As I wrap up my latest course, I'm breathing a sigh of relief and feeling a strong sense of accomplishment. The focus of this course was on writing an annotated bibliography and a literature review for my action research project. I was new to both, so I didn't appreciate the workload involved when I first accessed this course.
Now that they're done, I find myself surprised by two things. The first is that I was completely wrong about which parts of the tasks would take the most time. And the second is that I foolishly thought the review would help focus the project.
If you're not familiar with an annotated bibliography, the process for developing one is to first research your topic, locating articles related to the problems you're trying to solve, or the solution you want to test. Then you review each article and write a summary identifying the approach, findings, and relevance to your project.
For a literature review, the process is to gather and categorize all the findings from the relevant research into a cohesive picture of the topic, including any contradictory theories, and identify any research gaps.
As reading is not my strength, I expected the article review process of the annotated bibliography to take the most time and effort. It was tedious and slow, so when I finished that part, I mistakenly celebrated that I'd completed the worst of it.
Little did I know the really difficult part was still ahead. Categorizing the contents is something I thought I could do in my sleep. But after I changed the order and groupings for the tenth time, and I revised my draft for what felt like the hundredth time, I realized I might be out of my depth. Even now, after I've already submitted the assignments, I am thinking of at least half a dozen other ways I could, and maybe should have presented the information.
The next thing that surprised me was how quickly overwhelmed I got at the breadth and depth of my topic the more I struggled with the organization of the review. Someone close to me kindly agreed to read through my final draft and their reaction confirmed my own. They said that they were struck by how overwhelming the problem seemed to be. They said that the fact that there were contradictions on the effectiveness of serious games and there were significant challenges to be addressed were difficult problems on their own. But what made it even more overwhelming was that in addition to all that, it might still be difficult to convince faculty and administrators of the work that should be done.
It is daunting to think about. Trying to fix one problem has the potential of introducing many more. And failing means students do worse. I could sense I could quickly fall into a paralysis of sorts. It's overwhelming to do nothing, and overwhelming to try anything. How does change ever happen?
But then I remembered why I'm driven to do any of this and why I'm in the field of education. I know it can be done better. I know it. And I know it's my God-given purpose to try to help others believe that, too.
It isn't going to be easy. The people that need to cooperate won't always be willing to try. Sometimes things will need to be made worse to highlight how they can be made better. Life and the education for it are complicated and overwhelming. Exactly as designed!
Comments