Breaking in: Early findings from an Open University Associate Lecturer’s action research scholarship project critiquing own breakout room practices

Demelza Hayer 

Keywords

Breakout rooms, action research, synchronous online nursing education, critical digital pedagogy.

 

Rationale

Lack of guidance and training in use of online breakout rooms has been identified as contributing to inconsistent use in nursing education teaching practice at the Open University. Inconsistent use of breakout rooms contradicts Standards for Pre-Registration Nursing Programmes set by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2023), which emphasises that higher education institutions must ensure technology is used effectively and proportionately across the curriculum to support supervision, learning and assessment. The scholarship project focuses on the extent that breakout room pedagogies are used effectively by the researcher in her practice as an Associate Lecturer. The decision to critique breakout room pedagogies was underpinned by critical digital pedagogy, which encourages educators to critically examine the tools educators use in their online practice in relation to the proposed benefits afforded by the tools (Morris, 2018). The rationale for the scholarship project is to gain an in-depth understanding of the researcher’s reality of breakout room use in practice, in order to improve practice.

 

Method

The scholarship project adopts an ‘observe, reflect, plan, act’ model for action research (O’Leary, 2004), allowing the researcher to be at the centre of the research process.

Observe: this stage has begun, the data set utilised is the researcher’s tutorial recordings from one presentation of a stage 2 nursing module. A tutorial observation schedule adapted from Chandler’s (2016) diary of involvement in online tutorial sessions to investigate use of online breakout rooms was used to familiarise with the data. Reflect: this stage will commence on completion of observation and familiarisation; tutorial recording content will be subjected to reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes within the data (Braun and Clarke, 2020).Plan: this stage will involve collaboration with others, engaging with critical friends to review themes and assist to identify practical improvements that can be made. Act: This stage will involve disseminating findings and implementing the improvements identified.

 

Results

Observation and familiarisation with the data has indicated four notable areas of interest concerning breakout room activities: build up to breakout room activity, utility of breakout room activity post tutorial, facilitation of feedback from the breakout room activity, and evaluation of the breakout room activity. The build up to the breakout room activity involves the detailed explanation of the activity, asking if students understand or have any concerns; however, during this time students give minimal responses. In nine of the ten tutorial recordings, the recording is paused during the breakout room activity without consideration of students using the tutorial recording as an asynchronous learning resource; however, in every observed tutorial, the feedback slide from the breakout room activity is exported and uploaded to the tutor group forum for student access post tutorial. Annotating a feedback slide was the main feedback method following a breakout room activity and students completed this without difficulty. There was lack of substantial evaluation from the tutor and students regarding breakout room activity effectiveness.

 

Next Steps

Following on from observation and familiarisation with data, the scholarship project will move into the ‘reflect’ stage of action research (O’Leary, 2044), in which the researcher will commence reflexive thematic analysis of the data (Braun and Clarke, 2020). Reflexive thematic analysis has been selected to utilise the subjective values and skills of the researcher, that are critical to the context under study, and apply these in an inductive approach utilising open coding.

 

References:

 

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2020) ‘One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis?’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 328-352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2020.1769238

 

Morris, S. M. (2018) ‘Critical Instructional Design’, in Morris, S. M. and Stommel, J. (2018) (Ed) An Urgency of Teachers: The Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy. Available at: https://pressbooks.pub/criticaldigitalpedagogy/ (Accessed on: 13 March 2025).

 

Nursing and Midwifery Council (2023) Part 3: Standards for pre-registration nursing programmes. Available at: https://www.nmc.org.uk/standards/standards-for-nurses/standards-for-pre-registration-nursing-programmes/ (Accessed: 12 March 2025)

 

O’Leary, Z. (2004) The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage.