Self-reflection on my writing thus far « Blog Archive

I want to reflect on the exam style essays that I’ve written so far in an effort to improve my process. The exam is given in two sessions of three hours each, and I must answer three questions in each session, so roughly I have one hour to answer each question. Each question is graded as U (undergraduate level), M (master’s level) or D (doctoral level). You must have no answers graded at U level and at least 4 graded at D level to pass.

I’ve evaluated my performance on these essays by comparing how I answered to what my notes say (coverage and accuracy) and by considering suggestions that I’ve been given by both faculty and by people who have already taken the exam. Those are:

Most answers are 2-3 pages long. I’m not sure now whether that means single or double spaced. I’ve imagined the typical guidelines for writing: double spaced, 1 inch margins, Times Roman 12 point. Some people go far longer than 2-3 pages per answer, if they think and write fast.
It is good if your answer finishes with a summary of current research in the area. I’ve started to take this to include mentioning areas that are ripe for research, also, because I feel like there’s no way I could discover and retain what researchers are doing in all these areas.
It is good if you work IS theory into your answer: theory of planned behavior, media richness theory, systems theory, etc. Not the technology adoption model, as CGU IS faculty are generally critical of it.
It’s good if you include analysis in terms of one of the popular business strategy/IS strategy frameworks: Porter’s 5 forces, the strategic grid, SWOT, Henderson and Venkatraman’s Strategic Alignment Model.
Make a logical, clear argument and support it, as described in The Craft of Research. Have structure to your answer, and don’t ramble. Proofread your answer for grammatical and spelling errors.
Start your answer by restating the question.
Be sure to answer all parts of the question.

You can break this down into informative (1 and 6), mandatory (5 and 7), and value added (2, 3 and 4). Informative things are good rules to live by, but you can get along without them and do just fine. If you fail to provide the mandatory characteristics, you fail the question. The value-added characteristics may be what pushes you from M (master’s level) to D (doctoral level).

Writing time

I’ve written eleven essays by now, and I have a number of observations. The first thing I can say is that one hour is not long. I frequently went over — the longest over was 1.5 hours for the “Virtualization, cloud computing, and open source.” The average over was probably 1:10. This worries me, largely because the things I’m answering are not quite as complex as the real exam questions. Each question can have sub-parts. Here is an example from 2004:

The prevailing view of object-oriented software development is the one informed by the Unified Software Development Process (Jacobson et al, 1999). From this perspective, software development ought to be 1) use case driven, 2) architecture centric, and 3) iterative and incremental (pp. 5-8). The Unified Process viewpoint-in conjunction with the Unified Modeling Language-underlies many recent texts on software analysis and design (such as Dennis et al [2002]), and arguably has determined how most recent graduates of information science/computer science/information systems programs think about analysis and design. Notwithstanding, it is less than clear that practicing software developers uniformly or enthusiastically embrace the Unified Process viewpoint (Johnson et al, 1999; Singh and Kotze, 2003).

a) How does object-oriented software development work, according to the Unified Process viewpoint?

b) What do the central tenets of this viewpoint, enumerated above, mean?

c) For what types of software development is the Unified Process viewpoint most appropriate? For what types might it be less appropriate?

d) Name an important aspect of software development that is under-emphasized by this viewpoint.

e) Describe one current perspective on software development that stands as an alternative to the Unified Process viewpoint (not including outmoded approaches of the 1980’s and earlier, such as ‘structured development’)?

f) In what ways does this alternative differ from the Unified Process viewpoint?

g) What are its advantages and weaknesses relative to the Unified Process viewpoint?

So seven sub-parts to this one question that I have to answer in one hour. It took me a little over an hour to answer my own self-posed question:

A popular software development methodology is the Rational Unified Process (RUP). Give an overview of the process. When is its use is indicated, when it is counter-indicated? What business implications does the use of RUP have? What aspects of software development does it address, what does it not address?

This has five sub-parts, which are equivalent to (a) – (d) plus an extra one. (e), (f) and (g) seem like lengthy additions, and I wouldn’t have had time to address them. I need to consider some contingencies that I can consider.

Write less: perhaps I’m giving too much detail. In the “Virtualization, cloud computing and open source” essay, this is almost certainly true. How much is enough, and how little is too little? Saying only what needs to be said and no more is actually harder in areas that I know intimately. Writing less and still providing adequate coverage of the topic can actually be more time consuming for me than writing more.
Write and think faster. I am expecting to gain thinking and writing speed under the pressure of the actual exam enviroment: this always happens for me. But I won’t think and write twice as fast. Possibly, I’ll write 120% as fast. Maybe that’s enough.
Outline my argument first, and then write to my outline. I don’t do this currently. I just start writing. Definitely some portion of the time on those essays was spent reworking and adding to the argument or details. Part of the problem with this is that I tend to remember things through writing.
Know the material better. Knowing the material better should mean that the words flow easier.
Practice writing more. Do what I’m doing now and continue to write training essays on high risk topics. I think that this can do nothing but help.
Have a standard format that I write in and use that as a mental checklist of what to include. Not having to think about format might save some time. It should probably be something like:

Restate the question

Overview of my argument

Many paragraphs of support

Business implications (if any)

Future research directions

Topic coverage

I was not where I want to be on topic coverage. For most of the essays, I reviewed the associated material first, and then wrote the essay, and even then for some essays (”Action science” and “Value of IT”; possibly some others) I had to refer to my notes to even write the essays. And for some others, upon review of what I wrote, I saw that I’d left some things out. In most cases, they weren’t critical, but still.

Contingencies:

Review the material more. Well, duh.
Practice writing more. Writing helps me exercise the brain pathways to the memories of the material, and also helps to show where I need more work.

Essay quality

I’m pretty pleased overall with the quality of the essays. I think I hit all the mandatory parts that I mention above, and cover the informative parts, and I usually offer one to two of the value-added characteristics: business impact and future research. I almost always cover business impact (if appropriate), and run out of time before I can consider future research. For some questions I asked (”What is action science,” “What is a theory,” “What is science,” for example), I don’t see how I could work any of the three value-added characteristics in, so I think simply answering the question suffices.

I’m really having a hard time figuring out how to apply IS theory to any of the answers I’ve given without doing so in such a way as to sound like I’m doing so just so I can mention the theory.
One question I have for myself about essay quality is about whether or not I write a conclusion. I have not been doing so, because I’m always over time, and I never know what to say. Perhaps I just let future research directions be the last paragraph and call it a day.

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