Advising

This page is for PhD students advised by Chris. The guidance on this page summarizes LAI and CISL policies in the CISL handbook, which takes precedence if there is any discrepancy with this page. Make sure you are familiar with the handbook.

Coursework

Here is a typical course plan for CISL students in the Computational Literacies Lab, taking 9 credits per semester and completing in four years. Students who do not have a master's degree will need to take an additional 10 credits of electives or dissertation research. Once you are working on your dissertation, UB can certify your full-time status even if you are enrolled in fewer than 9 credits, so it is straightforward to extend your timeline as needed.

Notes:

• Every student should take LAI 695 Teaching Practicum at least once. In this course, you will collaboratively teach a course with Chris. The intention is not for this to be an unpaid TA-ship; you will be involved in every aspect of (re-)designing the course, leading pedagogy, supporting students, and assessment.

Milestones

Research analysis exam

The RAE should be taken in the fall semester of your second year. Read the CISL handbook guidelines for the RAE, especially the RAE procedures for students which is linked in the handbook.

Preparing for the RAE

When you're ready to take the RAE, write a one-page document and send it to Chris. It should contain:

1. A one-paragraph academic profile summarizing your role (doctoral student at UB), your research area, the most important frameworks you will use to frame your research, the most important methods you plan to use, and an explanation of your research is important. For example:

   Chris Proctor is an assistant professor of Learning Sciences at University at Buffalo (SUNY) and founding director of UB's computer science teacher preparation program. Chris studies K12 Computer Science education through the disciplinary lenses of Learning Sciences and New Literacies. He is interested in how computational media can support youth in critical identity authorship, in and out of school. Much of Chris's work is participatory design-based research, working with middle- and high-school students to design new technologies and then using mixed methods to study the emergent practices they support. Chris is the lead developer and researcher of Unfold Studio, a web application for reading and writing interactive stories which weave together text and code.

2. Citations for three journal articles or ISLS/ACM full conference papers which you see as "mentor texts" exemplifying the kind of research you aspire to do, or which play an important role in contextualizing your research interests. Write one sentence after each citation explaining why you selected it.

Criteria:

• Articles must have been published within the last ten years.
• Articles must be empirical, meaning they make verifiable claims (or at least hypotheses), they present evidence in support of claims, and they have a methods section which explains how the data was collected and justifies the relevance of the data to the claims or hypotheses. The requirement that articles be empirical excludes theoretical frameworks or arguments, design analyses, methods papers, and experience reports, among others. These are important genres, but they are not suitable for the RAE.
• Don't choose articles written by Chris.

Chris will likely select one of these articles for your RAE, so it would be wise to select articles which you are interested in analyzing. You are welcome to select articles which you think have flaws, or with which you have a productive disagreement; it can be especially productive to analyze such articles.

Writing the RAE

When you receive your assigned article, you will have ten days to write a critique of the article. While following the CISL guidelines for the prompt and format, keep in mind the following:

• Avoid summary. Assume I am familiar with the paper. Don't spend your time telling me what it contains. I'm not interested in whether you can identify the research questions; I want to hear about how they work: how the background sets up the theoretical context for the questions to make sense and feel important; why the methods are (or aren't) a good fit for the theoretical framework; whether findings are clear and persuasive; whether the discussion follows through on the commitments made earlier in the paper.
• Interpret, don't evaluate. I am more interested in your analysis of the paper than I am in your evaluation of its quality. It's fine to claim that certain parts of the paper work well or don't, but focus on explaining why.
• Put the article in context, but don't lose focus on the article. It's important to show that you understand the field to which the article is contributing, but don't let your critique turn into a manifesto about the field.
• Put yourself into the critique, but not too much. The focus should be on the article you're analyzing, but I am interested in your own positionality: why the article matters to you, why you made sense of it in a distinctive way; how this paper relates to your future research. I suggest directly addressing these topics at the beginning and the end of your critique. I welcome writing in first-person.
• Be specific.

Research component

Your Research Component (RC) is a research project you lead. Chris expects that your RC will be a first-authored full paper submitted to an external national or international conference. If you have such a paper accepted in your first three years, this satisfies the Research Component milestone. However, reviewers are fickle; if your submission is rejected, it is acceptable to satisfy the RC by presenting your work at the GSE Symposium.

You should start planning your RC research with Chris during your second year. LAI 619 is designed to guide you through the process of designing a qualitative research study, including IRB. It can be helpful to take LAI 619 once you have the outlines of your study in mind.

Dissertation Proposal

Start planning your dissertation proposal at the beginning of your third year. You should present your dissertation proposal during your third year, or at the beginning of your fourth.

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