Category Archives: Research tools

Writing up

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Inspired by Anesa’s recent blog posts, I have started to write up my thesis!

Karen did suggest a couple of months ago that I could bank some sections of my PhD which I was feeling confident about. Accordingly, I’ve written 1000 words on the ethics of online research, which wasn’t too complicated, as I drew heavily on last year’s U500 presentation. Then I dragged out my mini-viva presentation to use the section of units of analysis. That needs to be added to – I’ve got a couple of articles that I need to reference. Oh, and I’ve done a piece on episolary interviewing. It needs to be tidied up but most of it is in place.

That’s 3000 words or so – hey, I’ve written 5% of my thesis. How cool is that?

Blog my research?

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How would it be if I gave every student on DZX222 access to this blog? Or to another blog, created for the purpose? Then I could put in my musings as I go along and get student responses. It would be another source of data and a whole new use for my blog.

Of course, I’d have to be really careful about referring to data in order to protect anonymity. And if students could access my research, would it affect how they act? Would that matter? Would I be seen as interfering with the learning and teaching? Would I have to write myself some specific blogging ethical guidelines before I got going?

Ecological metaphor

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I’m reading Ann and Kim’s article on affective issues in collaborative learning. They quote Crook extensively and say he uses an ecological metaphor which promtes an approach whereby the investigator pays particular attention to both the features of the interaction and to the ‘character of the resources that collaborators act around – much as ecologists need to study how organisms interact with each other within their natural habitat.

Perhaps I should be doing this?

Probationary research questions

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And these are my research questions as framed in my probationary report…

This research will consider the affordances of asynchronous online communities in higher education, asking how they can be utilised to support rather than to impede learning. It will also examine ways in which learners participate in a virtual environment. The main research questions which will drive the work are:

  • How do virtual learning communities support distance learners in the co-construction of knowledge?
  • How are self-presentation, identity and community relations implicated in learning online?

And again…

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So, my supervisors said that the last set of research questions were questions for an entire career, not for something as narrow as a thesis. Now I’m down to:

How do virtual learning communities based in asynchronous online conferences support higher-education learners in the co-construction of knowledge?

How are self-presentation, identity and community relations implicated in online learning in these communities?

Research questions revisited

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I like to keep tabs on my research questions, so before I delete this week’s set, I’ll post them here.

This what I proposed in the draft of my probationary report:

What are the key characteristics of a virtual learning community?

Which characteristics of a virtual learning community support learning?

Which characteristics of a virtual learning community impede learning?

Epistolary interviewing

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Just so that I don’t lose it – Here’s Margaret Debenham on epistolary interviewing:

Finally a number of Personal Interviews were undertaken to complete the main study by exploring inferences drawn from the earlier studies through direct interaction with the participants. Eleven students were interviewed in total.  This phase of the work was undertaken in two parts, using two different interview techniques. These were ‘face-to-face’ interviews and on-line interviews by asynchronous e-mail, a novel method introduced in this thesis, termed epistolary interview.  This latter method was adapted for text-based communication from the type of semi-structured conversational format described by Wilson (1996) as a suitable research tool for in depth exploration of interviewee experience in a face-to-face situation.  Both sets of interviews were based on a similar framework of interview questions. (p. 11) 

Debenham, M. (2001). Computer Mediated Communication and Disability Support: Addressing Barriers to Study for Undergraduate Distance Learners with Long-term Health Problems. Chapter 1 p 11. Doctoral thesis. Milton Keynes: The Open University.  John added:
If anyone is interested in accessing Margaret Debenham’s PhD thesis in an electronic form, it can be found through the following site:

The url of the web page is http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mjdebenham/MDpage2.htm.This will normally be accessed from a link on my home page at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mjdebenham/MDpage1.htm

Being quantitative

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I just wrote a Visual Basic program to help me with my data analysis. How quantitative is that 😉

I’m picking out words and phrases in my data which are likely to be indicative of the appropriate coding, then I’m inserting a note by them with a suggested coding. It would be better if I could highlight the text in some way – underline it, or make it blue, but I couldn’t work out how to make Visual Basic do that for me.

Also, it’s an extraordinarily long program for what it does. It doesn’t have the elegance of a programmer who knows how to loop their program up tidily into sub-routines. Still, it functions. I can always learn a bit more later.

NVivo 7

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I’ve installed the new version of NVivo, which looks a whole lot better than the clunky old version I had before.

It still feels like a development version, though. Any researcher who worked with it for ten minutes would have given them a range of ideas for the Beta version.

Particularly the Help element. There’s next to no Help, except on fairly obvious points. So, after struggling against it for a whole day, I had to move on to the Tutorials. They’ve written these in QuickTime, although by the looks of them they used an earlier version known as Slowtime.

First… you click here………Now…. you double-click here……..Move your cursor over here (Yawn, did I fall asleep?)

And couldn’t they have programmed some key to mean Code? I don’t want to press esoteric key combos – I just want to code! (Grrr)

Still, at least it now imports Word files. Only problem is, due to my data going some way complicated FirstClass, Unix, Mac, PC route, it’s not quite a Word file but some mutant hybrid. (I can see the paragraph marks, you can see the paragraph marks, but can Find and Replace see the paragraph marks? No way.) 

And, boy, is it slow to open. Almost time to make a cup of tea while I’m waiting for it to crank its way into action.

Oh, and periodically it crashes and loses all your carefully constructed work.

Still, as I say, it’s a lot better than the old version.

What do I do with my data?

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Right, I’ve pulled my data to pieces, word by word. Not sure how useful that was. Time wil tell. Now I’ve read through the majority of my notes for the last six months, and I’ve made a list of ways to come at this data. I’ve listed them below so I won’t lose them.

Questions
Are they happy online?
How do they acknowledge / react to M?
Are they supported or hindered by the ‘real world’?
Where are their networks / weak ties?
Do I see them gaining trust and respect? Do they demonstrate reliability and ability?
What types of thing are praised by the group?
What forms of validation are there? Which ideas are valued and respected?
Which ideas and suggestions are ignored?
How do they work to establish identities?
Which stories are being rehearsed?
How embodied is it? (Interesting, but possibly irrelevant)
Are identities mobilised to support learning?
How is identity established?
What are the backstage areas, and how are they used?
When do people first model each online skill? Which are taken up?
Identities
Who creates the subject positions? OU? BPS? Students? Tutors?
Which identities/positions are readily taken up? Eg nervous, unsure.
Online identities: suckers, newbies, social loafers
Is this text or identity? How do they treat it?
Constructing identity via projection of beliefs / expectations / social states (Crook).
Approaches 

Follow the trajectories of individual students. When are they involved? Who with?
Key incidents: breakdown, Xmas, M, deadlines
Social network theory: Haythornthwaite
Prototype theory
Informality
Do their emotions relate to their engagement?
What informal relations do I see developing?
Is the effectiveness of the group in any way related to social interaction?
Playfulness / informality / nonsense / off-topic discussion.
Follow up
Lapadat – the advantages of asynchronicity. Are these borne out here?
Find out more about interpretative repertoires.
Weinberger on social scripts – I think this is like modelling behaviours. Check.
Do I see clarification / elaboration / interpretation? – other criteria CF Mercer.
Schrire on higher-order thinking. What evidence of that is visible?
Murphy’s graded classification of collaboration.
Burnett – who don’t they accept info from? Who gets ignored? M??
Learning community / Community of practice
What makes this a learning community or a CoP? Find a definition.
Seems to have all the aspects of a CoP except for being voluntary.
Do they articulate their purpose / goal? Is it the same for all of them?