candidate software requirement is interesting to reflect on given this:

“If you ask adult learners whether their educational learning is fun, they often hesitate, and hesitate more than if you ask whether they are enjoying it. This is because it involves more effort than most things described as “fun”, but also can be more deeply satisfying because it can engage much deeper goals. It is this deeper engagement we should be aiming for where possible” (p. 121).

And it is that deeper engagement that the students craved.  Indeed, thinking about what my teacher participants said, perhaps there isn’t really a divide.  They certainly craved it as well. When the teachers described for me what good learning with ICTs looks like/sounds like/feels like, it was all about that sense of engagement.  It was not necessarily about “fun,” although they often talked about “fun” in relation to a rationale on using ICT in the first place.

So, what is “fun”? What makes language learning “fun”? Or should we be asking a different question? What makes language learning (with or without ICTs) immersive, reflective, playful, flowing, collaborative, personalised, curious, fantastic, and challenging? I’m going to follow the advice of some of my student participants in thinking about all of this, and “just have fun with it.”

Hear for yourself: