It was so great to have time to chat about our projects with our peers. Its really comforting to talk to people in the same situation and hear their ideas and takes on really interesting ares of study. I find it really inspiring and always want the opportunity to do it more. I think its important to have insights into other departments and ways of working. You can get tunnel vision surrounded by the same team all the time. It is refreshing to get other multi disciplinary perspectives. It has highlighted the value and importance of sharing ideas and knowledge, and how much I crave meaningful focused conversation. I’m really thankful for the space and to practice my active listening skills in preparation for my research.

First I had time to chat to Jo, who is also a technician on the performance courses at Wimbledon. That was really interesting as there were many parallels to our work. We only had 10mins to talk about what part of the action research cycle we were at. The conversation was so interesting, were currently trying to find time to have another chat.

In groups again we talked about methodologies and what we were using. We focused of focus groups and talked about the difficulties of being a neutral facilitator. We discussed the options of moderating yourself or standing back and letting someone else do it. We also talked about knowing when to step in to stimulate conversation and knowing when to just let the conversation flow. We talked about our inexperience in facilitating focus groups and how that may impact the quality of the conversations that are had. We talked about online/in person dynamics. We talked about the lack of control and over the way the focus group would go but maybe unexpected turns would be good for our research. Lastly we discussed the pitfalls of interpreting the conversations post focus group, are you giving a true representation of what occurred or are you trying to fit it to your research?

The last group exercise was discussing projects more in depth and using it as a testing area for feedback. Rachel used us as test interview subjects for her project on citation. It a really good exercise for us both. It was so useful for me to be the interview subject and see how it felt. Rachel used a fun way to break the ice- a little game to find out which citation character you were. It was a really great way to get started and had me thinking about ways I could inject a bit more fun into my project. In fact Rachel suggested using an ice breaker in my focus group as part of my feedback, to help relax the room and break down the power dynamics- something I hadn’t considered yet, so that was really useful! The exchange also got me thinking more about my positionality as a researcher and the questions I was asking.

Ching Li talked through her project around imposter syndrome. We talked about how she was presenting the work and showing a video and wondered if it needed both. We thought through narrowing the project down to feelings of imposter syndrome within an educational setting to avoid becoming too personal. We asked if she wanted to inform students of what imposter syndrome was or find out what they know about it and what they understood about their experience?

I talked over my project but was still feeling very unsure how to progress with mine at this point. This was before my chat with Vikki. It would have been so useful to use that time to test my interview questions but unfortunately I was not that far forward yet. I am going to orgainse testing my questions as I have seen first hand how important that is.