Douglas W. Conrad - Action Research Cycle 2 journal
ARP Cycle 2
Oct. 12 - 19, 2012
emails to frame project:
To EMO staff:
Hey team ... I totally appreciate you giving up a sliver of your time to help me look into this. First ... the "why".
- studies have shown that mobile technology and social media are creating a shift in how we interact and how we learn. The term, "Multiplicity of Place" has been used to describe this shift. Basically this means that the lines between online and offline have been blurred and because communication is so much "anytime and anywhere with anyone" our sense of where we are with regard to place is changing. Think about it ... you are talking to someone in your dorm room, you get a text and then your cell phone rings. In an instant you are in multiple places. Is this good, bad or neutral? What effect does this have on your learning experience?
I don't know but ... I do know that there is a change taking place. Through your participation, we will look a little closer at what is going on. Here's the "what";
- I will send out a Tuesday and a Thursday Tweet in the morning (today it will be by 1:30pm)
- You will help by responding to my two tweets and then, when appropriate, respond to each other.
Pretty simple, right?
As for content ... we may digress and go off on tangents, but for the most part, lets try to make our comments substantive. Again ... we are peering into a future that is going to be your very near reality. It is exciting and one bit scary at the same time.
Again ... I appreciate your time and your busy work and academic schedules now more than ever. Your participation is voluntary so I ask that you each give this conversation a chance to succeed. Feel free to add your own questions or thoughts to start a new discussion. Later in the semester we will meet again for a recap on this all.
The question was asked if this would replace the texting we do for EMO gigs and I don't think so. It is also fine to talk about gig stuff in our twitterverse ... the main thing is exploring the value in using these types of tools.
To Professor L:
Hey Professor L ... just checking in with you about the couple of things we talked about before the 4 day:
- set up and account on The Archivist for your two class accounts (http://tweetarchivist.com/) so that it can start collecting the data. Once this is set up, you don't need to check it regularly. it will just create a report whenever you login to show the use up to that date.
- give clear direction to your class about why you are having them do this and what you expect - I think we said that one tweet discussion starter question from you per week to help initiate your class to converse using this tool.
- To fully assess this tool in how it has impacted your class, I will need to interview some of them briefly - maybe with a tweet poll - at the end of the semester.
Let me know what you think.
In this cycle, I took what I learned in cycle one and applied the change to the action. I met with the professor to strategize the best way forward for him and his classes. I chose this professor and his classes initially because he contacted me with this need to find a way to engage his students in discussion outside the class. My research question on how to discover the impact of mobile media tech on students' academic collaboration appeared to be a good fit. So … I reconnected with the professor to clarify for both of us, why we both chose to do this and what steps we both would take for this to succeed. What I learned in cycle one was that I/we neglected to provide a context for use of this tool and did not give any real clear guidelines for it's use related to the course work. For this cycle two, the professor planned to discuss the context and value he is hoped to realize for his class with his students. He was also clearer about what he would do and what they should do tying their participation to a portion of their class participation grade. The professor committed to sending out one tweeted question per week for his class then to add their feedback, first to the professor and then to each other. In addition, I set up this same action with my group of student workers (14 students) and set up an Archivist analysis of their activity. It was my hope that adding the additional guidelines to this action would encourage student engagement with this tool. The focus of this ARP is not how to get students involved in using these technologies, rather it is taking the action of implementing the technology to discover the impact it's use has on student learning and collaboration.
The beginning of cycle 2 is all about applying what I have learned in cycle 1 of this ARP. After meeting with Professor L last week, I feel we are ready to take a fresh direction. The classes will be given a clear explanation of the "why" for this project. In the case of Professor L and these classes, it is about allowing their discussion about course topics to infiltrate their everyday lives. The professor, a new Twitter user himself, will make a point to Tweet a class question each week and encourage class participation. I also will reset this with my student staff in the same way. I will have a meeting with them, give them an explanation of the "why" for this project and have a clear idea of my expectation for their participation. The user or non use in these three sections will be still at the student discretion but in cycle 2, we will engage the participants weekly in dialog about how this is going for them. It is the focus of this cycle to take action that gathers more data, reflect on that data and plan new action to further discover how academic collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom will have an affect on student learning outcomes.
This week I met with my section of the Twitter project and laid out a clear reason why this project might matter to them, the application for the data we will collect together and a clear guideline of what we wanted to accomplish. I gave them the guidance that I will tweet a question to the group on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and expect them to respond at least to that question. The potential for expanded tweet discussion will still not be mandated so we can see how useful that tool really is to the depth of our communications and collaborations. it is still new for my group and the expanded tweets have not come yet but we will give this a couple of weeks to see how it unfolds. I also sent an email to the professor to remind him of what we had discussed and encourage him to also provide guidance for his two sections. I secured a meeting with an off campus programs planner for next week to look at the potential for what I have hoped from the beginning would be one of my AR focuses - finding a way to connect the on campus with the off campus through a shared writing project to try to help both groups realize the wealth of experience that both groups have individually but even greater when connected together. Lit review is mostly my main focus for these next two weeks but I will keep assessing and watching this AR cycle two activity to see what can be learned from what is happening in these back channel discussions and what affect they might have on student learning outcomes.
October 29 - Nov. 4
So … cycle two and the changes I installed (regular tweets from me - 2 per week) and more regular analysis have begun to bring in a bit more data. Still hard to get Professor L to initiate his "side" of the action. When I talk to him, he is all stoked about the possibilities and we agree what might be the best next steps for him but as far as I can tell he has yet to take action. As just an informal observation, participatory technology such as Twitter does not just organically become adopted by busy students or faculty. For both, it is important to both develop the habit of using these tools as well as understanding the benefit vs. investment of time. I will keep tinkering with the formula of adoption of this and other PT tools to get enough data to have some assessment.
As for the writing project with off campus and on campus courses, I met with Professor JW last week to discuss my idea and what he was working on in support of off campus programs. His ideas are for more programs, a monastery program, OCP that go to the same place every year, physical campuses in global lands and global sites that have some online content. I think he is ambitious and maybe not quite aware of how strongly online content may be opposed. He did not think my idea of a writing project would be effective. He was polite, but said he likes my thinking of solutions but didn't see any value in this approach. I, while appreciating his right to opinion, am not convinced that he is right. This is what I know: Currently we have very little connection between what happens on campus and off campus. An academic connection would be more valuable than a social connection. I will need to talk to the actual professor leading the program to see if he is willing to give it a try. Until we try something - my idea or some other idea - we won't know what could be so … I will remain undaunted and keep strategizing.
Last night in LC I realized after talking it over with my Oteam that I need to find (if possible) other classes and instructors that would be willing, even at mid semester, to take part in this pilot project. It is frustrating to me that Professor L did not follow through on what he and I agreed on but … instead of pushing him, just chalk it up to experience and find another way to proceed. Today I sent an email to two education professors that I work with a lot. I told them that I am aware that in some ways this is a crazy thing to ask at mid semester. I laid out how the implementation would be pretty simple and it might add a nice value to their classes. For one group of these ed students, they will begin interning on location in classrooms around the city so … a backchannel, twitter communication might be something that would work well for them. Being that this is Friday, I will wait until both next week and the next time that I see both of these teachers in person. They are my best chance right now to expand and continue cycle two. If they will not go for this, then I will reach out to the next tier of faculty that I also have a close working relationship with. On the surface, this may be a harder way to go but hard for me to guess … maybe they have been looking for something like this and I just don't know it. The more I work in this environment, the more I realize the importance of clear and defined goals. The premise that i am researching that academic collaboration beyond the classroom walls will have a positive affect on student learning outcomes still seems viable. I just need to get more data to collect. Hard to say why the original class did not have any traction from the professor but I will continue to look at the action that is happening (or not happening) and the environment that the action is taking place in to be able to report my findings. Depending on how the review of my lit review goes, i may consider modifying cycle three to focus on the multiplicity of place aspect of mobile media device use outside the classroom. This may take the place of the on campus/off campus project I have been considering.
I heard back from one of the professors (Prof W) who asked if she and her students could participate in the ARP next semester as it would be hard to add here in the middle of the semester. While I am looking to add one or two more data collection communities for this semester, it does make me think that cycle 3 will be along the same track using Twitter and maybe adding tumblr to look into the backchannel academic collaborations on campus rather than trying to expand to include the on campus/off campus connections. I initially saw that as an obvious opportunity for Westmont to improve but the politics and logistics make this a difficult course to pursue. I will give it my due diligence and talk to the key prof who will lead the trip but … after writing my lit review, I think there is more to look into with Twitter/Tumblr on campus than I first thought. The whole idea of multiplicity of place that these devices encourage/enable could be a key area of discovery for Westmont.
Nov. 5 -11
This week I am working on my lit review review to add a couple more sources and clean up the paper in response to the feedback I have gotten. The whole project makes me think that the microblogging beyond the classroom is what I will keep my focus with. The LR has given me a finer focus on what might be going on with our mobile devices and how we communicate and learn. My cycles questions are about looking into how the process of using these tools (more than Twitter?) will affect student learning outcomes. The whole assessment area is new to me so just trying to do the right thing with data and academic analysis. My current plan is to provide a combination of Archivist graphs, student and faculty interviews and journal entries to document what is happening in this ARP. At this writing, Professor L has not engaged so … how can I learn from this? Being that I am not the one directly involved in the action, it is hard to make a change in that arena. In the next cycle, I will have more than one course/faculty involved and strive for greater clarity in what the shared goals of the research are. I thought that this was a good way to start with on Professor and the two sections of his class but … somehow this fell of his/their list. If I had at least one other course/faculty the odds would be better that the ARP could be able to collect data.
We view students as tech aware but they, like us, know what they know and do not in general have a wide understanding of tech potential or workings. Twitter, though it is not the new kid on the block, is not regularly used by most of the students in these courses. I guess that was the first assumption that was not completely correct. I imagined an easy adoption of this tool as students surely would either be using it or be aware of it's potential. For this group and for my staff group, it has not caught on organically so far.
Nov. 12 - 25
Well … the lit review has been an eye opening experience to say the least. It has definitely been "hard fun" finding the sources and writing a 13 page paper in an academic voice. The process led me to sharpen the focus of this research. As I have written earlier in this journal, the action of cycle one began quickly and without much guidance, the users did not really engage after the initial week. The second cycle continued with the same classes and the same general focus but added a discussion of context with the students and framework for how the tool would be used by the class. While this was going on, my lit review writing brought in the ideas from my reviewed sources of how disruptive and transformative mobile media tech was becoming to our society, and in turn education. As I reflected on the action so far and on the lit review, I realized that my initial focus of Academic Collaboration Beyond the Walls of the Classroom was too broad. The action that I have already begun and the reviewed materials brought me to bring the ARP focus more on the impact of the technologies rather than the broader topic of informal learning. I think that this has a lot of promise and while there is a lot written in recent years on mobile tech, I look around and see how these tools are gradually changing how we communicate and how we gather information. So my AR title is now Mobile Media Technologies and Their Impact on Academic Collaboration Beyond the Walls of the Classroom. It's not so much that I will look at or even promote or root for a specific tool or tools but look at the impact the concepts of multiplicities of place and the unwiring of connectivity impact student collaboration, communication and learning.
I guess that I am starting to get the hang of this. My cycle one and two of the is research have gone way differently than I theorized but I have learned things that I will apply to my third cycle. It is as if my first two cycles were in preparation for my cycle 3. This is the action that I propose for cycle 3:
- use Twitter with two classes of ed student teachers as they are out in the field
- use Tumblr with a photography class
- use an app called Glassboard potentially with Jerusalem semester
So … I ran into the professor today and he admitted he had been avoiding me. I told him that while the action did not turn out how he or I expected, the research can still yield valuable data and to not avoid me cause he let me down. I hope to get some sort of exit interview from him and a number of his students as well as interviews with my student group. I will watch the tutorials that Margaret posted next week and make my plans for ending cycle one and collecting the evidence that I can.
Nov. 29
I am preparing to wind down this cycle and evaluate and reflect. I will begin in the next week to collect the interviews and begin to analyze the data. At the same time, I am beginning my plans for cycle 3 action. I ran into our photography professor last week and discussed the possibility of including him in this research by using Tumblr with his photo class. I am also looking into the possibility of engaging and two additional classes - our Jerusalem semester and an on campus writing/History of literature class using glassboard.
Dec. 3 - 9
I crafted the student survey questions and will send them to students online. Tomorrow I hope to meet with the professor who will run the Jerusalem program this Spring. I hope to "sign him up" to participate in the Cycle 3 action but hard to say which way this will go. If he does, then we will get to add another mobile technology to the action of this research. I really want this to work out as this really was a part of my initial goals for this research. I have learned along the way so far that even though I am involved in this action research, so much is out of my control. And even when the action takes a different turn, I am getting more proficient in extracting meaning and data from some of the "train wrecks" of these first two cycles.
For the second cycle report, I will rely mostly on my smaller group of students for the action data. The professor and class just never did engage so I will only use the professor interviews from that group. I do feel that I have learned a ton from this what to do and what not to do to involve students and classes in action research. So … these first two cycles may not have a ton of action data from the Twitter discussions that I had hoped for, I will have actionable items gleaned from all of this to apply to my larger group of action in cycle 3.
The data collected from the cycle two experience of students in this action research project shows in part, the impact that mobile media technologies have on the student learning experience. From this small group of students we find that 60% had already used Twitter before and accessed data on their phones 20 times or more in daily use. This same group also said that they found Twitter to be a less than effective tool for communication. Some of the reasons for this point us to logistics of students either not having a data plan that covers this use or a phone that was new enough for this service and the trademark limitation of 140 characters. Some find this intriguing but to this group, only 40% found this to be a positive attribute. Student ideas to make the specific tool, Twitter more effective were to enhance the notifications and expand the amount of characters you could use.
Students polled in this cycle felt that although Twitter was not their favorite mobile media tech, that mobile tech in general did impact their learning by enabling a swifter channel for feedback and providing an easy integration into their academic lives for communication and data searches. Most of these students felt that the mobility was a key feature but that the relative size of space to read or write was not as beneficial.
In this cycle, I added clear guidelines for the participants use of the mobile media tech (Twitter) and a foundational explanation of the context for this action research. In the first cycle, these were not present and the students stopped using the tool when their regular coursework demanded their full attention. The thought with the adjustments for cycle 2 was to aid in the adoption of Twitter by giving the students a context for this project. These two changes greatly enhanced students' use of this mobile media tech. In cycle one, the use was strong at first, but dropped off quickly as students chose to allocate their time to what was necessary to succeed in the course. In the second cycle, students appeared more able to balance the mobile tech use with their schedules as they understood that they were a part of the action rather than just some extra thing they were being asked to add to their already busy lives. This points to the realization that these tools are not trans-formative by themselves without a proper context. This will be an interesting area to use as a filter for the way we might be able to get to an answer to the questions of how we might leverage the technology for student learning.
In the professor's exit interview, some of the students' similar concerns about Twitter were raised with regards to the 140 character limitation. While this platform may not have been the best fit for a professor and students needing to write more and be more interactive, this professor still seeks to find a way to leverage mobile technology to encourage his students' collaboration beyond the classroom. It is this informal learning that was the initial push to try something new. For cycle 3 of this research, I will involve a group of students that may be a better fit for the mobile collaboration on the go - education students interning in classrooms. I also plan on including two more groups of students using mobile media tech that does not have a character minimum - Tumblr and Glassboard.
This cycle of action built upon the previous cycle and opened up a few more possibilities for understanding the impact of the action on student learning. As in cycle one, the difficulty communicating with the professor made the collection of data difficult. Taking what I learned in cycle one, I feel like having more than one group involved in the action did help the research go forward. Twitter appears to have a window of effectiveness where it is really useful for one sector and too confining for another. Since my research is about the impact of mobile tech in general and not about just one tool, I will look to expand the number of groups of students involved along with the number of tools. This will help me take a broader look at how these tech tools and the effect they have on our understanding of place and connectivity will impact the academic environment. We already see the infiltration of these devices from our personal lives to our work lives and more and more to our academic lives. I still feel that the research path I am on and the action I have taken and will take will allow me to provide a view of how we might leverage the changes in communication and collaboration to benefit student learning outcomes. Our mobile and wireless connected world has amazing potential for enabling new channels of communication while disrupting some of our traditional communication culture. The multiplicity of place mobile devices enable (talking to someone face to face while checking a text for example) presents opportunities I hope to help uncover. The challenges are currently more obvious as we feel a certain sense of disconnection when mobile devices interrupt our face to face interactions. These were initially situations that were on the fringes of business and academic circles. Now this digital interaction is more part of our everyday experience. This cycle of the research project began to collect date of how students use and are impacted by mobile media devices. Cycle 3 of this action research project will continue the action to discover the opportunities and challenges inherent in the use of these devices.
With the end of cycle 2, and looking forward to cycle 3, I am aware of what I am researching and mindful of the level of control I have on the outcomes. I just need to remember that the ARP is not about proving something is good or bad but discovering new information related to the topic I have chosen to look into. Everywhere I look, mobile media technology is infiltrating almost every corner of our lives. The cell phone and iPad can now be used as clickers for our PowerPoint and Keynote presentations. The iPad musical instrument apps are generating groups of people that form bands using only those tools. Teachers are beginning to discover ways to turn mobile device distraction into learning opportunities and students are more and more connected globally with the social media of their choice. All this to say that these devices are having an impact and my cycle two results were not able to reflect this - partly due to my leaning curve with this form of research, and mostly due to counting on a professor who was not able to follow through on this project for a variety of reasons. I will hope that his exit interview will shed some light on what actually happened here. As I look forward, I will take what I have learned in these two cycles and prepare for an amazing cycle 3. I will have more than one class and professor participate and get clear buy in and set schedules of activity to give this research the best chance to grow and flourish. It's kind of like what I have learned about gardening and caring for plants. My initial thought is to buy an plant and if it lives without much attention or care, then it will work for my garden. Some plants will be fine with this, but others need more care. My wife and I joke that it is our 12 to 1 rule - buy 12 plants, 11 die, keep the one that lives and buy 12 more. I have learned though, to spend the time on some plants to give them the water, sun and food they need to grow tall and beautiful. For my ARP cycles one and two, the action began real quickly and I did hope that the students would just take to the adoption of the technology without any "watering" but it seems that for cycle 3, I will take more time and make sure to prepare the "soil" and give the technology, students and professor enough space and time to grow. This is my plan, but of course, the adventure is that I will make my plan take the action and see what grows in my little AR garden.