TY - GEN
T1 - A tale of two cultures : building community by researching community
AU - Drane, Jon
AU - Cai, Wenjie
AU - Wechsler, Andrea
AU - Mussi, Eveline
AU - Shi, Ye
AU - Crommelin, Laura
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - ![CDATA[Upon beginning postgraduate research at the Faculty of Built Environment at UNSW, the authors were surprised to find themselves working in a library like environment, where a culture of silence prevailed. Assuming initially that this was just how postgraduate research was, they soon learned that the building also housed a second postgraduate lab with a different work environment featuring more interaction. This discovery prompted the authors to create an informal research community group, the Cohort Knowledge Share Group (CKSG), and to develop a ‘mini-thesis’ to explore the lab differences and to share the thesis creation process. Auto-ethnographic perspectives shaped the mini-thesis study, which utilized mixed methodology incorporating a questionnaire, individual reflections and interviews, focus group sessions and observation. The mini-thesis results illustrated that despite undertaking a common journey, the research student community’s diverse and multicultural nature created complex needs for facilities, community engagement and personal support. In addition, while undertaking the mini-thesis study, the authors discovered that the innovative CKSG model had changed the sense of community in the main postgraduate lab, as well as the broader research student journey. As this case study will show, the CKSG has therefore been a transformative experience in more ways than one.]]
AB - ![CDATA[Upon beginning postgraduate research at the Faculty of Built Environment at UNSW, the authors were surprised to find themselves working in a library like environment, where a culture of silence prevailed. Assuming initially that this was just how postgraduate research was, they soon learned that the building also housed a second postgraduate lab with a different work environment featuring more interaction. This discovery prompted the authors to create an informal research community group, the Cohort Knowledge Share Group (CKSG), and to develop a ‘mini-thesis’ to explore the lab differences and to share the thesis creation process. Auto-ethnographic perspectives shaped the mini-thesis study, which utilized mixed methodology incorporating a questionnaire, individual reflections and interviews, focus group sessions and observation. The mini-thesis results illustrated that despite undertaking a common journey, the research student community’s diverse and multicultural nature created complex needs for facilities, community engagement and personal support. In addition, while undertaking the mini-thesis study, the authors discovered that the innovative CKSG model had changed the sense of community in the main postgraduate lab, as well as the broader research student journey. As this case study will show, the CKSG has therefore been a transformative experience in more ways than one.]]
KW - graduate students
UR - http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/uws:36956
UR - http://ife.ens-lyon.fr/vst/Colloques/DetailColloque.php?parent=racine&id=1139
M3 - Conference Paper
SP - 1
EP - 13
BT - Regional and Global Cooperation in Educational Research : Proceedings of the Joint Australian Association for Research in Education and Asia-Pacific Education Research Association Conference (AARE-APERA 2012) : University of Sydney, 2-6 December 2012
PB - Australian Association for Research in Education
T2 - Australian Association for Research in Education. Conference
Y2 - 2 December 2012
ER -