Mary-Helen Ward
|
BA(Massey), MA(Hons)(Massey), MPhil(Massey) PhD candidate |
Email: Phone: 9351 7399 Fax: Building.Room: . |
Research project description
My thesis title is "Living in Liminal Space: A journey in accidental pedagogy."
My study is a reflexive ethnography which investigates the experience of being a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. Much has been written about the PhD, for example federal government reports and policy documents; theory on the pedagogical underpinnings and the management of the degree in Australia; internal university policies, procedures and plans; supervisor training courses and faculty documents. However, very little of this has taken into account the lived experience of PhD students. In my project, a group of students kept blogs (online diaries) of their progress and process for over a year, and read and commented on each others’ blogs. This has created a rich textual record of what and how they learned in this time which, in my thesis, will be re-presented as commentary on what has been said about the PhD in other documents and publications.
I am a very mature student, having already raised a family and completed two Masters degrees in New Zealand before emigrating to Sydney in the late 1990s. Having worked at Massey University in New Zealand as an editor of Distance Education, I have worked as an educational designer at several professional colleges in Sydney before coming to Sydney Uni in 2004 to work in the eLearning team. I am now the Education Design Manager for Sciences and Technology at Sydney eLearning, and fit my PhD studies in at evenings and weekends.
Visit Mary-Helen's PhD blog http://manainkblog.typepad.com/faultlines
Thesis work
| Project title | Degree | Supervisor |
|---|---|---|
| Living in liminal space: a journey in accidental pedagogy | PhD | Professor Peter Goodyear |
Selected publications
Book chapters
- Ward, M-H. (2009). Thoughts on blogging as an ethnographic tool.. In InSrinivasan, M.I. and Mathur R.R. (Eds.), Ethnography and the Internet: An exploration. Hyderabad, India: Icfai University Press.
Journal articles
- Ward, M-H, West, S., Atkinson, S. and Peat, M. (2010). Making it real: Project managing strategic e-learning development processes in a large, campus-based University. Journal of Distance Education, 24(1).
- Ward, M-H and West, S.H. (2008). Blogging PhD Candidature: Revealing the Pedagogy.. International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, 6(1).
Conference papers
- Ward, M-H. (2010). Tracking the Tidal Flows: Themes of QPR conference presentations 1994-2008. In Kiley, M. & Mullins, G. Educating researchers for the 21st Century (pp. 271–271). Adelaide, 13-15 April 2010.
- Ward, M-H West, S.H. Leahy, G. (2010). Integrating elearning into the student experience: the role of faculty representatives. In Devlin, M. Nagy, J. Lichtenberg, A. HERDSA 2010 - Reshaping Higher Education. Melbourne, 6-9 July 2010.
- Ward, M-H. (2006). Thoughts on blogging as an ethnographic tool. In Markauskaite, L., Goodyear, P. & Reimann, P. (Eds) Proceedings of ascilite 2006 - Who's Learning? Whose Technology? (pp. 843–851). University of Sydney, 3-6 December 2006.
Other
- Ward, M-H. (2010). Riding the Tsunami: Themes of papers at Quality in Postgraduate Research conferences, 1994-2008 (Poster presented at Quality in Postgraduate Research conferences, 2010), Adelaide, SA.