Qualitative doctoral research in educational settings: reflecting on meaningful encounters

In qualitative doctoral research the methodological approach, and the research design are extremely important when ensuring the rigorousness of the work. This is particularly significant for all researchers, and even more for doctoral students who are still developing their research and analytical skills. This paper aims to support doctoral students in their research journey by highlighting some of the tensions involved in conducting qualitative research by unpicking the experiences of two doctoral students to learn from the concerns, questions and reflections on the use of qualitative methodology in their doctoral research projects. The findings reveal challenges and insights with regards to reflection, educational research and the developing identity of being a researcher. The paper discusses these reflections to support and guide doctoral students as early career researchers when planning and conducting qualitative research in educational settings

Design project planning, monitoring and re-planning through process simulation

Effective management of design schedules is a major concern in industry, since timely project delivery can have a significant influence on a company’s profitability. Based on insights gained through a case study of planning practice in aero-engine component design, this paper examines how task network simulation models can be deployed in a new way to support design process planning. Our method shows how simulation can be used to reconcile a description of design activities and information flows with project targets such as milestone delivery dates. It also shows how monitoring and re-planning can be supported using the non-ideal metrics which the case study revealed are used to monitor processes in practice. The approach is presented as a theoretical contribution which requires further work to implement and evaluate in practice