Week 12 Reflection

This week I was very good for me. I didn't really consider the fact that I would need to make my research engaging. I learned some tricks to help make my research more engaging.

Cherie pointed out that a story is a good way to engage readers. This made me think of our weekly elder talks at school. When the elder tells a story students are so engaged, but when the elder tells them how to act students frequently find other ways to keep themselves occupied.

Everyone pretty much noted that creating catchy titles is another way to attract attention. If you can hook a reader with a few short words you might entice them to continue reading. I didn't really write about this in my post, but I did notice it. Once I started reading other posts this really started to sink in, and I realized how important this could be to my report.

I also found that if you make your research relatable it is far more engaging. This involves describing your settings with just enough detail that others might be able to see themselves in your shoes.

Data update Week 12

As far as analysis goes I have not done much. I have been a little busy at school working with the senior class this year. So my data analysis has been put on the back-burner. I plan to do a lot this week. Having the holiday will help give me some time to focus.

I did get a chance to look at the post surveys. I noticed that on an initial inspection it looks like student perception did not change a whole lot. This is not what I would've thought, as it seemed like the students were becoming less interested in Twitter. I will need to look more closely at the data to determine if this is in fact the case.

Week #12

Essential Question: What are the characteristics of an engaging Action Research Report?

I picked the 2 articles that were about science because I am a science teacher. The first thing I did after that was look at the page lengths. I planned to just skim them, but ended up reading more than expected. From this I gained a few insights as to what might spark someone's interest. The first being that it is very important to have an engaging introduction. This is what readers get to first. You can either make it something that really hooks the reader into wanting to read more or it could be a total dud causing the reader to disregard your work. Tracy (2002) described his situation so well that I thought he must have been in my classroom. “As I struggled to explain mitosis to a group of very low English level English Language Learners I realized that they had no idea what I was saying. Desperately I floundered to try a different approach.” I feel like I am doing this constantly with my middle school students. He couldn’t have described it any more perfectly. Once I read that I wanted to keep going and know more. He also brings in the humor that sometimes comes into teaching by sharing a personal story. This personal story was easy to relate to as I think every teacher has probably had a similar experience of doing something and it comes out totally wrong.

The second article I read by Herman (2002) took a little longer to hook me. It didn’t really seem to relate to me but I read on anyway. It didn’t take long to get to something intriguing, on the second page she talked about challenges. One really stuck out to me, and I could relate. “Students would get up and walk around when they felt like it, even if the teacher or another student was speaking to the class. Or a student would sharpen a pencil during another student’s presentation.” I frequently have this problem and have to stop the class to talk with students.

With both articles I was engaged when I could relate. I think this seems to be a huge part of the engagement. Describing something with enough detail, but not too much, so that someone else could feel like they are in your shoes.

I also think it is very important at the end to discuss implications. According to Action Research Projects (2002), “The implications for your findings might consider a set of next steps you want to take, additional research that needs to be done, and/or how your findings relate to your school or teaching context.” I think this really engages a reader to think more critically and stirs their imagination. At least for me, I start to think about what I could do differently.

References

"Action Research Projects." Action Research Projects: Exemplar Projects - LMTIP. 2002. Web. 20 Nov. 2015. <https://gse.gmu.edu/research/lmtip/arp/ex>.

Hermann, K. (2002, June 1). Teaching Science to High School Students Who Have Limited Formal Schooling.

Tracy, C. (2002, June 1). Assessment: A New Science Teacher’s Attempt to Use Assessment as a Form of Conversation.

Week #11 Reflection

Sarah’s post reminded me that we wrote an introduction and literature review that were separate. Because of this, I think I will have 6 sections in my final write up: introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. I would not want to combine any of the last 3 sections to shorten my report. For me it is nice to see the raw data, and because the discussion can get long it is nice to have a shortened conclusion.

From Peter’s blog I also gained the idea of having an appendix. This would be great so that you could really shorten your results section by including only what you feel is necessary. Then if others wanted to see more you could have an appendix that shows all of the data you collected.

This week really made me think about who would read my research. I have told a couple of colleagues and they want to hear my results. But other than colleagues and this class I don’t know that I would share it unless someone asked. I don’t think Twitter was all that effective in my high school class. I think part of the problem is the lack of internet access at home. Also, we do not have data for cell phones either and I think that might make a major difference. As I am typing this we are getting hooked up to 3G, so I would be interested to try this again in the future to see if there is a difference.

Week 11 Data Collection

All of my data from Twitter seemed to be about the same this week. The newness has worn off and less and less students are participating. I think a huge problem is the lack of internet at home and that there is no cellular data. So really the only place to use Twitter is at school.

Observations keep getting harder. This week I totally forgot. But I have at least one day of data for each student I wanted to observe. So I think this will still work.

I am ready to sit down and try to sort through the pile of data I have collected. I am really excited to look at the post survey that I just collected on Friday. I am interested to see if student interest declined because from my perspective it did. I think a large factor is that I needed to spend a lot of time looking up new ideas on ways to include Twitter in the classroom. I just thought that using too many different activities might complicate my research. I think I would like to try some other methods in the future to see if I get different results, but it will be nice to have a baseline.

Week #11 Blog

Essential Question: How will you format and disseminate your research?

The first step in writing up qualitative research is to figure out who your research is for, your audience. Next you choose the focus. This is where you go back to the purpose of your study. “The focus “states a purpose and then fulfills the promise. Coming up with a focus means deciding what you want to tell your reader. You should be able to state it in a sentence or two” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 271). Before you can even start writing you must go through all of the data you have collected.

There are many barriers to writing. When you write you could be critiqued and this could be good or bad. People may scrutinize you or criticize your ideas. You could even have many flaws in your research and someone may point those out. These things can make you feel inadequate, and defeated (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 274). But if you don’t put your work out there no one will ever be able to benefit from the work you did. Öhman and Löfgren give the following advice when writing up your research:

      -    The report should be easy to understand and clearly contextualized

-    Keep short

-    Be clear in presenting methods

-    Avoid too much detailed descriptions of the results

-    Relate your findings with existing knowledge and theory

-    Provide a discussion of the applicability for theory development and practice of the research field

There is no format you have to follow when writing up your research. “In standard research reports, the problem that gave rise to the study is laid out early in the report” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 276). This may be in an introductory section where you talk about your framework and include references. Next you may write about the setting of your research. You may choose to include a section about yourself including: your training, experience, philosophical orientation, and biases (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 277). A methodology should be included, but where you include it depends on the audience. Every report will list the findings. This is where you write about what you found out from your research. You may choose to discuss your findings in the same section or start a new section to discuss your data. One of the hardest parts it to determine how much data and analysis you should include.  “A good rule when considering how much information to include is that readers should have been given enough information to be able to carry out similar research themselves” (Anderson, 2010). In this section if might be of benefit to include displays, charts, or figures. “Keep the number of displays to a minimum; using just a few figures to represent important ideas will draw attention to those ideas” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 284).

According to Pitchforth (1995), you could use the following structure for your paper: introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion. I really like how this is laid out and it seems like how I wrote my science lab reports in undergrad. To me it seems the most natural and I plan to use this as my outline. To disseminate my results I really just plan to share with the class and others at my school or in the district who might be interested.

References

Anderson, C. (2010, October 11). Presenting and Evaluating Qualitative Research. Retrieved November 14, 2015, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2987281/

Merriam, Sharan B.; Tisdell, Elizabeth J. (2015-07-06). Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (JOSSEY-BASS HIGHER & ADULT EDUCATION SERIES). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

Öhman, A., & Löfgren, M. (n.d.). News and updates. Retrieved November 14, 2015, from http://www.medicaljournals.se/jrm/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=56

Pitchforth, E., Porter, M., Van Tijlingen, E., & Forrest Keenan, K. (1995, December 3). Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care. Retrieved November 14, 2015, from https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/309/1/Qual research paper 4 final revised.pdf

Week 10 Data Collection Update

My students are getting tired of always posting to Twitter. At first they were excited but now the newness and excitement has worn off. I'm thinking that like anything in education you have to change things up. At this point in my study I don't want to change anything, but I think in the future it would be important to consider multiple uses of Twitter. Right now I am only really using it as an exit ticket. Some students still seem to enjoy it while others just see it as something they have to do. I have also noticed a decline in the number of posts, especially in the past week.

Week 10 Reflection

This week it seemed like everyone talked about the issue of confidentiality and I think that was really good. It gave me many ideas to consider when I go to write up my conclusions. I realized that I need to think about confidentiality for my students. I did not really consider that too much before, but as we are coming to a close in data collection I need to start thinking about how I will write this up. Tristan pointed out that she was planning to use student A, student B, etc. I really like this idea because as I was thinking of different ways I thought even pronouns would give away too much information. Really anyone in the village would be able to identify some of the students. Another suggestion I might consider using is just telling the number of students that did a certain thing. This is what Sarah listed she was doing.

Another big concept that I will need to focus on is rich, thick detail. I really did not think about this either, but it makes sense. If I don’t describe exactly how I did something then why would anyone believe me? They would have no idea what I had done and they would discredit me.

Blog #10-Credibility & Ethics

Essential Question: What primary concerns exist in ethics, validity and reliability in AR? How are you managing these concerns (or how will you) within your study?

Internal validity deals with the question of how research findings match reality. (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 242) To measure validity, Lincoln and Gruba (1985) list credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability as the main categories to assess the validity of a study. Credibility means that the study seems to be true. Transferability is that a study can be applied to another situation. Dependability refers to the ability of a study to be repeated with similar results. Confirmability means that the results are due to the respondents and they were not greatly influenced by the researcher.

In qualitative research “data do not speak for themselves; there is always an interpreter, or a translator” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 242). This means that no matter what we do as a researcher our opinion will always be present. “One cannot observe or measure a phenomenon/ event without changing it” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 242). Even when faced with similar situations people usually have different accounts.

According to Merriam and Tisdell (2015), some ways to increase the validity of a study include: triangulation, respondent validation, adequate time with data, peer review, audit trail, thick descriptions, and maximum variation. If you can get feedback from other sources either through reading the research or talking with others you can filter out some of your opinions. However, “the important feature of triangulation is not the simple combination of different kinds of data, but the attempt to relate them so as to counteract the threats to validity identified in each" (Brown, 2005).  This helps you to gain other perspectives that you may not have seen otherwise. Spending time collecting and analyzing data coupled with thick descriptions can help others to see where you are getting your conclusions. “If the findings of a study are consistent with the data presented, the study can be considered dependable” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 252). This also means that the researcher needs to explain their position so others will know where possibles biases may come into play.

When researching there will always be multiple opinions on what is allowed and what is not. The ethics behind the research is not black and white. There will always be gray areas. I think of biggest concern for my study will be confidentiality and anonymity. With using Twitter my students will be out in the online world. This means that I am not the only one who sees their tweets. I decided to look into the ethics of using Twitter to see if there was anything out there. There wasn’t much but I did come across the suggestion “that scientists never reveal screen names and make research objectives publicly available” (Moyer, 2014). My students are aware that others can see what they are doing and they know that they are posting to Twitter to see if it helps them out in class. They are aware of the basics but not the specifics. I think I will just have to be cautious in writing my conclusions to make sure that I think about their anonymity as I go.

This week I stumbled across another cartoon that made me chuckle. It went right along with my research and the ethical concerns that could come up.

https://epriego.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/twitter-as-public-evidence-and-the-ethics-of-twitter-research/

References

Brown, J. (2005). Questions and answers about language testing statistics: Characteristics of sound qualitative research. JALT Testing & Evaluation SIG Newsletter, 9(2), 31-33. Retrieved from http://jalt.org/test/bro_22.htm

Lincoln, YS. & Guba, EG. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Merriam, Sharan B.; Tisdell, Elizabeth J. (2015-07-06). Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (JOSSEY-BASS HIGHER & ADULT EDUCATION SERIES) Wiley. Kindle Edition.

Moyer, M. (2014). Twitter to Release All Tweets to Scientists. Scientific American, 310(6). Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/twitter-to-release-all-tweets-to-scientists-a-trove-of-billions-of-tweets-will-be-a-research-boon-and-an-ethical-dilemma/

Week #9 Reflection

This week Genevieve pointed out cross referencing your data with your questions. This gave me the idea of printing out my question and keeping it in front of me as I sort through data. I think this might help to keep me on task and will help me to work more efficiently. I also really like the idea of a number system to sort out what you think you will use (3), what you might use (2) and what you don’t plan on using (1). I would hate to leave out data and then later on realize that I need it. I also think that with leaving it out I might just forget about it, and it could’ve been really important without me even knowing it.

Another key point in the discussion on Sarah’s blog is that I need to not be so focused on what I expect to find. Some things may pop up in my data and I need to “roll with it.” This is so hard for me, as I want to stick with the method I outlined. This week after taking a step back from looking at my data, I realized I may need to look at it differently. There are just so many ways to organize data.

This week I definitely learned about the importance of going through your data as you collect it. This is something I would want to do regardless, but I probably wouldn’t have made the time. This week after our Twitter chat it motivated me to at least look at the data and try to start sorting the tweets into the main categories I had outlined in my methods. I think this is a good start, but I am thinking I will also need to sort my observations in a similar.