# All the raw notes from my MA thesis: Chinese National Top Level Courses


I completed my MA thesis on the Chinese National Top Level Courses
Project in September 2010, and since then, I have been experimenting
with publishing the results in [a variety of different
formats](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses). I not only made
available the classic double-spaced nicely formatted PDF, but also a
more compressed two-column single-spaced version fit for printing, and
DOC, RTF and ODT versions of both of the above. In addition, since I am
a big proponent of e-readers (and love my Kindle), I created epub and
mobi files.

I also syndicated the "best parts" of my thesis on this blog over
several months last fall, which served two purposes. First, it meant
that people who ordinarily might never get around to reading a 100 page
PDF, could simply get it "drip-fed" every day. (I know I have many MA
and PhD theses on my harddrive which I will "get around to some day",
but I also read many blogs daily). I know from personal feedback that
several people read the whole thesis in this way.

In addition, it gives each individual "chunk" of the thesis it's own
URL. This makes it much easier to link to, reblog or retweet (which
happened with a number of the pieces, they were picked up by Stephen
Downes, Open Education News, etc).

I am committed to being an [open
scholar](http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/10/24/how-to-be-an-open-scholar-oa-week-2010/),
but for various reasons, the research process leading up to the
publication of my MA was not very "open". However, in addition to
publishing the polished end-result in a variety of formats, I also
wanted to make available some of the ephemera that was generated in the
production process, the stuff that is usually left on the cutting floor.

I used
[DevonThink](http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/) to
keep downloaded PDFs, webpages, and initial notes, and I later moved all
the notes into
[Scrivener](http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php), which I
used for the entire writing process. I absolutely love Scrivener, and
couldn't imagine writing this thesis without it. (See a [gallery of
screenshots](https://picasaweb.google.com/shaklev/MAThesisDraftInScrivener)
from my Scrivener database).

After completing the thesis, I had the idea that I wanted to make all my
raw notes from the writing process available. I was not planning on this
from the outset, and so made no effort at structuring these in any
useful way, they are a complete mess. However, it might be interesting
to some, both to see how I structured the writing process, and to find
extra material that did not make it into the finished thesis.

Scrivener can export a database to HTML files, however it does not
generate any kind of index for these files. I wrote a little Ruby-script
which goes through a folder hierarchy and creates a web-view, either
with two or three panes. I used this to publish [my entire Scrivener
database on the
web](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/scrivener-web). The [entire
Scrivener file](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/scrivener.zip) is
also available, so if you have Scrivener (there is a free trial version
available), this is probably easier.

The only thing I have removed is all references to my interview
participants, because of privacy, and the Chinese transcripts, because I
need more time to go through them and make sure there is no identifying
information there. I am almost ready to publish the Chinese translation
of my entire thesis, and I will try to get the full interview
transcripts up at that time as well.

Would love some feedback, whether you find this useful or not. You can
also find the script I used to convert the folder hierarchy [on
github](https://github.com/houshuang/folders2web). For my PhD research,
I am trying to be much more open from the beginning, with my [PhD
wiki](http://reganmian.net/wiki).

* * * * *

This blog is about the MA Thesis "The Chinese National Top Level Courses
Project: Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Quality in
Undergraduate Teaching" by Stian Håklev, University of Toronto 2010.

-   Download this thesis:
  [PDF](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/Haklev_Stian_201009_MA_thesis.pdf)[DOC](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/Haklev_Stian_201009_MA_thesis.doc)
  [ODT](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/Haklev_Stian_201009_MA_thesis.odt)
  [RTF](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/Haklev_Stian_201009_MA_thesis.rtf)[ePub](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/top-level-courses.epub)
  [Mobi
  (Kindle)](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/top-level-courses.mobi)
-   [Central page collecting all blog posts, many different download
  formats, and supplementary
  material](http://http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses)

* * * * *