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.