Reflection on the Literature Review
As with the research paper, I found this part of the course very tough, it being a wholly new thing for me to do.
However, I had learned some things from doing the previous research paper assignment.
Whilst my first 'research paper' was on the general area of using ICT in education in developing countries, this one narrowed down the focus. I use quotes here because by this stage, I knew why that first assignment wasn't really a research paper - it was an exercise in academic writing for someone who had no idea how to do academic writing!
For this literature review, I focussed on mobile learning and on Africa. The latter because of my personal interest in Africa, and a desire to go back there in future, the former because mobile networks are growing very fast in Africa.
I felt that I had more of a narrow focus for this paper than for the first one and based on this I was able to build a concept map (using a tool Macu had mentioned - CMaps) to structure my paper. I did this because, as I wrote in my reflection on the research paper, I wanted to get a first draft written much earlier in the process. This concept map really helped me to structure the paper. It was an evolving map over a period of several days while I was reading papers (and making lots of notes for later reference - something else I hadn't really done the first time round).
The concept map was itself the first draft of the actual document. I put notes about the references I would use and others I needed to find in the concept map to remind myself. This was definitely an improvement on writing notes on convenient pieces of paper or even in my college notebook - where I might not locate them again.
Another benefit of using the concept map was that I was able to send it by email to Macu and ask what she thought of my approach. Her feedback was encouraging as well as giving me some points to think about.
Whilst I found out a lot of interesting and useful information about the various strands of my topic - m-learning, trainee teachers, ICT in education in Africa - I also knew that I would probably not be doing my meta on this as I wouldn't be able to do a project in Africa....but I really wanted to know more about the area so I could seriously think about it as a topic for my dissertation next year.
