Campus Session 1 continued - what we did to explore the tops of 'love'

Right so here are some examples for the 12th Feb campus session 1 with Ruth, Kym and Sophie (also look on their blogs for more info). Others who came on the 13th Feb might also have put info up about the session.

The group chose the idea of 'love'. We talked about how ideas - we read a theory about the idea that the definition of love has changed in modern societies - Here is the quote we used from someone else's paper (permission given to use) about the 'undateables' http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-undateables series:

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim commented upon the new definition of love caused by the fracturing of social bonds within society caused by individualisation, stating; “It is no longer possible to pronounce in some binding way what family, marriage, parenthood, sexuality or love mean, what they should or could be; rather these vary in substance, norms and morality from individual to individual and from relationship to relationship”[1].

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[1] Beck, U, Beck-Gernscheim, E, The Normal Chaos of Love

Then the group did a brainstorming session with a mind map - identified a particular facet of 'love'. In this case  business related - online dating - as a form of love.

Here is the mind map of the preliminary unpacking exercise of 'love'  and a close-up of the focus chosen for further investigation.

 in this case online dating - then we googled it with key words. BUT… Remember you need to go past the BIG key words and the first commercially linked hits...

You need more focused key words in order to find sources - remember there are some sources which are authored - some with more authority (peer-reviewed journals) than others.

So look for key words like 'online dating'.

Then we used Summon in the MDX library (go to this under MyLearning library section). This searching agent looks at the resources that are available within the university.

It works a lot like Google - but you can tick the boxes to say you just want journal articles… then we looked to find an article online dating and found one about EHarmony!!! (Kym spotted it!).

EHARMONY: MORE THAN TRADITIONAL INTERNET DATING 

Atul Gupta, Lynchburg College

Rebecca Murtha, Lynchburg College

Niharika Patel, Lynchburg College Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies, Volume 18, Number 1, 2012

It is not always so easy - sometimes you have to search a bit to find other sources that have talked about your topic.

So an idea as big as love needs to be unpacked and smaller elements focused on in order to develop thinking around a more specific topic. This process happens in all the modules. This is the critical reflection - where expertise and ideas from your experience but also other people's experience (both practitioner and expertise that do research about the topic) can inform and theorise what you are thinking.

 Good luck with exploring your own topics and 'digital literacy' in terms of searching for ideas related to your topics! Love is in the world...