Well, I am very thrilled to say that my formal offer for a 4 year funded studentship from the UK Open University arrived over the summer and I have accepted it. It is simultaneously my dream come true and the culmination of many long years of developing ideas in my professional life, and creating a sufficiently solid research proposal. My topic concerns the use of technology-enabled learning networks to achieve practical organisational improvement outcomes, in the not-for-profit sector. That is, how organisations learn collaboratively how to do things better, across different contexts and boundaries. It's very inter-disciplinary. I plan to use some form of technology-enabled action research, and hopefully to be pretty creative about it.
So here we are, at the beginning of the new journey - and yes already feeling on top of the world for having got this far :-) I can now identify myself as a full time PhD Research Student and feel very fulfilled about that.
Bring it on, been planning it long enough. Am I in blissful ignorance of the trials ahead or just looking forward to a demanding, exciting, tough and gritty challenge? Sounds like the rest of life! If I am a part of a vibrant research community, get to grips with my research process and how to tackle my question, am backed up with necessary resources and have my family behind me, then I trust I should be a pretty good bet. I like this Slideshare from a lady called Jody Martin at the Australian Catholic University to get me going, maybe some others will like it as well :-)
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