Douglas W. Conrad - Action Research Cycle 3 Journal
January 14
Cycle 3 is now fully underway. Two new professors and classes using Twitter and incorporating the things learned in the first two cycles. A third group of students are using Glassboard so … I know that there will be new challenges but … I am very much hopeful about the knowledge creation potential of this ARP. I have my lit review back from the writing center and from Margaret and that is all pretty much set to go. I got some feedback also from Margaret about the data analysis in my first two cycle reports so I am updating those in response. I watched a video this week from my fav futurist, David Houle where he talks about one of my ARP focuses - that of how mobile media devices are changing our understanding of place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ffEmsOgECg. This process has brought me further and deeper into what I think about the way technology, on the one hand affects our lives and then how this can be leveraged to benefit learning.
January 6, 2013
This month I will expand the research group for this ARP. I will meet with one of the two classes of teacher students tommorrow to help them set up their Twitter accounts. This appears to be a better fit for the use of this tool compared to the class that participated in the previous two cycles. In this group, the students will be looking at the use of this mobile tech to communicate on the go with each other as they will be all out in classrooms doing student teaching assignments. What I hope that we can discover is not so much if Twitter is a good tool, but how the use of mobile devices to collaborate and communicate will impact the learning experience of students. The second class of students will be brought on board with this ARP one week later. I will also have a small group of my tech student staff use Glassboard to give this research a different look at the impact of mobile devices. I will use the same analytics for the Twitter groups along with student and teacher interviews. I will use student interviews and general use data for the analytics for the Glassboard group. I feel like I learned a lot in the first two cycles and now feel confident I can get some good activity with these three groups in this cycle.
This week I met with the first group of student teachers and their professor. We talked about the context, gave guidelines for use and made sure everyone was signed up and they understood how to use the tool. The professor is enthusiastic about the possibilities of leveraging the tech to encourage the academic collaboration while her students are on the go. Taking what I learned from the previous cycles, I was able to set up this field of action in a way that the participants will feel confident in why they are doing this as well as finding a good fit for their pedagogical goals. So far this cycle activity has been like night and day compared to the previous cycles. I have two more groups to add - one more on Twitter and one on Glassboard so … now I can see how this form of research is really meant to function. I feel like there will be enough data from this cycle and possibly a 4th cycle to have a good look at the impact of mobile devices and … the other question … how can we leverage this to encourage adoption of 21st century skills.
January 21
A couple of weeks now into this cycle and the action seems to humming along. The two classes and professors using Twitter are enthusiastic about use of the tool and are modeling it's use as well as encouraging their students interaction with each other. One of the professors has been so pleased with the direction of this project that she wrote up and submitted a report to be included as a presenter on this topic at an education conference in April and asked me to join in the presentation. Wow … so much different than last cycle experience. So what is different? I feel like all I learned in cycle 1 and 2 helped me prepare assist the participants in embracing this project. I definitely learned the value of making sure that the technology is a good fit for the participants. It seemed like it would be for the first cycle professor and classes but that experience gave me a better focus and perspective that helped choose the current group and engage with them in our work together. I will be sending out a poll this week while we are at FETC to the students and one to the professors to gain a better understanding of how they feel the research is going. I will then have them respond in a poll at the end of this cycle, somewhere near the end of February or beginning of March to compare and contrast. It is interesting to see this unfold as the 140-character limit of Twitter was a deal breaker for the group in the previous cycle, the current group is thriving within this boundary. The knowledge building that is happening in the informal learning spaces between classes will I believe, be clearer in this cycle. As for the Glassboard users group … I have gotten off to a slower start with them but early results show much more potential for significant use mainly due to the lack of character limitation and … the closed nature of the app. As my research is not about vetting any one tool, I believe that the Glassboard group will give me the opportunity to have look at the action research question from more than one perspective.
TweetArchive from this week shows the use and keywords for this week of this ARP.
Professor 1 feedback
Hi Doug,
It sounds like the 12 responses are from the 11 elementary students and me, as I had them complete the survey during seminar. (Michelle, just to encourage you -- the survey only takes about 5 minutes to complete).
I feel quite energized with our use of Twitter. During the week, we have used Twitter for a variety of reasons, but the most significant is tweeting after an observation to highlight something a student teacher has done well. This tweet publicly affirms that students and reminds all the student teachers of an important teaching or management strategy. Twitter also helps us as quick questions can get answered, words of general inspiration/scripture can be shared, and quick reminders can be given. So yes, I do think informal learning occurs via Twitter throughout the week.
The other way I'm using Twitter is during seminar class time. Each week I typically have the students tweet about 2 different things. We then use the Tweets as a springboard for class discussion.
Yesterday in class the students first tweet was -- Share a teaching tip that's working for you. I said, "_________, what's one teaching tip that you'd like to learn more about?" The student I called upon then asked a fellow student to expand upon their teaching tip.
The second tweet asked -- Share a discouragement. I then asked students to share a word of encouragement or advice to a fellow student.
Twitter provides a channel of communication throughout the week, and a new channel of communication during class.
Thanks for inspiring us to give this a try.
Jane
February 10, 2013
I received the second set of poll results today and entered them into the spreadsheet in preparation for analysis. I will send out the same question set to the Glassboard users group to include their responses. As I look at this cycle, I will finish collecting this data, interview the professors, code the results of the polls and reflect on all of this to plan cycle 4. The activity and use of these two tools (Twitter and Glassboard) has been good qualitatively and quantitatively and I am hopeful that these results will begin to shed some light on the question in all of this … what impact do these mobile media technologies have on informal learning and … in what ways can this be leveraged to include the learning in this space into the formal curriculum? I have not really been a data analyst up to this point, but an assignment that our group did in Orlando, helped me see the potential in gathering, coding and then reflecting on the data from my research. I had originally thought of this cycle as a long and winding road to the end of this project, but now see that I can further refine this research by winding this cycle down now and "running" one more cycle with the same groups. The more I write and talk and think about this research, it becomes a little clearer what might be learned and ultimately claimed. My one thought for this last cycle, is to give the groups direction for use in a way that will focus the use not on the tool, but on how learning is enabled in our daily lives by the use of these tools. Through all of this, I have noticed that I am thinking about the issues that revolve around this research in all parts of my day and "seeing" what has always been there in the ways that mobile media technologies are disrupting the ways we learn and communicate. This is a lot of writing, reading, reflecting and acting in community but I find myself energized by it all.
February 18, 2013
This week I have gathered all of the responses from the survey and will begin to code the data. The next step is to write my claim and then start to work with the data. My learning circle volunteered to look over the data after I have worked with it to help me discern what it all means. Both the Twitter and the Glassboard groups have been engaged with tools regularly though out the process of this cycle. I will look to take what I learn from this data and form the action for the fourth and final cycle of this research. My claim for this data is, "Mobile Media tools will encourage knowledge building outside of the formal learning environment."