More on Dissertation Writing

Dissertation writing is an interesting experience. In my last class I wrote a couple of chapters of a dissertation on emotion and Virtual Reality. Testing the extent to which VR is effective and adding an emotional element to it to make it more effective is some super cool stuff, in my opinion. But, in this post, I'm not going to get into the technicalities of it, I'll just focus on the writing. 

I've written about my dissertation before (see HERE) and about the surprises I've uncovered since starting this process. The writing of the dissertation is one. 

I have written three novels and each is over 80,000 words long (see HERE). I've already written about how creative writing is tougher than research writing. But what I've found out since, through discussions with my major advisor and others is that the dissertation writing process is really a secondary part of teh overall process. 

My major advisor told me last year to quit focusing on the writing of the dissertation and just read read read. Having written a couple of chapters of a dissertation, I realize that the writing is going to happen somewhat naturally, as a conseuqence of the courses I take. 

Sure, the chapters I just finished were on qualitative research and emotion in VR. My dissertation, if I keep the same path, will be a quantitative analysis of different computer based learning techniques, with VR being just one of them. But I can take the emotion in VR chapters and quite easily re-tool them for my own. 

Constructivism will be a fundamental theoretical framework. The methodology behind the research will be similar. The collection and analysis as well will be very much the same. I see what my major professor meant. The framework of the dissertation remains the same, it's all of the reading that builds up the content of that framework that is so necessary. Like reading Dick Francis or Lawrence Sanders before I start writing novels.