Thursday, January 29th marked the first lab group meeting of Education Graduate Students. Five part- and full-time students attended, in addition to Dr. Michelann Parr, Chair of Graduate Studies. Led by Jessica Perron, a full-time student in her first year of the Master of Education program, we began by discussing the pre-selected article on school age readiness, and branched into several other areas of interest, including assessment, boys’/girls’ literacy, full day kindergarten, and the merits and pitfalls of early diagnosis of potential Learning Disabilities.
Present at the meeting was a wide and diverse range of experience and interest; however, we quickly discovered common questions that we shared, as well as collective fears and aspirations. Among some of the questions raised were:
-Should I really do a thesis? I’m afraid of defense, so should I take another route?
-How do I organize and sort through data once I’ve begun the collection process?
-How do I narrow down my broad interests into a focused research topic?
-How do I find a supervisor for my research?
We quickly realized that if these were common questions amongst the five attendees, that it was likely other graduate students were also asking similar questions. We are hoping to offer answers to these questions through the EGS blog in the weeks to come.
Future meetings will occur every other week, and attendees will have the option for signing up to lead a meeting on the topic of their choice. Skyping in will be offered for students unable to make the meeting in person, and we would love to invite our entire body of EGS colleagues to join us.
Being able to consolidate and converse with other students and receive detailed answers to our queries from Dr. Parr was hugely beneficial, not only for our academic futures, but also for our sense of belonging and community. We are already looking forward to our next meeting…if you haven’t already, join our Facebook page to receive invitations to meetings, as well as other fun and important information about graduate-level events both within and beyond Nipissing.
Notes taken by Marianne Vander Dussen