After five years of course work for my doctorate in Instructional Technology at Towson University, I am beginning to write the literature review for my dissertation.

I devoted this week — spring break — to the project. I have spent the entire week at my computer searching peer-reviewed journals online for research that relates to my area of interest, then writing my first draft.

Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

I was making good progress, then my computer keyboard died. The space bar cease to work, so there was no spacing between words. My lit review copy came out like this:

“communicationisareciprocalprocessofexchangingsignalstoinformpersuadeorinstruct…”

I’d write a sentence, which smunched together, then go back and add spacing between words, a tedious chore to say the least. I wonder if the great scholars whose work I am now reading ever had to go back and add spacing between each word? I think not, because there is a huge amount of research out there. The inability to space words in sentences would be detrimental to their prolific output, I think.

It sure was detrimental to my efforts. But that was then, and this is now, writing on my new keyboard. You can’t be a scholar without some practical tools.

Now, what I need is research materials related to my topic. It is hard to find relevant and timely research that relates well enough to be instructive. One might think it would be easy, but I am  finding it difficult.

Perhaps the problem lies with my Boolean logic.  Conducting an advanced search through Towson’s excellent Cook Library databases and subject gateways appears to be at once art and science. I am trying many different combinations of search words, but I seem to be missing something, somehow, somewhere.

I have not mastered it yet, but I keep at it.

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