Hello Joe,
You are right, a good research question is the most important basis
for a thesis, and that it is why it is so difficult.
>From what I see in your mail, a-c is indeed like the three sides of
one and the same thing. What is overtly missing is the agent; "who" is
supposed to build?
In the Netherlands there is a project (government supported) to let
teachers create free textbooks or textbook materials so that the
government can save a lot of money ("Wikiwijs"). Is this kinda in the
direction you are thinking about?
And what is your faculty? Are you a mathematician, a sociologist? It
could be a good start to have look at the many projects to
collaboratively write textbooks, they exist also in English I am sure.
You could study them and tell what are the obstacles they are
struggling with?
Kind regards
Ziko van Dijk
2010/11/23 Joe Corneli <[email protected]>:
> So far, the best phrasing I've come up with is: "What stands in the
> way of building and supplying low-cost, high-quality mathematics
> education via the internet?"
>
> The art of encyclopedia-building doesn't seem to carry over directly
> to education. This should be of fairly general concern (the Wikimedia
> Foundation's mission is about developing and disseminating educational
> content).
>
> I think there's a knowledge gap in there, maybe more than one. It's
> much easier for me to think about "engineering solutions" than it is
> to precisely specify a research problem question!! In particular, I'm
> thinking about
>
> (a) building interactive textbooks that work for self-guided learners
> (b) building technologies to support live tutorials over the web
> (c) building infrastructure to help in developing good survey articles
> or similar content
>
> The faculty here might want me to "pick one", but this is hard for me
> to do because I see each of these three approaches as being part of
> the puzzle. Asking how well one of them works in absence of the other
> is a bit like asking how well a fish can breathe in the absence of
> water.
>
> So maybe the "research question" is about asking: What is the family
> resemblance of (a)-(c)? How do they work together as a system? Or
> maybe the question is about whether a given implementation of (a)-(c)
> shows any promise?
>
> I seem to be struggling to switch from a hacking-oriented way of
> thinking about things to a research-oriented way of thinking about
> things. I'd appreciate some feedback from those of you in a position
> to offer advice on these matters.
>
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>
--
Ziko van Dijk
The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/
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