Note: This Summary of my field of action was written in August 2004. I am leaving it unrevised, to better represent my professional context at the beginning of my research.

My plan is to conduct my research within my place of work. I have already received preliminary permission to conduct research, but have not yet fully defined the exact focus of my research. What follows is a description of my "field of research" (the place where I currently work).

I work for a large, international, corporation that makes a wide variety of healthcare related software and hardware. Our clients are hospitals, hospices, homecare organizations, laboratories, radiologists, pharmacies, and doctors. The department I work for is called Client Education. There are currently 14 people in this department and I work closely with all of them on a daily basis. Our primary responsibility is to provide the courseware (online and offline) that educates our clients on how to use our products in their facilities. Our department consists of 1 Manager, 3 Instructional Technologists, 4 Learning Consultants, and 6 Learning Developers (of which I am one). In addition to my teammates within Client Ed, I also work with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) from several other departments, as well as members of the Employee Education (internal training) department.

Recently, the larger corporation made some restructuring decisions. Among these was the decision to place Client Education(14 people), Employee Education (3 people), and the education department for a newly acquired product (about 4 people), under one senior manager (the person to whom my direct manager reports). The intention of this restructuring is to create one larger department called "Enterprise Education" (we have already nick-named it "The Big ED"). We are literally at the very beginning of this change. As I begin the planning for my research, we are just starting to discuss how we can all work together as a larger team.

It is very likely that my Action Research will involve the evolution of The Big ED (the merging of 3 very different team/dept cultures). This is a HUGE change made up of a lot of smaller changes (both individual and communal). I believe the focus of my research will lie in the smaller changes, as that is where the focus of my work within the department and my part in the larger change will be.