Monday, September 20, 2010

Problem Statement Draft

I'm having a really hard time finding my focus, so I thought I might use the opportunity to create a few problem statements. Here is the construct we were provided with:

Parts of a Qualitative Problem Statement:
The purpose of this [type of study] study is to understand [what] of [who or what] involving [what or who] from [when] to [purpose].

The purpose of this [____] is to understand if e-Learning can provide educators with accessible Authentic Instruction....
1. [qualitative study] ...during the semester of a hybrid and/or fully online class through the perspective of a participant/researcher to experience the strengths and weaknesses of current technology.
2. [meta-analysis] ...through a review of current research, trends and new technology to synthesize best practices.
3. [quantitative study] ...by analyzing comprehensive testing data of current online class takers to determine internalized knowledge.

3 comments:

  1. Does testing data reveal internalized learning?

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  2. For 1. Instead of the strength and weaknesses of current technology, consider the potentials of participatory technologies for a specific and specified sound pedagogical practices. For example if dialogue is important to learning, and the facilitation of the dialogue is critical to the depth of learning through dialogue--how does this happen in f2f and online?

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  3. Your concept map is dynamic and a very fitting approach to communicate research ideas that involve teaching and digital communications.

    The evidence of transformative learning suggests that it is not the interface (face-to-face or computer) that makes a course educationally valuable or not, but how the potential of that interface is used and how reflective the practitioner to continually improve teaching and learning environments and processes. Here's a reading on this topic:

    Zhang W., & Kramarae, C. (2008). Feminist invitational collaboration in a digital age: Looking over disciplinary and national borders. Women and Language. Retrieved from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Gender,_Communication,_and_Technology/Feminist_Invitational_Collaboration_in_a_Digital_Age:_Looking_over_Disciplinary_and_National_Borders

    There is much more scholarship on this topic, which I have contributed to and am familiar. I sent off a chapter two weeks ago for the anthology, Feminist Cyberspaces: Pedagogies in Transition (Editors: Carolyn Bitzer, Sharon Collingwood, Alvinia Quintana, and Caroline Smith).

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