As a dissertation writer, you may be overwhelmed by the array of tools available to you. Depending on the nature of your study – quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, action research – you have options ranging from expensive statistical software to programs that help you code, to free programs that promise to sort all of those articles you collect in anticipation of writing your literature review. However, none of these programs can do the hard work of organizing your thoughts around the literature you are reading and the data you are coding. Google Jamboard (found at https://jamboard.google.com/) can help you organize those thoughts into something coherent; it’s intuitive to use, and best of all, it’s free.
As a dissertation coach, I see writers struggle to get down on paper the themes they’ve identified in the literature or from their data. “I know what I want to write my dissertation about, but how do I form that into a coherent problem statement supported by literature?” or, “I’ve got all these codes…now what do I do?” What follows next is a period of uncertainty, as surely this organization is something of a subjective process. The mistake too many writers make is to start writing without a clear idea of how the information might be sorted.
1. Organize Your Dissertation Writing by Collaborating
Google Jamboard is a helpful solution. A whiteboard with an easy user interface, Jamboard allows the user to apply sticky notes, photos, typing, and writing. I use Jamboard frequently in working with writers struggling through the dissertation process. The collaborative nature of Jamboard means that I can be talking on the phone with a writer and we can be working from the same Jamboard URL and putting sticky notes on the same page.
There is something freeing about writing a thought on a virtual sticky note: It doesn’t have the formality of a Word document, and it can be easily moved, edited, or deleted. With a dozen sticky notes on a page, the writer can move them around and see connections between the thoughts (or codes or themes…whatever these sticky notes represent) that he or she may not have noticed in reading their literature annotations or their collected data on the printed page.
When working on a dissertation’s problem statement, a writer might have a Jamboard page that looks like this:
2. Organize Your Dissertation Writing by Brainstorming your Ideas and Ranking them
The writer has completed a brainstorming session in which she has listed in green sticky notes the possible problems that need to be addressed in her study. In doing this, she is then able to rank these problems and determine which one merits inclusion in the problem statement sentence. The writer has also included the context in orange sticky notes to consider which level of context would be appropriate to mention in the problem statement. Finally, the brainstorming session has included other thoughts that she wanted to get down on the Jamboard – and perhaps initially considered for her problem statement. After working with the sticky notes, she sees that the items she has colored in pink are best for other sections of Chapter 1.
When coding qualitative data, a writer might have a Jamboard page that looks like this:
3. Organize Your Dissertation Writing by Sorting your Ideas
The writer has completed a brainstorming session that brings their codes onto the Jamboard and begins to sort them. (In reality, the writer will likely have many, many more codes than the ones in yellow, green, or orange here, but Jamboard does offer multiple boards in the same document.) They may not have sorted them by color when they started, but gradually they start to sort them by topic into categories (denoted in pink) and then can make an organizational decision to create colors to help them think of these codes in groups. They may also find that some of their codes belong in more than one category and can just duplicate a sticky note and put it into the other category.
Jamboard can also be a helpful solution if a writer needs to develop codes from a photo. A photo can be uploaded to the board and the writer can begin adding sticky notes around it to represent the codes that may relate to the image.
As an added bonus, researchers can present their research using a Google Jamboard. Slides from a PowerPoint Presentation or Google Slide deck can be saved as PNG files and uploaded as background images on to a Jamboard document that covers several boards. The presenter now has an interactive slide deck in which the link to the slide deck can be shared, and conference attendees can brainstorm with the presenter adding their own sticky notes, text, or images. This is a great way to engage others in presenting research.
Try Google Jamboard with your own research and see what process works for you. As mentioned, sorting through literature themes and collected data can be a subjective, personal process. Using a tool that allows easy sorting and creative connecting is a beneficial asset to your research journey.
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