Penworks.Net

22/07/2022

Let’s talk about Questionnaires

Why are questionnaires always so badly designed? Why do people think it is easy to put a questionnaire together? This post considers the key problems in an honest, candid way. I see quite a lot of ‘quantitative’ research from various sources, both scientific (positivist) and humanities (interpretivist). I also see various random market research questionnaires about stuff like technology/ apps/...

Categories Blog/Learning & Teaching/PostDoc

06/05/2022

The Challenges of Peer Review

This post is about dealing with difficult peer review, particularly reviewers who are rude and patronising. It’s made up of three posts shared in Facebook and I reproduce largely intact. Dealing with negative peer review is always *interesting* The gatekeeping of academic work by others ‘in the field’ sounds good in theory but in practice can sometimes be an exercise...

Categories Blog/Learning & Teaching/PhD/PostDoc

20/02/2022

Data landscapes, perceived truths

This morning I woke up and listened to the excellent BBC world service documentary ‘Dark Patterns’. It’s 27 minutes of your time, and it’s very much worth it. It will introduce you to, if you’re not already familiar with, the dark patterns of digital interface design. I’ve been teaching stuff about dark patterns for the past few years any time...

Categories Audio/Blog/Featured

03/02/2022

Unwritten Stories of PhD

I write this post to document my own journey a little, and for the benefit of others who think they aren’t good enough, aren’t suitable or are ‘the wrong kind of person’ for doing this kind of thing. That was probably my own self-view. But I am now a Dr, and you could be too. (Longread) I was first pointed...

Categories Learning & Teaching/PhD

21/12/2021

It’s finally Xmas 2021

It’s finally Xmas 2021. We got here. All the covid, PhD, work, projects, hassle and stress are done. Free Christmas cards are here too. Download each set, you get A5 and A6 pre-made pdf for printing if you’re inclined, plus all the images to just email or message to your fabulous friends. There are two sets, a Generative Art set,...

Categories Blog/Featured/Images

22/03/2021

Managing project assets, deliverables and timelines

This post is about managing projects and the documents that come with them, using ad-hoc person-centred solutions. It’s not about Prince2 techniques or other strict top-down approaches. People are often involved in several projects at once and many can be document heavy and involve several people. These scenarios mean we need to find a practical system to manage assets, deliverables...

Categories Audio/Blog/Words/Work

08/02/2021

Selective democratisation of the arts: who needs your book, song, painting? No one, that’s who

When Toni Morrison said ‘write the book you want to read,’ she didn’t mean everybody. (Fran Lebowitz). I recently saw this statement in a social media feed. Momentarily I thought someone had singled something pithy out of the current Lebowitz programme being screened on UK television. But on a quick Google search I realised this is a billion-shared meme. Which...

Categories Blog/Ideas/Words

10/12/2020

Smart Learning really is a thing

Catching up on current happenings in smart urban creative and learning initiatives using digital interactions to engage with place and the city I’m following up again on my continuing academic assertion that situated digitally mediated creativity, perhaps especially writing (aka writing the smart city, hyperlocal publishing, ambient literature, twitterature …) is a real opportunity for learning and engaging with place...

Categories Blog/Ideas/Learning & Teaching

30/11/2020

Repair, re-use, renew, adapt, survive

It is more than a year since I had to reinstall my operating system on my sturdy MacBook Pro (2015 8gb RAM 128gb SSD, OS X Yosemite 10.10.5). Everything still works great, and I celebrate my own sheer bloodymindedness plus *desperate need* to achieve this. Well done me. I was just about to leave for London, ready to teach the...

Categories Blog/Featured

09/10/2020

Teaching in Pandemic Times

People are talking a lot on social media about their lives, more than ever. Indiscretions are made, but the light gets in when things get broken. Today I saw some posts on a teaching group in FB about losing hope, about not being able to deal with the ebbing away of student motivation, snide comments about their practice, endless pressure...

Categories Blog/Learning & Teaching/Work