Reflection upon library meeting and beginning of annotated bibliography--Week 2

Taxonomy of Reflection: Week 2

Remembering: What did I do?

This week, I met with Dr. Dennis, the librarian, and reviewed twenty articles for my forthcoming literature review on gifted students in group learning.

Understanding: What was important about it?

The meeting with Dr. Dennis was purely helpful. She gave me lots of nice tips and search keywords (to be written up an submitted soon) to help in my discovery of useful articles. Her advice was good too, about expanding my searches to include international students.  It helped set me on the right track.

The annotated bibliography was important for the obvious reasons: I need to read about my topic so I can understand it. I have to do this before I can write about it. It's all pretty straight forward.

Application: When did I do this before? Where could I use it again?

Well, the information about search techniques that Dr. Dennis shared with me should be useful for the rest of my life, particularly if I really get into RefWorks seriously. I can see that being a very useful tool.

I have written annotated bibliographies for many other classes. This one had a slightly more formal form. I can see using the last two categories in the future: "How does this relate to my questions?" and "what do I need to look up?" This is very useful.

Analysis: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did?

Not so much, apart from procrastination crush. As it was last week, the realities of my life now mean that the bibliography just had to wait until the weekend. So, my weekend was a busy whirlwind of reading and reporting. I have planned on stopping by the Ned McWherter Library on the way home from work tomorrow to write up three articles, so hopefully I can avoid the crunch in week three.

Evaluation: How well did I do? What worked? What do I need to improve?

I feel that I did okay. Some of the sources I reviewed were notable (for my purposes, at least) for just one of two lines that will be helpful in the paper. That seems a little cheap, but one has to find attribution where one may, mustn't one?

Waiting till the weekend didn't work. Fix that.

Reading articles worked. I even shared one particularly good article with my wife, as I think it has implications for how we will design our homeschool classroom for TBD Taylor who is currently five months from joining us. 

Creation: What should I do next? What's my plan/design?

This plan now is to stay the course, while making the review schedule more regular and, therefore, less onerous. 

Personal Reflections

Few this week. I enjoy reading articles and writing papers. The feedback is immediate and enjoyable, both from reading a well-written article and understanding new ideas, to creating a document and seeing my ideas come together in a coherent and hopefully lovely document.

Writing the annotated bibliography, however, if one of those intermediate steps that I realize is necessary, but that grants no joy to the worker. It just must be done, to assure the quality of the final step. The researcher must walk out on faith that all will be better because of the drudgery. This is wisdom.

Reflection upon Graphic Organizer and Topic Selection Assignments--Week 1

As part of an important and required process, I will weekly reflect upon my work in IDT 8500 using Peter Pappas' Taxonomy of Reflection.

Taxonomy of Reflection: Week 1

Remembering: What did I do?

This week, I created a graphic organizer, summarizing my understanding of the elements of a literature review, and defined my topic for the literature review that I will produce in the IDT 8500 class. My work was completed and turned in prior to the deadline--but only by a few hours--due to a busy week of traveling and professional obligations.

Understanding: What was important about it?

The graphic organizer forced me to think about the parts of the literature review in an orderly, systematic fashion. I had to synthesize information found in several different sources and concisely reproduce it in one diagram. This helps in the development of my personal cognitive Literature Review Schema, so that future production of literature reviews will be appropriate in scope and form.

When selecting my topic, I had to consider the many questions that have arisen throughout my studies in The University of Memphis IDT department and identify the one that I most want to learn about. In developing specific research questions, I considered what information would have to be understood in order for my proposed research to go forward. This methodical process is one of logic and abstract thinking, and vital in understanding the route from relative ignorance to deep knowledge of the topic.

Application: When did I do this before? Where could I use it again?

I've been required to create graphic organizers in other classes (in education, biomedical, and optometric settings) as a concept-solidifying and organizing technique. Occasionally, I have used such drawings in personal problem solving, particularly when considering large subjects that I cannot fully consider at once. Yet, I do not tend to prefer to use such graphic models when learning a concept, as I find the concept remains relatively blurry until I actually put it into practice. This is not a technique that I am likely to use in the future.

The process of topic selection, however, is merely a particular example of the first step in every high-order intellectual project. I have performed such definition and analysis of requisite questions on every personal, academic, and professional problem I have faced in my adult life. Thus, efficient and thorough problem analysis is of enormous applied importance. 

Analysis: Do I see any patterns or relationships in what I did?

I felt that I approached both tasks with relative efficiency (brought on, perhaps, by the aforementioned time crunch). I read the assignments early in the week, and considered them throughout the next several days. When I found time to complete them, my path was identified and my outcomes were high-quality and efficient. I will have to take care not to allow this last-minute completion to become the norm, for I know how difficult it can make a class like this.

The selection of the topic, being the first step in the production of a literature review, was necessary for what is to come in this class. I anticipate it becoming a vital component of my future work. The graphic organizer, however, will likely languish in a folder on my computer. I don't feel that it helped solidify my understanding of the literature review, and I doubt I will reference it in the future.

Evaluation: How well did I do? What worked? What do I need to improve?

I am happy with my output this week. I do not feel I had to cut corners or submit substandard products with either the graphic organizer or topic selection assignments. My thought process in developing the topic and requisite research questions was streamlined and incisive. I need to avoid last-minute work in the future, using to my full advantage the assigned time each week.

Creation: What should I do next? What's my plan/design?

The majority of what is to come is outlined in the course. I have identified procrastination as my most pressing concern, so I must implement policies to prevent this in the future. Perhaps I will dedicate a certain amount of scheduled time each evening to course work.

Personal Reflections

My struggles with the demands on my time are well described above. The importance of the topic selection--specifically the knowledge that my topic in this course would define the direction of my future research--filled me with a certain amount of apprehension. I do not feel that I know the subject in which I wish to perform my research, or which would make the best project. There are many interesting topics I would like to explore. 

These issues made these assignments, though minor in demand, somewhat frustrating. I settled on a topic that was informed by the course I took with Dr. Grant this Summer. He had reviewed the concept and signed off on it, which gave me some confidence that it has research merit.

It is probably obvious that I found the graphic organizer assignment of little use. I am aware enough of the prevailing research to know that I am in fact learning when I organize and produce such a document, whether I feel as though I am learning or not. Such activities have never lent themselves to me, however, so I found it frustrating. Adding to this frustration is the clunkiness and overall poor user interface of every graphic organizer software I have ever explored. Producing outlines in these programs is a process so artificial and non-intuitive that I feel as though more of my time is spent struggling with the interface than actually producing a useful diagram. Web-based tools merely amplify these problems, even on the fastest Internet connections, as every step is slower and buggier than on local software. The entire process made me wish I could simply take pen and paper, draw an outline, then scan and submit it. Compared to computer based tools, the venerable pen and paper seem so elegant, so efficient, so tactile, so right. 

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References

Pappas, P. (2010, January 5). The reflective student: A taxonomy of reflection (part 2). Retrieved from http://www.peterpappas.com/2010/01/reflective-student-taxonomy-reflection-.html

Welcome to IDT 8500!

This blog is on again, thanks to the IDT 8500 class in the Autumn of 2014.

Watch this space for more posts over the rest of the semester.

--Daniel

What do faculty think of online learning?

I've seen some resistance among faculty members to the implementation of new teaching techniques, particularly those that flip the classroom, using Internet-based education.  Many members of faculty seem resistant to change, while others have good reasons to oppose using such techniques (at least, it seems so upon initial presentation of their arguments).

As I have studied flipped classroom techniques, I have begun to understand how they can be used in ways and situations that are not initially obvious to the uninitiated.  So, I became curious if any research had been done to assess what Faculty think about Internet-based education, and if there are techniques that can be used to effectively convince faculty to give them a try.

This presentation was given in March of this year at The SoTL Commons, a conference on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Savannah, Georgia.  It can be found here.  It assesses faculty attitudes toward Internet-based education, actual faculty use of such techniques, and understanding of which courses are suitable and unsuitable for flipping.

They found that faculty tended to declare certain courses as unsuitable for online education, based mainly upon the laboratory component or assessment not being conducive to such a delivery modiality, or because the faculty member thought that student interaction was too important.  Slight majorities of faculty had favorable attitudes towards flipped education.

I was surprised that course content was not reported as a major objection.  When I was first considering such instruction, I rejected it, because of the large amount of content that I had to cover.  Though I now understand how classroom flipping can effectively cover large quantities of material, at the time, I considered that a major problem with flipped education.  Apparently my objection was an isolated one, if these findings can be effectively extrapolated to the general population.

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Khalid, A., Stuzzman, B., Colebeck, D., Sweigert, J., Chin, C., & Daws, L. B. (2013, March). Flipped Classroom or Flipped Out? Professors Attitudes Towards Online Learning. Paper presented at the meeting of The SoTL Commons, Savannah, GA. Retrieved on November 22, 2013, from http://spsu.edu/rlc/includes/P10.pdf

Games in Education

Like many of my age, I grew up playing board games, video games, and the ilk, and many formative moments of my youth were based around video games; either in the play of them, or attempting to design, create, or program them.  Learning how to program games taught me a lot about logic, math, and organization.

Strangely, for a field that is stereotypically considered as being populated with isolationist loaners, games taught me a lot about people, as I could sense the ideas and preconceptions of the game designers by using their creations.

For all that I learned with video games as a motivation, I also learned how horrible "educational games" often can be.  They are created with the best of intentions, often by educators who see the power that games have over their students, and hope to harness that power for educational purposes.  Yet, something goes wrong in the process, leaving an educational game that no student wants to play volitionally.

The folks at Extra-Credits have a fine video blog, in which they discuss issues in game design and development.  One of these issues is gamification in general, and games in education, specifically, which is covered in this video.  They hold that a great problem with educational games is the way they are created and used: as a corollary to highly-controlled, instructor-driven lessons. They argue that gaming is based around play, which ceases to be play when it is controlled and mandated.

Yet, play can be an amazing learning tool, as it tends to consume our free time, even when we are not actively playing.  When we are engaged with a game, we seek to improve at it, and may find ourselves considering its strategies throughout the day.

An effective educational game would be one that encourages students to seek and explore available knowledge, by creating a competitive or reward-based framework around which such behavior is reinforced.  Games in education work best when they trust that learners will curiously seek after knowledge if they are appropriately motivated.

TBL FTW?

This weeks readings were reviews of common statistical techniques and thinking.  I was fortunate to take two quantitative stats courses over this past Summer, so most of the reading was a nice review.  Thus, rather than discussing some related subject, I've decided to write a little about my experiences composing a rough draft for my research paper on Team-Based Learning (TBL), which, incidentally, can be found here.

My colleague, Dr. John Mark Jackson, teaches Optics and Contact Lens classes at Southern College of Optometry, and has been using Team-Based Learning techniques for several years now.  This stoked my curiosity about the (to me) novel technique, although not enough to cause me to look into it beyond a merely cursory examination (my own attempts at implementing elements of TBL had been met with considerable resistance from the students, which certainly contributed to my gunshyness).

Having composed a paper on the subject, I can identify what I had done wrong when I attempting TBL in the past.  Core principles of TBL are team dynamics, immediate feedback, and student accountability.  I was doing none of those things.  Instead, I was using a poor imitation, asking classroom questions and having students report their prepared findings.  This added to the burden of the students, who had my lectures, and there own research to worry over.

I think I am ready to give TBL another go now that I am more prepared.  Research-wise, I would like to design a study for the literature, measuring my students grades and attitudes before and after the change.  Rest assured that, this time, all my moves will be well grounded in the literature and good study design.

That issue of rigor, and its implications

As I have been reading and viewing information about Mixed-Methods research, I see rigorous methodology emphasized over and over.  Apparently it is relatively common for people to add a half-bad qualitative component to an otherwise-normal quantitative study, call it "mixed-methods," and receive accolades.

It's obvious that this is not ideal--if what we are doing is science (that is, systematic investigation into the way things are), then we should strive for rigorous methodology, simply so that our results are as accurately-reflective of reality as possible.  Knowing this, why do why have the problem with rigor?  Why is the warning against sloth one that needs to be addressed so vehemently?  A few ideas:

1. Humans are naturally-lazy.  Whether this is a character defect or a survival mechanism, humans tend to perform the least amount of effort to get the desired result.  Rigor in research is an effort-rich activity: the undisciplined researcher could easy find corners to cut that make more different than he reckons, in a moment of weariness.
2. Our motives are never as pure as we like to think.  Most people I know who get into science, do research, or what have you, like for people to think that they are doing so purely for the thrill of the chase--the rush of learning something new.  Yet, I would be very surprised if most are not at least influenced by the positive stigma attached to being a scientist; the money available from grants and employers, and the adulation of one's peers.  It is not necessarily bad to be motivated by these other, more base motives, but anytime a person lies to himself, he opens himself up for a fall.  It's only when we face our true motives that we can responsibly control them.  
3. The moment of crisis is a great clarifier.  This could be a subheading under point 2, in fact.  When the researcher has done years of work that is considered among his field as important or ground-breaking, it is a great disappointment to analyze the results, only to find that the null hypothesis is right, and that there is no difference between groups.  Lately, in optometry, the AREDS2 study was released, which showed little-to-no decrease in the development of Age-Related Macular Degeneration when certain vitamin supplements were taken.  Many publications talked about the "disappointing" findings, seeming to express dismay that the results returned as they did.  I remember when I was doing my scientific work to get my MS; there was a scandal (can't remember exactly who did this), in which a lab had falsified its data, in part to meet expectations of its results.  The point of these examples is that there is a tendency to want highly-anticipated results to return in a certain direction.  I think that, as researchers, we must try to divorce ourselves from this desire, to protect ourselves from manipulation of the data to suit our preferences.