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The KPEC schools' location

The locations of the 5 K-Perak E-Learning Cluster (KPEC) schools. Ipoh, Setiawan, Gerik, Kuala Kangsar and Taiping. Their distances from each other are from 30 km to 100 km apart. I have established rapport with these school since late 2007. How ever at that time I was not sure that they will be my participating schools. Three schools are primary and two are secondary.

The new research title

"Teachers adoption of knowledge management technologies (KMT) within a professional development context in Malaysia: An action research study" is my new approved title of my research.

My RP

Alahamdulillah. The defense session went very smoothly yesterday afternoon. It started at 3.35 pm chaired by Assoc Prof Dr Roslina Othman. Prof Dr Bakri & Dr Abdul Rahman Ahlan were the examiners. Also present were Assoc Prof Dr Mohamad Fauzan (my supervisor) and Dr Media as representative of IS Department. Prof Abu (ISHOD) could not make it. I prepared 26 slides for the presentation plus 20 more that were not in the presentation but could help me with the Q & A session. I was given 20 minutes only to present. But the presentation took more than 30 minutes. Of course I'm only halfway through the slides when Dr Roslina inform me that I have 10 minutes left. In that 10 I rushed to finish what I had prepared. You seem to have a lot to say but so little time. You see the best strategy was to highlight only the main critical point of your proposal. The rest is already in the RP submitted. And you must be ready to defend it.
The RP document I submitted on Jun 4th was a dateline document. I fully admit that it has a lot of short comings. Many actions and stances mentioned in it were not justified, so some of the questions were on those that have no justifications. It's not that I don't have them but it was not included (documented) due to the time constrain for me to beat the dateline (May 31st!).
The first question was on the research topic. Alhamdulillah, praised be to Allah that it was the question that we (I and Dr Fauzan) anticipated, as it was the weakest part of the proposal - NOT academic. For days, I search for a suitable topic to replace it. Alhamdulillah, it (the new topic) was accepted with minor changes (omission of some words). (to be continued)

My new research topic

After working on the theoretical framework it become more clearer the purpose & objective of my research (action research within the interpretive paradigm). So, the new proposed title is,
"Teachers KMT adoption and its impact on K-sharing practices: An action research study within the Malaysia Teachers professional development context."

Then, Shukry rephrase it for me to,
"Teachers adoption of knowledge management technologies and its impact on their k-sharing practices within a professional development context in Malaysia: An action research study." Yes I like this better.

Presentation made at faculty seminar

Date: June 5, 2009
I gave a presentation that day on Action Research (AR) in Information System (IS) research. We had a good discussion on the methodology of AR in IS research. IS research in KICT currently is predominantly survey and case study within the positivist paradigm. So far, no AR research conducted in KICT. In CS the research is more toward design research. As my research method is AR I think I should try to present something on AR to the faculty.
AR in IS is well established research method (slide 4). Betweem 1997 and 2007, a number of articles had been written by the major IS scholars on AR to established the validity & credibility of the research method in IS field. Their works have been cited beyond IS literature as a major contribution in the AR development.

In the discussion, Prof Bakri inquired on more current research reports (2008-2009). Unfortunately I did not made any search on the research trend in 2008/09. So, later searching into the ACM database I found at least 7 study in 2008. They are listed below.
2008:
1. Chapman & van der Merwe (2008). Contemplating systematic software reuse in a project-centric company. ACM ICP Series, Vol. 338.
2. Plummer et al. (2008) A wiki that knows where it is being used: insights from potential user. ACM SIGMIS Database.
3. Strazdins (2008). Applying the community of practice approach to individual IT projects. Conference in Research & Practice in IT series, Vol 315.
4. Hansen, Robertson, Wilson & Hall (2008). Using AR approach to design a telemedicine system for critical; care: a reflection. 20th Australasian Conference on CHI.
5. Chang, Hsu, Wang (2008). Action science approach to nonprofit housing service using web 2.0 mapping tools. 17th International Conference on WWW, Beijing China.
6. Saeed & Yang (2008). Incorporating blogs, social bookmarks, and podcasts into unit teaching. Conference in Research & Practice in IT Series, Vol. 315.
7. Trauth, Quesenberry, Huang & McKnight (2008). Linking economic development and workforce diversity through AR. SIG on Conputer Personnel Research Annual Conference.

I'm still searching into other databases. Hoping to find more IS studies taking the AR approach. What I notice in the report, the validity & credibility issues were not the focus anymore.

[Download my presentation slide @Google]
[Download my Chapter 4 - Action Research @Google]

Meeting with Dr Suhaila Hussien

Met Dr Suhaila this afternoon at 2.00 pm. She's from education. I attended her Research Methods class (school of Educ) few semester back. Her PhD research method was AR, but of course in the educational context. Also her research paradigm is interpretive (but she favors critical). I asked for her expert opinion on my research interview questions. Alhamdullilah, not much comment but she did pointed some things that I have left out (tq, Doc). I'm planing to give to 3 qualitative research expert the interview questions for review. The other two will be Dr Ismail Sheik Ahmad and Prof Ratna, both from Education.

Research proposal submitted & defense date

Submitted my research proposal on 4th of June. About 70+ pages at 1.5 spaces - 5 chapters. Only yesterday the Kulliyyah informed my RP defense date, 29 June, 2009. I'm planning to have an open defense, where others can come and observe (not participate - anyway I don't mind if they do). Don't know how the Kulliyyah would take it. I have requested for open defense since I started this PhD programm, but it seem that it does not have any support either from the faculty nor the students. I'm also intend to invite non KICT lecturers, if possible. Those who could help me during the defense, at least some supporting faces who know what I'm doing.

On PCT - Perceptual Control theory

Link:
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/pct/

The Theoretical Framework

I'm using a multiple theoretical perspective as the research theoretical framework. So far these have include Rogers (2003) Diffusion of Innovation theory, Representation and action (Vaast & Walsham 2005) and Perceptual Control theory (Zhao & Cziko 2001). They could be more f it is related. Adoption theories like TAM and others may not be suitable on the basis of the research approach, the research design and the researcher research philosophy. These thoeries are mostly call for variance type of research (Wolfe 1994) where else my research lies in the domain of process research and longitudinally design.

Data sources

The source of data would include any communication that I made with the participants. These include emails, messages on online social network such as Facebook, chat conversation and comments on blogs posts.

Rigour in Action Research

This article, "Quality and rigour of action research in IS" by Judy McKay & Peter Marshall give a good discussion on rigour aspect of AR. Using the four elements introduced by Guba & Lincoln (1989), the paper provide a brief explanation of (1) credibility, (2) transferability, (3) dependability, and (4) confirmability, and show how to use them in evaluating an AR report.

Some related links:Techniques for establshing trustworthiness.

• http://www.qualres.net/HomeLinc-3684.html

Reference: McKay J. & Marshall, P (2000). Quality and Rigour of Action Research in Information Systems. In Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Information Systems (Hansen HR, Bichler M, Mahrer H eds.), 108-115, Vienna.

Action Research for PhD thesis - some guides

Action research in a PhD thesis
(Source: http://www.ee.nus.edu.sg/stfpage/eleamk/phd/phdth3.html, accessed on 08/24/2007. However access to the article not possible now.)

Action research as a methodology for management PhD research is relatively rare (Perry 1991). Moreover, although action research has the potential to overcome many deficiencies in social science research, its results are generally viewed as not generalisable (Heller 1986). This
appendix reviews a number of issues which candidates using action research might consider when writing their PhD thesis. The appendix attempts to ensure that action research is no longer a marginal backwater depending sometimes on very carefully selected examiners, but becomes a part of the river of PhD research. Action research is outlined in Kemmis and McTaggart (1988a), and Zuber-Skerritt (1991).

Firstly, it is wise to consider the thesis as something distinctly separated from the action research project, that is, the candidate will have two projects - the action research project and the thesis project which uses data from the action research project (Perry & Zuber-Skerritt 1992). The philosophy and processes of action research are broader and more complex than those implicit in most PhDs. In particular, the action research project is relatively unfocused, emphasises practice and has outcomes of reflections which include propositional, practical and experiential (group and personal) knowledge. In contrast to action research, a PhD thesis project usually emphasises an individual candidate's additions to propositional knowledge published in the literature of a discipline. In brief, in the action research project, action research may be an ideology, but in a PhD thesis it is merely a methodology. Writing a PhD thesis about an action research project without acknowledging differences between the thesis and the action research project is difficult.

Provided these differences are acknowledged, the structure of a five chapter PhD thesis can be adapted to PhD research using the action research methodology. For a start, the 'research problem' in chapter 1 of the thesis could be different to the 'thematic concern' (Kemmis & McTaggart 1988b, p. 9) of the action research project; the research problem necessarily refers to practices of a workgroup and is written in terms of the literature of a discipline, but the thematic concern is less restricted. For example, a research problem could be 'How can the senior management team at an open-cut coal mine integrate marketing, operations and financial subsystems in the planning of inventories of mined coal?', and the thematic concern of the senior management group at Pacific Coal could be 'How can our inventory management procedures be improved?' The action research project will probably require multidisciplinary solutions, but it is advised that the thesis should concentrate on only one or two disciplines, to facilitate its examination.

Chapter 2 of the thesis written about an action research project would refer to some unresearched areas of propositional knowledge which are the foci of the data collected from the action research project. However, to be true to the spirit of action research, these propositions should not have been finalised before the action research project began - unlike PhD research using some quantitative methodologies, when the hypotheses should be crystallised before the data collection project begins. Furthermore, chapter 2 could outline the boundaries of practical and experiential knowledge which existed at the start of the action research project. Alternatively, the discussion of practical and experiential knowledge might be restricted to an appendix, if likely examiners are not expected to be familiar with action research methodology.

Chapter 3 could be used to describe the action research project - not to allow replication of the experiment, but to demonstrate the researcher's competence in the action research methodology. The chapter could have sections or refer to appendices which contain the following details of the action research project (Kemmis & McTaggart 1988b):

• the names of group members;
• the group's thematic concern;
• details of the multiple sources of data, for example, dates of meetings and their attendees and matters discussed, reports and letters;
• the distinctions between the stages of the project through its one or more cycles of plan-act-observe-reflect;
• the group's published report of the project - which is written before the thesis is completed and for a different audience from the thesis, for example, this could be a short narrative or a management report;
• the evidence that the group has reflected on processes as well as content, which might be recorded in the group's published report noted above but does not have to be;
• and the nature of the action research, that is, technical, practical or emancipatory (Carr & Kemmis 1986).

As noted above, an appendix might also reflect on the practical and experiential knowledge gained in the action research project, but it would be more usual to include that reflection in the body of the thesis.

Chapter 4 could be used to categorise the data collected in the action research project (not all of which needs to be included in the appendices referred to in chapter 3). This chapter organises the data from the action research project into patterns. Chapter 4 begins the candidate's own
preliminary reflection on the action research project and could be divided into sections according to the propositions of propositional knowledge, and into sections for practical and experiential (personal) knowledge if they are to be included in chapters of the thesis rather than in appendices. So the chapter should be written with the ideas to be developed in chapter 5, in the candidate's mind.

Finally, chapter 5 makes conclusions about the full PhD research, linking the data of chapter 4 to the boundaries of the body or bodies of knowledge outlined in chapter 2. A section in chapter 5 entitled `Reflections on methodology' should be included in a PhD thesis which refers to an
action research project . Then sections `Conclusions about the research problem', `Policy implications' and `Further research' will conclude the thesis. In PhDs using other methodologies, a chapter 5 section of reflections on the methodology is not required, because those reflections are incorporated into the `Limitations' and `Further research' sections.
In conclusion, an action research methodology can be used in PhD research, but action researchers should be concerned that their thesis may be messy, inconclusive and be unrelated to propositional knowledge published in the literature of a discipline. Use of the adjusted five chapter format for a PhD thesis which has been outlined in this appendix may allay that concern.


References
Carr, W. & Kemmis, S. 1986, Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research, Falmer, London.
Heller, F. (ed) 1986, The Use and Abuse of Social Science, Sage, London.
Kemmis, S. & McTaggart, R. (ed), 1988a, The Action Research Reader, (third edition), Deakin University, Geelong.
Kemmis, S. & McTaggart, R. (ed), 1988b, The Action Research Planner, (third edition), Deakin University, Geelong.
Perry, C. 1991, 'Action research in management education and research', Symposium on Action research at the Annual National Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Gold Coast, November 1991.
Perry, C. & Zuber-Skerritt, O., 1992, `Action research in graduate management research programs', Higher Education, vol. 23, pp. 195-208.
Zuber-Skerritt, O. (ed) 1991, Action Research for Change and
Development, Gower, Aldershot.

Acknowledgment: Discussions with Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt, Bruce Frank and Helen Samujh helped clarify some issues in this appendix. However, the views expressed are the writer's.

(Writers unknown)

Three vitally important things that a thesis should have:

(1) Have a `thesis' of the thesis
A review of 139 examiners' reports ... revealed that rarely were theses criticised for `bad writing' in the sense that most people understand that phrase. That is, theses were acceptable in terms of the mechanics of presentation: sentence structure, paragraphing, spelling, grammar, etc. They also were not criticised for failing to conform to conventions of the discipline about referencing or presentation of data. What frequently was criticised was the students' failure to take a clear philosophic stance or to reach a conclusion. Examiners called upon students to state clearly their hypothesis and their conclusions. If students adequately communicate the `thesis' of their dissertations, they usually avoid unnecessary length, lack of coherence, repetitiousness and confusion in their writing.

Supervisors need to emphasise throughout students' candidacies that they are striving in the thesis to communicate one big idea; that there should be a `thesis' or centre to which everything in the document contributes. (Nightingale 1992, p. 174)

... so, what is my thesis?

(Source: http://www.ee.nus.edu.sg/stfpage/eleamk/phd/phdth3.html)

Collaborative Technologies

I'm now almost at the end of my 7th semester. I'm reviewing the title of my thesis " ...Knowledge Management Technologies ...". How does KMT compare to "Collaborative Technologies" (CT)." I simply describe KMT as technologies that facilitate KM processes (reference?). Now I'm looking at the definition of CT to be compared to CT.
The Wikipedia give a description of CT as, "Collaborative software (also referred to as groupware or workgroup support systems) is software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals. Collaborative software is the basis for computer supported cooperative work."

(CT in Wikipedia)