Carol Timney :: Blog

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/11/13/week-4-and-5/

Week 4  was working on the research design. It’s been slow going and I felt bogged down and wanting to start work on the course building before I run out of time.

In the middle of all that took a few days “out” by way of a diversion to do a bit more family history research. Anyway as sometime happens, when busy at work and study, a ”mental break”  renews one’s energy to get back to the task at hand.

So to week 5 and a bit of excitement the first tangiable object resulting from the project, the results of my training needs survey are in.

Here the beauty of using Moodle comes into its own. The survey was done on line and the built in reporting tool has already done all the analysis work for me and provides the results in graphical and numeric form.

 

Comparing this with the effort of the last piece of research I did on the pupils on paper I recall the hassle and inaccuracy, double checking, inputting all the data into excell and then figuring out the correct equations to get a meaningful result.

 

Granted it took me several hours to build the questionairre, but it was a fraction of the time I spent on other recent paper based surveys. The last time this survey was issued the results were looked at briefly but never analised at all statistically.

 

All I had to do this time was observe the number of participents entries rising until after a couple of e-mail reminders all but one of my study group complied. I deliberately did not look at the results until they were all in having learned from my previous research that the full picture often looks different from the interim result.

 

Here is an example showing the way the results are presented for a rating question.

  

I found that by scanning through the 16 questions I could quickly identify the gaps in knowledge, and those areas where a whole topic was not well understood. For a busy teacher with several hundred pupils this must be of great benefit.

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/29/week-3-time-constraints-and-

Terry King highlights an issue which affects my project in her paper “Some Ethical Issues Arising in Educational Research”. Here she describes a problem of researching in the field of education where the research subjects may only be accessible for a ‘one-shot’ opportunity to sample the target group.

The “one shot” I am mindful of is the next INSET day in January 2009. This will be my only opportunity to use some of the schools directed training time to get subjects to access and evaluate a course in Moodle.

The short lead time to this deadline means I have to look at ways of accelerating the design process in order to have some material ready for evaluation. A timely blog post by Michael Hanley leads me to The Rapid Guide- How to Rapidly Identify Training needs, by Stephen Walsh of Kineo. Here I have a perspective from industry from which I can extract some tools.

The guide outlines three methods of speedily gathering initial information, surveys, focused interviews and virtual workshops. 

I already have an assessment of training needs survey in progress. Interviews with key staff could be arranged. Virtual workshops would not be an option for me as staff are not yet in a culture of working on-line.

Having gathered my initial data I need to work out what my criteria will be for deciding which courses to implement first.

Using the survey I expect to discover a wide range of potential topics for course material, and give lower priority to those which are not of immediate use to my sample group. Some topics will obviously stand out by being relevant to a higher percentage of potential users.

The Rapid Guide identifies a number of criteria for ranking training opportunities which would be relevant to my study. These include, alignment with strategic objectives of the organisation, external deadlines, return on investment, compliance driven requirements.

I will be returning to the “Rapid Guides” again to see what perspectives inform the different stages of design and implementation.

Huge bank of free resources available at

http://www.kineo.com/elearning-reports.html

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/25/week-2-research-methods-refl

Week 2 a bit of a blow out due to illness. A lot on at work managed to hold things together there but had to drop the study ball. Have half term week 3 to move forwards again.

Have more or less finalised my informed consent letter, hope to get this delivered and signed during the inset day at the beginning of term. Lots of discussion and thought about all the info that the study subjects need to have to give informed consent.

 

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/17/reflections-on-week-1/

As I have been working on my draft specification, I have been thinking around the subject of how to engage the motivation of the teacher students on the courses I will be developing.

In my report last term and in the project specification, are lots of questions which focus on identifying the problem to be solved. The answers are biased towards the technical, and practical issues. Work is already in progress to identiy the gaps in knowledge that the training materials need to address.

There needs to be a corresponding Why? to the What of all the above.

I want to make sure I give attention to the motivational areas, the needing and wanting area as in Race. If the teachers gain a few skills, but do not gain any concepts which they find personally relevant to their own teaching I feel I will not have served them well.

I have been thinking in general terms about the introduction areas of the courses. Here is where I think I should focus on motivation, by making sure that the relevance of the topic in question to their own teaching and learning is explored.

Christopher Sessums extensive research into teacher education leads him to this observation

“I have seen teachers absolutely panic over having to learn how an application works (unlike their students who willingly push buttons to see what happens) rather than looking ahead to see how such a medium might be useful.”

He also askes the question

“Is it possible or realistic to expect teachers who do not want to enhance their basic computer skills to be compelled to do so without any incentives? What’s in it for them?”

Cultural Implications of Social Software Teaching and Learning, Ready or Not

http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/144604.html

In his blog post “Web Learning about Web Learning for Teachers”, Terry Anderson notes

But I wish we could learn to spark interest in the most exiting and revolutionary technology ever to be used for formal instruction, in ways that were just a bit more designed to fire the imagination and engagement of users – both as learners and as teachers.

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/09/08/108/

Here is my motivation if any were needed to ensure that the benefits of understanding how to use a particular piece of software or employing a particular tool are stated very explicity in the course materials. Now to think about the means of achieving that.

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/15/research-methods-course-init

As the research methods course gets going so does my preparation. Attempting to organise my research using the Zotero FireFox plug in. As I usually use IE this means setting up another browser and beginning to separate my research and leisure browsing. Not a bad thing perhaps, less confusing and vital as the project rambles on to capture references and reduce the workload on the writing stage. 

Pleased with my initial efforts with Zotero. A quick trip to Amazon puts all the bibliographic info in place and I can get down to attaching notes as I read. I will need to look at ways of backing this up however before I get too carried away!

In Victory posting building up as we get our teeth into the work. Good to hear from everyone again. The course is now reduced somewhat again, but those going on seem determined and ready for the fray.

 

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/03/research-from-last-term/

By way of limbering up to the research methods course about to get underway here are my thoughts on my attempt to do some research on the pupil cohort at work.

This week I finally manged to publish the results from my survey of pupils from last term. I will write about how I did this research and what I learned in broad terms without publishing the statistical results here.

The purpose of the research was to discover how many of our pupils had access to a computer at home with broadband Internet access suitable for accessing work in the school VLE, Moodle. It seemed to my colleagues and I that we could not push forward the development of the VLE without having some indication of how many children could access it from outside school. Also we needed to be looking at how we might make provision for those children who might not have computers and Internet access. We are aware of the growing scale of gov initiatives to address the digital divide, however we expect a number of children to fall through this net even so.

A questionnaire was prepared on paper which was sent home with all the pupils. Responses were identifiable initially so that they could be checked off a register to see who had replied. We wanted to get statistics for the children by year group. The personal identifying information was then removed before someone else entered the data into a spreadsheet. I had to re check the data several times as some of the sample groups were very small errors in the input had a disproportionate effect on the results.

The initial round of questionnaires bought in a return of about 30%. I then sent out via e-mail and letter further copies to those who had not responded.  By the end of term we had had a response rate of 50%.

In general I think next time I will send the survey directly by post and e-mail to the parents. The survey itself was quite long and we attempted to get too much information. Next time I will have just three questions. Do you have a computer, do you have Internet access, is it broadband?

Maths and statistics not being my strong point I have a vague awareness that there may be statistical methods by which the data we have could be extrapolated to make predictions about the the 50% who did not respond. However in the absence of this knowledge the application of “common sense” to the figures had yielded some interim conclusions.

The results from the group who have responded show a disproportionately high percentage of broadband Internet access way above the national average, currently 57%

This lead me to conclude that those who did not respond largely represent the balance of those who do not have computers or internet access.

This means that overall across the school our pupil cohort have well under the national average of access to the Internet. This would be consistent with other measures of the student cohort.

It was interesting that as the returns came in I was initially impressed with the level of Internet access the pupils seemed to have, and was quite optimistic about our ability to close the gap on the digital divide. However it was only at the end of the process that the true picture emerged. It is clear that only the massive levels of investment proposed by central government will make an impact on this situation. For ourselves, once the impact of the £300,000,000 is assessed we will need to revisit this question again, a year on from the first survey.

Meanwhile we can use the data we have to work on plans for a range of after school activities for pupils and their parents.

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/08/27/holiday-notes/

Well dear reader just limbering up and making sure everything is working before term begins. Over the next week will be preparing for the Inset day at school which has been allocated for Moodle training. Unfortunately due to massive building works the staff will be in no mood to concentrate and will want to get to their classrooms as soon as possible to restore some semblance of order before the children return.

I will certainly have to be at the top of my game and problably bribes of some edible format may have to be considered.

Lots of inspiring things occured over the summer. I enjoyed watching Can’t Read Can’t Write on Channel 4

http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/R/reading/video.html

The weather was terrible during my two weeks holiday, in fact all summer, however my break happily coincided with the Olympics so got to watch some spectacular events,  not least the opening ceremony.
Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/07/09/wordle/

Wordle

http://wordle.net/

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

 

This looks interesting the I find the whole area of visualisations very interesting with much to discover of their uses as a learning tool.

Really pleased with this wordle of this blog!

 

 

This is the wordle of the Harnessing Technology Report

 

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/07/09/blogs-to-follow/

Catching up on some reading today, trying to find bloggers relevant to my work

http://advisorymatters.naaceblogs.org/

 

 

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/07/05/post-unit-roundup/

Results are in from the EELIP unit and the high standard of all was mentioned in dispatches so well done to all.

Having had a few weeks off study I am itching to get back down to it and move forward again. Work is incredibly busy and saps my mental energy with the number of different areas I am trying to resource.

Since I last posted I have been trying to negotiate myself a path through next year. Had some good meetings where I was able to present the case for implementing my report. However the response to this is still unknown and I am prompted to begin to muse on what if…I am not able to pursue the project I outlined in the strategy report? What other question would I address as my research project for next year?

It’s hard to think where to focus my energy in the abstract. I do see a rich supply of questions arising from the blogs I follow in this space. Perhaps something will hit a spark.  I am going to start reading back over the past two years entries of this blog as well to try and collate some ideas about questions I have asked.

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.