DBAX 8101 Week 1 Project Status Discussion Post Example

Week 1 Discussion: Project Status and the Comment That Keeps Returning

Where the Draft Actually Stands: A Status Post Reporting Each Chapter as It Exists, Counting Open Mentor Notes and Quoting the One Comment Made Twice

Status, Chapter by Chapter

My study examines how small medical-device contract manufacturers plan for supply disruptions, through interviews with operations leaders at eight firms. Here is where the draft actually stands, not where I planned it to be:

Chapter one, introduction and problem: drafted, returned by my mentor twice, four notes still open.

Chapter two, literature review: about 60 percent drafted; the section on supply-chain resilience is complete, the section on small-firm planning is an outline with sources listed but not discussed. Two notes open.

Chapter three, method: drafted once, not yet returned. No notes yet.

Chapters four and five: not started, as expected at this stage.

That is six open notes in total, four on a chapter I thought was nearly finished.

The Comment Made Twice

One comment has come back twice, in slightly different words. In the first round my mentor wrote: "The problem statement describes disruptions in general; what is the specific problem for these firms?" In the second round, after I added statistics on supply disruptions, the note read: "Still broad. What happens to a small contract manufacturer that a large one avoids?" I answered the first note by adding evidence that disruptions are common. I now think the note was asking something else: what is distinctive about small contract manufacturers, such as their dependence on a few large customers and their limited buffer inventory, that makes disruption a different problem for them. Kumar and Stracke (2007), analyzing written feedback on doctoral theses, found that much supervisor feedback is phrased as questions or suggestions, and that students can misread what is being asked when the feedback is indirect.

What I Will Do

I will rewrite the problem statement around the specific features of small contract manufacturers before touching the rest of chapter one. The other three notes on that chapter concern wording and may change once the problem does. Kamler and Thomson (2014) treat doctoral writing as part of how the research itself takes shape, which fits what is happening here: the problem statement is not badly worded, it is not yet decided.

Question for Classmates

Has a mentor's comment come back to you twice? When it did, was the second version asking the same thing as the first, or had you answered a question that was not asked?

Reply to Tamika

Tamika, your status lists chapter two as "complete pending revisions," with five open notes. I wonder whether "complete" is the right word if five notes are still open. Would it help to list which notes concern content and which concern style? Caffarella and Barnett (2000) found that doctoral students learned most from critiques when they treated them as part of the writing process rather than as corrections to a finished product.

Reply to Owen

Owen, your post says your mentor asked twice for a clearer link between your research question and your survey instrument. That sounds like the same pattern I described. Could the second comment be asking you to show the link in a table, item by item, rather than in another paragraph of explanation?

References

Caffarella, R. S., & Barnett, B. G. (2000). Teaching doctoral students to become scholarly writers: The importance of giving and receiving critiques. Studies in Higher Education, 25(1), 39-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/030750700116000

Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2014). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Kumar, V., & Stracke, E. (2007). An analysis of written feedback on a PhD thesis. Teaching in Higher Education, 12(4), 461-470. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562510701415433