Annabelle Nelson
Faculty Assessment Guidelines
Areas of Assessment:
KA2-Human Development, KA5-Theories of Personality and KA-8 Human
Learning & Motivation. Please see my own bibliographies, charts and
comments for KA2 and KA8 on FELIX Knowledge Area Study Guides. For KA5,
I am primarily interested in a neo Jungian approach from people like
Edinger (Ego and Archetype), Woodman (Dancing in the Flames) and von
Franz (An Interpretation of Fairy Tales).
Areas of Specialty
learning theory, anti racism, consciousness studies, multicultural education, health prevention, storytelling, relationship of emotional to spiritual development, spiritual development, imagery, non-profit organizational development, grant writing.
Contact Information
Faculty contact information is on the School of Human and Organization Development. If you need to send me info, please check that site for current info. I am readily available on e-mail. I usually check daily. However, at times, I travel, and there may be at most a week in responding to student messages. I usually take three to four weeks to write evaluations on work. Phone contact is fine, and I strongly prefer being called during working hours, please see the FELIX directory for my current home office number. Don't hesitate to call or e mail me with questions. I am glad for you to call me at anytime during work hours to discuss your issues. If I am not there please leave a time, day and phone call when I can call you back. Morning is usually a good time to catch me. Also I am very open to setting up phone meetings.
Knowledge Assessments
I believe that learning is dynamic and self generating, so I am very open to discussing your learning interests, looking at drafts of contracts, and looking at drafts of papers. Particularly for depth papers, I recommend sending me a detailed, bulleted outline for feedback before writing the whole paper.
Please buy an APA manual early in your career at Fielding, and consult it for completing your references. You might as well begin using correct APA style with your early papers so that your dissertation will easily conform to that style.
Please when you write your papers, take notes on each reading, with the complete reference on the top of notes. Then go back and highlight important points, and create a mind map of connecting themes across your notes. (See Tony Buzan, Use Both Sides of Your Brain). I have sample mind maps on my web site, annabellenelson.com. Then create an outline for your paper and write from the outline. Please do not write a "book report" where you are telling me what the author said. Organize your paper by theme or topic with more than one reference per paragraph.
What I Like to See in Assessment:
1. References: I am very big on reading original seminal/ovarian works in the field, and also on doing data base searches so that the references are a mix of original writings and current articles in the field. Fielding Library Services has excellent search resources. Therefore when colleagues create their assessment contracts, I recommend including some original references, as well as a few current journal articles. Then of course, as the assessment is completed, the references will grow, so I am just looking for a few books and articles in each of the overview and depth area to let me know what direction you are taking. I am glad to give suggestions on reading, but expect library research as well.
2. Deliverables: For your assessment contract I like it when you are explicit as to what you will be turning in to demonstrate your learning.. It is also helpful to me to have an approximate date of when you plan to turn in each item.
3. Specificity of Contract: I do not require a lot of writing on the contract. A few sentences about what you will be studying in each of the three areas with specific questions your want to answer, a few specific references with journal articles, and the specific deliverable with an approximate date of submission is all I need. The only other information I need is whether or not you want a grade, and the name of your mentor.
4. Modes of Expressing Learning: Since my specialty is learning theory, I am very interested in encouraging you to document and express your learning in a variety of modes. I am particularly interested in having you express your learning in nonverbal and metaphoric modes, since 90% of your brain activity is nonverbal. Therefore I will accept mind maps, collages, timelines, drawings, poems and other representations. Of course in a doctoral program synthesis and analytical expression are extremely important, so one piece of documentation should be writing, but a free write can be used as well as a paper.
This is my usual recommendation for assessment deliverables:
Overview: Detailed mindmap, based on at least three foundational theorists. See my bibs on FELIX Study Guides for each KA for books by these theorists.
Depth: Scholarly paper on specific topics with book and journal references, as well as showing synthesis and evaluation. Use at least two references per paragraph.
Applied: Non verbal of your own development, learning theory or personality.
5. Group Assessments: My mode for doing this is to set up a Fielding Discussion Forum for the assessment. We need to begin planning at least two months before the assessment. Students choose three theorists each and bring their mind maps to the session, as well as their collages of their applieds. They can also bring their papers if they want to complete the assessment before the weekend.
Dissertation Concept Papers
These are the sections I like to see in the dissertation concept. It can be 2-3 pages long:
Introduction: Why are you motivated to do this study?
Theorists or research that informs your work: Specific bullets of the theorists or research that inform your work.
Research Question: Please be as specific as possible
Name of Methodology
Number of participants, criteria for selecting participants, setting for research
Dissertation Proposal
Intro: Why I want to do this study? End with research question (Can be short, 3 pages)
Common errors: Repeating the literature review. Being too personal.
Chapter 1: Literature Review
This should focus on the pertinent aspects of literature and research that DIRECTLY RELATES to your research question. Use sub heads freely, connect the sections. End the review with a specific, explicit, substantive conclusion. Mind map across the research and the theorists so you can write about CONNECTIONS between the areas of literature. This is synthesis, which is what needs to be demonstrated in the literature review. The lit review should be like a funnel starting with general, high –level info about your topic and ending with the specifics about your research question. Use a graphic to show interrelations of literature. Basically you want to establish a base for what is known about the phenomenon you are studying, and how your specific research question fits in. How you are going to fill some gaps
Common errors: Short non-connected overviews of literature review areas. Too much personal info. You want a strong scholar’s voice, but you don’t want to include a lot of experience and opinions. No meaningful subheads. No specific summary. No logical flow. Saying that there is no research on this phenomenon, you can generalize from other similar research. Not including current research about the phenomenon. Not using recent references. Putting a bunch of references in prens after a point to show you know a lot.
Chapter 2: Methods
The methods chapter in the dissertation is designed so your committee can see exactly what you will do to collect your data. Where, when, in what setting, with whom, for how long, doing what? These are questions that should be self evident. You need to list number of participants, selection criteria for participants, include any protocols in appendix, You need to name and define your methodology briefly with a reference and possibly include a reference of a piece of research using a similar methodology, but not do a lit review on the methodology or justify using a qualitative method. You don’t need to convince us, smile. List your data sources (i.e. qualitative interviews, field notes, etc.). Spend several paragraphs on your data analysis procedures.
Common errors: Long lit reviews on qualitative methodology. Listing a number of methodologies and not making it clear you know the assumptions and methods of the methodologies you will use. Having info disorganized, so one can’t find easily number of participants, number of interviews, length of interviews, question protocol, what your data will actually be, how you will recruit and choose your participants. You don’t need your IRB application here.
Reference Errors: Citations in text don’t match reference list, not double space through list and within a reference, no hanging indent, all words of book title or journal article are capitalized, page number not given for a quote
Steps in Writing a Paper with Synthesis
1. Write on top of notes, or type in EndNotes or other software complete reference in APA style, make sure capitalization, punctuation, authors names are in APA format, don’t put yourself in a position where you have to go back and hunt references.
2. Take notes on references. Note any important quotes you like and include PAGE NUMBER in notes. Many learners don’t take notes and have many books and articles piled around their workspace. When it comes time to write, the learners spend hours and hours sorting through the original documents trying to find what they remembered reading somewhere.
3. Pull the notes from references that seem significant to you.
4. You may want to distill your notes to explicit bullet points from the notes, that seem important to you to remember and that you will want to include in writing.
5. Mind Map all the points from you bullet lists.
6. Draw connections across the mind map. This is SYNTHESIS, where you are seeing what is similar across authors.
7. Outline the sequence of points to write about from the mind map.
8. Write
9. Try to use more than one reference per paragraph. Very important, don’t use one reference for three pages.
APA TRICKS
APA 5th Editions Reference and Citation Style (number after type of citations is page number in the APA manual)
1. Book 248, Book with no author or editor 249
2. Edited Book, 2 authors 249, 7 authors 241 Journal article 240
3. Reference with no author, such as a government report 257
4. Order and style of headings and subheads 290
5. Article or chapter in edited book 252
6. Citation in text 207
7. Citations with 3, 4, or 5 authors in text 208
8. url reference of chapter or section of internet document 273
9. Citations with a series of studies in prens 212
10. Quotation listed in body of document 117
11. Format of reference list in terms of spacing, indentation, and capitalization (in general) 223
Mentoring
Here are things you can expect from me as a mentor:
1. Openness to any phone calls and emails on problem solving any issues that are affecting your program, family issues, planning sequence, lack of response from other faculty and how to approach them in an constructive, effective way, understanding degree requirements, understanding requirements for assessors, port review, comprehensive essays, dissertation questions, IRB, concept paper, dissertation proposal, dissertation, what KA’s to take, how to manage advanced KA’s, how to get unstuck, reference finding, changing mentors, building dissertation committee, etc.
2. Response within three days to phone calls and email, unless I am traveling. Please check away calendar if you haven’t heard from me for awhile.
3. Help with brainstorming areas of study in assessments or the dissertation.
4. Networking on references and people to help you.
5. Personal meetings at national sessions, please email three weeks in advance for appointment.
6. Phone meetings as initiated by the student. Please email a few potential times and I will respond.
7. Mentoring to complete the program including effective strategies, and how to fit your program within professional plan. If you continue with me as a mentor, moving into your dissertation work, then I would become your chair, at that point mentoring becomes much more interactive and contact becomes more frequent.
Don’t hesitate to write or call. I want to know what is going on … troubles, doubts, successes, impasses. Communication is good.