How to start? Small it seems!
The first walking semianr was sunny, with a walk around the woodland trail. Ibrar Bhatt joined from the beginning, Mary Hamilton tracked us downvia mobile phone calls but a lesson was learned: a slightly later departure would have brought Andy Yuille along too.
The walk – in words and pictures:
The woodland trail is a really pleasant walk, though often dominated by traffic noise from the M6 or A6. However the corner of campus these pictures are taken from by the brook ar perhaps the most pleasant.
Location marker (via ATLAS.ti App – the same marker for both)
Pictures by Mary:
Conversational topics -how do we like to start?
The discussion topic was “how to start” – a paper, a presentation or another “output”.
There was a lot of consensus about starting with data – kicking off with a vignette (as say Etienne Wenger does so well in “Communities of Practice“). Bringing people straight in to the data and its richness and then working “back” from that was certainly the popular approach in our work and we felt helped to intrigue and entangle the reader immediately and lead them through to a solution. One question posed was: Could this be applied to quantitative approaches though? Could you start with data and tables – or is it restricted to a qualitative “thick description”.
A surprising level of consensus or shared values in a small group? Or perhaps a new standard to supplant the lit review – probelm – results – discussion – conclusion “standard” format?
Walking and talking makes such explorations different and mobilisies thinking. Onwards and upwards with the next one.