This week I finished the action of the final cycle (cycle 4) of my action research project. To say that the process was a main part of this experience is an understatement. I began with an idea of what I wanted to research on the front edge of the MALT program last July, but somewhere along the way this became an actual legitimate project. Writing the literature review and looking at what others before me had found on the subject really transformed my thinking. I found the focus I needed by cycle 3 of this project to really take pertinent action together with the participants. The focus came from working with the students and faculty to find effective ways to discover meaning in the actions we were taking. Along the way, it was many of the things that did not go as I had hoped or planned, that made the biggest impact. For example, I had thought that students would easily adopt the mobile technologies and we would be off and running with data flowing like water. But it turns out that we all engage in any new endeavor best when we understand the context of the action. This lead me to some great conversations and the revelation that the action we were taking needed a little more set up and guidance. With each cycle, I was able to reflect and adjust the action for the next cycle. As I look back on this year, the action and the cycles do fit really well together - one building on what was learned in the previous and carrying it forward. From this edge of the project, I see that I would not have reached this point without the ups and downs of the adventure.
In our Cognitive Tools class last fall, we began by learning how video games teach their players important lessons and I chose World of Warcraft (WoW). After many quests, my avatar came to the edge of the world he had tromped around and was standing on a cliff overlooking the shore. What lay before was one more challenge. It was a challenge that would have stopped him when he began the game a month prior, but now he forged forward with confidence. I feel this way at this edge of my action research project. The challenge remains to bring all of the data and the whole experience together in a way that makes sense and may even be profound. Where I anxiously began last fall, now I confidently forge ahead to face the challenge and stop for just one moment to reflect and breathe in what I have learned on the edges. On the front edge, this program seemed to be a daunting challenge but I dove in head first. The bumps and bruises which at first felt like setbacks, only made me want to understand how to do this better. I want to finish this project and program with some of that vigor. On this edge, I can look back as well as forward and see how I have reclaimed a love for writing and a sense that what I and others do in support of educators and students is a noble pursuit. At the edges may be where the reflection sight is the keenest but it is in the middle that we live the adventure that makes the story so great on the edges.