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?
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?
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
I really enjoy my blog, and I’ve been irritated that the damn probationary report has got in the way of my posting to it recently.
It just occurred to me that I spend a lot of time reflecting on the blog s and how we’ll be able to analyse them, and occasionally emailing other researchers and reading their blogs. Maybe I should be researching blogs, not online learning.
Having just struggled though my literature review I have this sense that everyone knows so much about learning and online learning. It’s really difficult to get a handle on it all. There are umpteen journals, so there’s more appearing every day. What I like about thinking about the blogging (and about epistolary interviewing, which I’m also thinking about at the moment) is that it’s fresh and new and untheorised and seems to open up so many possibilities.
Give me a choice on reading a book on blogging or a book on e-learning and I’d go for the blogging one straight away.
Well, I was booked to spend all day at Denise’s research day on e-assessment. I went this morning and, I must say, it was ver interesting.
But having been stressed out with deadlines all week, and expecting to be stressed out agin tomorrow when my supervisors have had a chance to pull to pieces my probationary report, what do I do? Do I get on with the mountains of work I’ve accumulated? No. I go and change the theme on my blog, watch a videocast and idly flick through my emails.
Well, I loaded it up yesterday, and I must say I didn’t find it very intuitive to use. Gill and I had a conversation, but the system seemed convinced that Gill was offline. I don’t understand the maps facility. Frankly it could do with some sort of Help facility other than telling me who programmed it in the first place.
So then I went home and thought well, perhaps I should be trying it out at home. I’ve got a Mac at home. And dial-up. So I downloaded the version for the Mac and other non-Windows operating systems. My computer was downloading particularly slowly and thought it might take about 80 minutes to download the zipped file, but managed it in only 25 minutes. Yawn.
But then it wouldn’t run. Lots of image files that would open happily. Lots of sound files that would open happily. No application that would open on my system. Hmm. Well, perhaps I haven’t got Java. Thought I had, but perhaps not. Run search on Java. Umpteen files with the name Java. Can’t spot which one I should be focusing on. Ah,this looks hopeful. Click. Bugger, it runs in Classic. Wait while Classic launches. Oh, look, animated coffee beans. That wasn’t what I wanted. Oh, and an annoying little sound file.
OK, back to the BuddySpace website. How to check if you’ve got the right version of Java. Open a terminal window? A terminal window? We’ve moved into Geek speak. I know they’re in there somewhere, but where? OK, online help. Oh, but I’m in the middle of printing ten pictures, and I’ve got about 10 applications open. My computer’s grinding to a halt. Help finally opens. Find out how to open a terminal window. Open a terminal window. Check my Java version. Yup, that’s fine. Except I still can’t open Buddyspace.
Look, here’s a web client. I didn’t need to do that download. In I go. Hey, I’m in Buddyspace. Where is everybody? Probably in bed by now (checks clock).
Conclusion so far? Buddyspace needs documentation which doesn’t assume we all know what terminal windows are and that accepts that some of us are at home using dial-up and really don’t want to waste an hour or so just so they can say Hi to their friends.
Oh, and I notice Luis is still on my Buddy list, though he left over a year ago. Who does the housekeeping, and how?
The thing about going to conferences is that your mind starts rushing around making connections between all the different things you’re hearing. At the U500 conference, where people are researching everything from the moons of Jupiter to the 15th-century viola, the opportunities for overlap are huge.
I’m currently into the applications of gaming software: how can it be applied elsewhere? Particularly, I guess, the way that if you reach certain targets in times of hours online or things achieved, you unlock new areas. Seems to me this might be really useful in keeping people involved in online learning enivoronments.
And I’m interested in mashups. Here’s the reference for the site which combinea Amazon wishlists, Googlemaps and some function of Yahoo to produce satellite pictures of the houses of people who recommend subversive books (must say I’ve read most of the books he uses an example and they’re not what I’d call subversive but, hey, it’s the principle of the thing)http://www.applefritter.com/bannedbooks
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.
Well, I’ve written up my pilot study in the form of a 5000-word journal article. The idea is that my supervisors critique it, then it gets critiqued at my probationary review, then it emerges as a lovely fully formed article which I can send off for publication. The only slight snag is that, owing to pressure of time, I’m only halfway through the pilot study. According to my article I have this wonderful, validated research instrument. I suspect, when I actually finish the pilot, that I’ll have something that works a bit. In some cases. And not all of the time. Still, the difficult lit review bit is in place, and the justification of why I did the study. It’ll just be more interesting to other people if it actually works 🙂
And my U500 conference abstract is written and my presentation prepared and practised. For the first time since (um, checks PDA) 28 March I’ve got my workload down to a manageable level and things look as if they’re on target, and nobody’s imminently expecting me to organise a birthday party.
of course, over the next month I’ll have to actually domy pilot study, write the other half of my probationary review, give my U500 conference paper, finish the now-three articles that I have sitting three-quarters written on my desktop, write a 32-page annual report for Bethany and Jacob’s school, arange to get the school CD copied 250 times, take over as chair of governors at Miriam’s school… I’m beginning to feel quite tired again. Good thing it’s the weekend.
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.