I’ve been finalizing my Dissertation Proposal.

Yesterday (Wed Oct 26th), I successfully defended my proposal. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I am now officially in the dissertation phase.

While preparing/rehearsing for the defense, I had the foresight to record one my rehearsals and thought I’d share it with you….be forewarned – its roughly 30 minutes long.  If you’d rather just look at my slides, feel free to jump over to SlideShare to review the slides titled “Understanding Twitter Sentiment for Investing Decisions“.

Now…the video.  You’ll have to excuse some of my pauses and “uh” moments – i delivered the final result much better…I promise

Understanding Twitter Sentiment for Investing Decisions from Eric D Brown on Vimeo.

The Slides (embedded from Slideshare):

October 26th is the big day!

For those of you interested, my Dissertation Proposal Title is:

Analysis of Twitter Messages for Sentiment and Insight for use in Stock Market Decision Making

In other words, I’m looking at whether you can actually use twitter messages for decision support…in this case, for investing decisions. There’s been quite a lot of research conducted in this area of using forums, blogs and Twitter messages to determine bias for the stock market – and I hope to add just a small nugget of knew knowledge to the literature.

For those of you that don’t know the process, the dissertation proposal defense is the last real step before actually doing the dissertation research.

I’m at that stage…finally.   I’ve been working on my doctorate since 2007 and I’m finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel….I just hope it isn’t a train about to crash into me

I’ll share more details (slides, perhaps a paper) in the coming weeks.

The research project was undertaken to try to get a feel for how people perceive online graduate degrees.  Our initial approach to the survey was to attempt to understand and compare the perceptions of people who’ve earned graduate degrees online versus those that have earned them via the ‘traditional’ method of attending classes on campus.

During the survey (using an online survey – details below), we collected some good data from the people that had earned an online graduate degree but our survey results those that hadn’t earned a degree online was skewed and therefore discarded.  Note: We plan to redo the survey for the group of people who’ve not earned a graduate degree online.

The presentation, titled “Perceived Value and Usefulness of Online Graduate Degree Programs” seemed to be well received by those that attended our session.    You can view the slides from the presentation below or jump over to Slideshare to view/download the slides.  My apologies to all those out there who hate powerpoint as much as I do.

To perform the survey, Kevin and I created a survey on SurveyMonkey.com and asked our colleagues and acquaintances to help spread the word.  We shared the survey link on twitter and facebook and asked our friends to do the same.

I won’t go through the actual questions here (you can see them in the slides) but some of the results are worth noting:

• 47.4% of the respondents strongly agreed that the rigor of an online graduate program was similar to that of a ‘traditional’ program
• 67.9% of the respondents strongly agreed that flexibility was important to them in their program selection process
• 55.4% of the respondents strongly agreed that accreditation was important to them in their program selection process
• Flexibility was ranked as the most important aspect in the decision making process
• Location was ranked as the least important aspect in the decision making process

You can see more results in the slides.

During the presentation, we wanted to get some discussion started with the attendees around the results and distance education in general. We were in luck…the group had a lot of things to say about the topic and our survey.

From the standpoint of the attendees, distance education (aka online education) is the future of higher education. There were plenty of attendees telling us that their universities and colleges had begun to transition many courses and programs to be offered either as a hybrid delivery method (e.g., a combination of an online & in-class) and/or as fully online delivery.

Additionally, these university and college administrators and professors were confidant that the next few years would see even more programs and courses transition online – since that’s what the traditional and non-traditional students are demanding.

Regarding our research, there were quite a few good suggestions and discussions that might lead to additional research avenues.  From these suggestions and discussions, a few key areas that Kevin and I may look at in the future are:

• How does someone with a ‘traditional’ degree (i.e., on-campus) perceive an online degree (this is the 2nd part of our initial research that we discarded)?
• The concept of the ‘traditional’ student is changing (or already has changed).  Some have reported that 60% of on-campus students living in the dorm are taking at least 1 online course per semester. How does that change the traditional vs non-traditional student perception?
• Are online programs becoming more popular because of their flexibility or because they are perceived to be easier (a good portion of our survey respondents believed that rigor is comparable)?

There are more avenues for research that came out of the discussions at the conference.

Kevin and I are planning on working up this survey into a paper as well as diving into more research in the area in the near future.

I was lucky enough to get to present at the conference (more on that in a future post!) and got to spend some time talking to university and college educators from around the northern part of Texas.

I was surprised to find most of the universities and colleges were offering their programs online to traditional and non-traditional students regardless of whether that student was on-campus (dorm, etc) or off-campus.  In addition, it was surprising to hear that at some universities that around 60% of students living in dorms where taking at least one course online. There were even a few people telling me of entire programs offered online regardless of the location of the students.

Back in 2001, I started my MBA at The University of Texas at Dallas. I lived close to campus but really (really) wanted to take some online courses to make it more flexible for me to work on my courses.  Because I was an ‘on-campus’ student, I couldn’t take online courses….I would have had to transfer to their ‘online MBA’ to take online courses.   I always thought that segregation was strange…but it seems that there’s no longer a segregation between on-campus students and off-campus students…and I think that’s a good thing.

One of the things that became very clear to me while at the NetNet conference was that universities are really interested in moving more courses and programs online.  Perhaps this is a cost saving measure – or maybe there’s just that much demand for online courses these days…regardless…the future of higher ed (and perhaps, high school?) is online.

Does online education mean fully online with no face-to-face interaction?  I’m not sure. For some courses and/or programs, perhaps it does.

In my doctorate, I’ve not met a single professor from Dakota State University and I’ve only met one other doctoral candidate face-to-face…in face, I just met him last week at the conference even though I’ve ‘known’ him virtually for 4 years.

The future of education is online.

What does that mean for social interaction?  Is an education really only the things you learn from a book and/or from a professor or does it also include the social interaction that occurs during class and throughout campus?   Using aspects of social media, can that social interaction be recreated or simulated?  How well does knowledge really flow in online courses?

All interesting questions I think….some of them are being looked at by one of my doctoral candidate cohorts…more on that research in later posts too

What’s your thoughts on the future of education being completely online? For it…against it?  Would love your thoughts.

Image Credit: DEANZ Panel on the Future of Distance Learning By Choconancy1 on flickr

Why do ads have to be boring?  They don’t…and Cheetah has figured out a way to get their point across in a funny manner.    Enjoy the video…and if you’re looking for some excellent PM training / learning aids, check out Cheetah Learning.

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• Art of project management – updated with primers and tomes (solutionset.com)

While the book spends a little too much time in the realm of ‘celebrity worship’ (i.e., there are LOT of celebrities that have found ‘the element’ apparently), the book is still a very good read.

The basic premise is that every person has their own ‘Element’ that they fit the best into.  What is the element?  Basically, the Element is the location where a person’s passion, interests and natural abilities intersect.

The Element is something that a person has to find for themselves. Schools can’t teach a child to find their element.  In fact, many schools and parents do the opposite…they try to drive children into the ‘safe’ areas for careers and educational study.

The book contains a lot of stories of people that have found their ‘Element’.  Many of these stories are of people who’ve gone against the ‘normal’ educational route to become their own person.

That said, this book does not slam modern education and teachers. From all accounts, Sir Ken Robinson is very much pro-education and pro-teacher.  What the book does do well is provide examples and discussion around the current state of educational theory and what it is doing wrong.

What is current education theory and practice doing wrong?  Easy…we are teaching everyone the same thing and using standardized testing to examine what has been learned.  In my opinion, there’s nothing worse than killing the creativity of a child by forcing them to fit into an educational and cultural mold.

The book is an easy read and highly recommended to anyone interested in the ideas of creativity and passion and educational ideas.

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Current Status (May 2009)

• 39 hours complete
• 52 remaining (27 hours coursework, 25 hours dissertation)
• 43% complete.
• Coursework completion ~ mid-2010
• Dissertation completion ~2012.

I’m taking another six hours this summer…might be a beating but we’ll see.  The courses are:

• INFS 750 – Telecommunications Technology & Management – Starting May 18
• INFS 892 – Advanced Design Science Research Methods – Starting May 18

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The 3rd annual University of Texas at Dallas Project Management Symposium is taking place August 13 & 14.  Call for papers is open until Feb 6 2009.

I just submitted a paper to be considered for this years symposium…keeping my fingers crossed that it gets accepted.  I was luck to get a paper accepted last year…lets see about this year.

About the Symposium:

Topics will cover project management issues facing medical and heathcare organizations, the telecom industry and more, governance issues and emerging trends in project management, global issues, new product development and more.  More info can be found here.

This book is an easy read and is worth picking up if you’re interested in writing.  The book is less of a discussion of ‘how’ to ‘write to learn’ and more of an overview of ‘why’ you should ‘write to learn’.

The book is full of examples of good writing in many different topics.  The majority of the book is passages from authors in various fields surrounded by Zinsser’s commentary on why the passage is worth including.

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this book like I did On Writing Well, but it is worth reading for those of you who are interested in the subject.

http://wylienews.com/current_issue/headline_councilman_18.html

Just received a call from his wife asking why I’m trying to ‘deliberately destroy his family’.   I’m sorry Ms Young…but I’m not.  Your husband has done that all by himself.