Thesis Meeting Field Notes (1)

Thesis meeting: Jan. 25, 2013 (10:30am)

Sorry that these notes are a bit dense, but it was my only other academic event other than my other ed. class that occured between Thurs. and Tues. 

• The meeting is in the psych lounge, instead of the normal location, my advisor’s (Prof. B) office.
• There are 3 people present including myself, my thesis advisor, Prof. B, and my thesis partner Rebecca.
• It is our first meeting of the semester.  Our last meeting ended with my advisor holding individual meetings with Rebecca and I.  During that meeting I went over the first draft of the first half of my thesis with Prof. B’s edits.
• In the current meeting, Prof. B explains our outline is for the semester, and what our goals are over the next 2 weeks.
  • He explained how we would begin our IRB proposal this week.  Once that is completed, and approved, we will create the online version of the survey.  Once the survey is created, we will post it on a hosting website, for the public and Bi-Co to access, and complete.  We will be collecting data in February for about 2 weeks.  Once the data is collected, we will analyze it.  Complete analysis will take approximately another 2 weeks to organize the data, and sift through the to see if we observe any trends.  Once we analyze all of the data, we will develop our conclusions, and begin writing the second half of our theses, which includes reporting the results, making conclusions, and assessing what research should be done in the future.
  • After Prof. B explained the semester timeline, I asked if he could go into detail further about the IRB proposal process.  He explained that we would use a proposal template to present our study, in addition to providing the IRB board with all of our measures, and a hardcopy of our survey.  He explained the 3 types of reviews for studies. 
  • Prof. B explained that we should work on creating our IRB proposal this week, so he could revise it and submit it within the next week and half.  He said that he would email us the template in the next few days.Rebecca and I decided we would meet early next week to begin organizing our measures and completing the template to make it specific to our study.We closed the meeting knowing what our responsibilities are for the week.  Rebecca and I planned to meet Tuesday during the day.
• This meeting was different from our regular meetings because it wasn’t as interactive as it normally is because it was our first week back, the beginning of the second phase of our thesis.  Therefore, there was less brainstorming, and questions’ being asked than is commonplace for our meetings.  It was primarily instructional/lecture style led by Prof. B, while it is usually interactive and guided by everyone at the meeting.
• What I took away from the meeting: Through the timeline that Prof. B provided us, I am able to now see the long-term and short-term goals for our theses, and specifically our study timeline.  I can now begin the establish what weeks in the semester will be extremely busy, and when I will have more time. This allows me to better plan out thesis, as well as other assignments that I have for other courses.