Category: TIEgrad (Page 4 of 4)

Twitter: Help Wanted

              I am not good at social media. I have it in my personal life but rarely post. I created a twitter account as part of an assignment in PDP but only used it when it was absolutely required. I admittedly do not use social media as a professional development tool, ever. Then, I hear other educators who are passionate about using technological tools to develop professionally. My reaction is split, on the one side I am inspired and intrigued at how people include such a rich technological presence in their professional practice. Specifically, how they manage their time and prioritize professional engagement with social media.  On the other side, I am unbelievably overwhelmed by the task at hand. Trying to learn new technologies, incorporate them into my practice, and finally contribute to the education community. The task seems too daunting to even begin.  

              With all this battling inside my brain, I can’t help but think of my students. How do they feel when I give them an assignment where they are unfamiliar with both the media and the content? Most importantly WHY DO I EXPECT THEM TO USE NEW MEDIA WHEN I RESIST USING TWITTER? Twitter is an amazing tool that allows educators to gain resources and connect with other educators globally. It is an amazing way to develop professionally and improve your practice. But I get stuck when I try to include it in my own professional skill set.  

              Degroot, Young and Vanslette further discuss the use of twitter in the classroom in “Twitter Use and its Effects on Student Perception of Instructor Credibility.” They found that student perception of professors were influenced by their participation on social media, specifically twitter. Degroot et al. found that students believed “self-disclosure increased [educators} personhood.” (pg. 421, 2015) Working in a high school setting, I will not be engaging with any of my students on social media. But what does twitter use mean for professional development? Do administrators and other educators evaluate their colleagues based on their engagement with twitter? And the one question I just can’t seem to get over, is it worth it?

              Many educational professionals would say ABSOLUTELY. Twitter allows them to connect with like-minded individuals, gather/share resources, and find support within a community. So here I am, willing to try, in hopes that I will no longer be a hypocrite when I ask my students to engage with the unknown. Maybe I will even start to enjoy it and won’t need to use the ‘it will be good for me’ reasoning.  

              Now to all my readers (if you made it this far in the post) I am desperately asking for some sort of guidance on how to effectively include twitter (and other social media sites like it) in my professional development. I will gladly accept any tips, tricks, comments or suggestions that may help me invest in twitter.

Thanks in Advance

 

              You can also ‘tweet’ me, @smith_rochellej with any suggestions to further my engagement in professional social media use.

Here is the  first resource I found, a quick video on the basics of How to Use Twitter.

 

Quantitative vs Mixed Method Research: A Comparison of Two Studies (Assignment #2)

For the power point discussion comparing quantitative and mixed methods research, click here: RSmith – july 10th presentation

              This is a comparison of the articles “Assessing the quality of mixed methods research: toward a comprehensive framework” written by Alicia O’Cathain (2015) and “Online self-paced high-school class size and student achievement” written by Chin-His Lin, Jemma Bae Kwon and Yining Zhang (2018).

 

O’Cathain, A. (2015). Assessing the Quality of Mixed Methods Research: Toward a Comprehensive Framework. SAGE Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Research, 531-556. doi:10.4135/9781506335193.n21

              Research is an important part of education, as it allows educators and policymakers to make informed decisions about their practices. However, there is much debate as to which methodology yields the most relevant results. Researchers have sets of criteria to evaluate the quality of their research. These criteria are specific to the methodology that they have chosen, for example, quantitative research’s criteria are “validity, reliability, replicability, and generalizability.” (O’Cathain, pg. 4, 2015) Whereas the criteria for qualitative research are “credibility, confirmability, transferability and dependability.” (O’Cathain, pg. 5, 2015) Unfortunately, there has been little around how to assess the quality of mixed methods research.

              Through a literary review, Alicia O’Cathain compares previous studies in order to develop a comprehensive framework for assessing the quality of mixed methods research. O’Cathain further discusses how “it is important to assess the quality of mixed method research” in order to “offer guidance to researcher, to establish a common language and provide direction for future development.” (pg. 2, 2015) O’Cathain discusses 8 domains of criteria to help assess the quality of mixed methods research in the “first attempt at a comprehensive framework.” (pg. 24, 2015)

Domains of Assessing Quality of Mixed Method Researcher (found pages 14-22)

1)      Planning Quality​

2)      Design Quality​

3)      Data Quality​

4)      Interpretive Rigor​

5)      Inference Transferability​

6)      Reporting Quality​

7)      Synthesizability​

8)      Utility​

              This comprehensive framework can be used to “address the needs of the variety of stakeholders who want to assess the quality of mixed methods research.” (O’Cathain, pg. 3, 2015) Furthermore, each stakeholder, including teachers, researchers, participants and policymakers, have “different needs and [are] likely to be interested in different aspects of the quality of mixed methods research.” (O’Cathain, pg. 3, 2015)

              It is a valuable skill for teachers and students to be able to evaluate the qualities of different methodological research. Whether it be qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods, it is important that readers assess research to ensure it effectively answers the research question.  

 

Lin, C., Kwon, J. B., & Zhang, Y. (2018). Online self-paced high-school class size and student achievement. Educational Technology Research and Development,67(2), 317-336. doi:10.1007/s11423-018-9614-x ​

This article is a little more personal for me, as I am currently employed at a distributed learning school, where we teach both fully online courses and blended courses where we see students face-to-face and deliver content online. I found it very interesting that with all the virtual high schools available to students there has been very little research done at the K-12 level.  

              Dr. Chin-Hsi Lin examines student success rate in relation to class sized in self-paced online courses. Before this article most academic research for online class sizes were conducted at a post-secondary level.  Dr. Chin-Hsi Lin discusses the “relationship between class size and student learning outcomes” (Lin, Kwon, and Zhang, pg. 317, 2018) understanding that “small classes are generally perceived as desirable” (Lin et al., pg. 317, 2018) for both teachers and students.

              “Online self-paced high-school class size and student achievement” uses quantitative research methodology to assess the relationship between online class size and student success rate. Data was collected from “an accredited state-wide virtual school in the Midwestern U.S.” (Lin et al., pg. 321, 2018), the courses were self-paced, communication with teachers and peers was asynchronous and teachers were provided with “fully designed online courses.” (Lin et al., pg. 321, 2018) Comparing class size with student achievement included the following data:

  • Sample size
    • 20,540 records
    • 12,032 students
    • 233 courses
    • 6 subjects
  • Enrollment Data for students
    • Name of the course
    • Semester enrolled in
    • Grades
    • Instructor identifying numbers

It is important to note that class size “was calculated as the sum of the students who had completed [the course], regardless of whether they had passed or failed.” (Lin et al., pg. 323, 2018)

              Lin et al. found that class size did have an impact on student achievement, but not in the way that he had expected. Optimal class size was related to subject area and was much higher than previous assumptions indicated. Class size had no significant impact on English, or foreign languages, but did effect math, social studies, science and the arts up to a specific number of students. Lin et al. found that students’ “final grades increased as class size increased up to a maximum [number] of students but decreased if class size rose beyond that point.” (pg. 329, 2018) The average maximum number of students in a class before seeing a decrease in achievement was 35-40.

              “Online self-paced high-school class size and student achievement” included some optional survey questions. Students were asked what grade level they were in, and why they had chosen to take an online course, however, only 30% of participants responded. If this study would have been conducted as a qualitative or mixed methods study, it would have allowed researchers insight into the online school. Including students’ perception of online courses, their experience, and how effective they believed the online course was at teaching the content. It also would have allowed researchers to examine how teachers felt about online courses, how they managed the marking and most importantly how frequently they were able to connect with individual students.

              Qualitative research may have also addressed how both students and teachers defined success in an online self-pace course. In this study, “learning outcomes were the course grades reported by the virtual school,” and class size was “calculated as the sum of the students who had completed [the course], regardless of whether they had passed or failed.” (Lin et al., pg. 323, 2018) Some would argue that ‘success’ is not accurately represented by a final grade, but rather should include evidence of students’ understanding of content and their ability to communicate their knowledge using various media. One challenge of using the quantitative research methodology for this study was that researchers were not able to accurately assess student characteristics “such as motivation and previously identified abilities … interventions on the part of instructors … and parents.” (Lin et al., pg. 332, 2018) If this study would have included components of qualitative research, they may have been able to address these blind spots.

              A shortfall of this study is that the quality of pre-designed courses is unknown to the reader. As all online teachers were provided with a “fully designed online course” (Lin et al., pg. 321, 2018), it is difficult to assess the quality of education student participants were offered. The “lack of responsibility for curriculum development on the part of its teacher … could have reduced their preparation time … enabled them to effectively teach larger classes than might be normally possible.” (Lin et al., pg. 331, 2018) The success of students may have been influence by the quality of course, more so than the class size.  Another limitation of this research is the sample size, all data was collected from a single self-paced online school. It would be interesting to complete a cross-examination of various virtual schools to see if the results were consistent. Previous research indicates that “small classes are generally perceived as desirable” (Lin et al., pg. 317, 2018) so it is interesting that this study would have very different results. Lin et al. recommend that “policymakers should be more cognizant of the balance … between maximizing educational access and having small classes.” (pg. 331, 2018)

              Online schools and online course availability are becoming more prominent in the education system. “Schools are continuing to expand their online course offerings, both to overcome school-level challenges and to meet student needs.” (Lin et al., pg. 317, 2018) Online courses afford the learners flexibility in and most importantly access to education. Lin et al. recommend that future studies “should aim to disentangle the effects of class size by considering additional factors” including “student satisfaction, and the amount of student-teacher interaction.” (Lin et al., pg. 333, 2018)

 

References

Lin, C., Kwon, J. B., & Zhang, Y. (2018). Online self-paced high-school class size and student achievement. Educational Technology Research and Development,67(2), 317-336. doi:10.1007/s11423-018-9614-x ​

O’Cathain, A. (2015). Assessing the Quality of Mixed Methods Research: Toward a Comprehensive Framework. SAGE Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Research, 531-556. doi:10.4135/9781506335193.n21

Diaries and where I’ve gone wrong.

Diaries are great in theory, or so I thought. At different points in my life I have been encouraged to record my days, thoughts and inquiries in a diary format. This includes the reflective diary entries that I had to complete during my practicum. Of course, I completed these diaries with a less than enthusiastic vigor. If I am being honest, I could have invested more into these diaries, but I didn’t see the point. From my student perspective, diaries were a waste of time where I wrote whatever I thought the professor wanted to read.

Well, I have been writing diaries wrong, for multiple reasons. As Engin (2011) discussed in Research Diary: A Tool for Scaffolding, writing a diary can be instrumental in the research process. Diaries are not just for writing down personal experience, but they are also for: reflecting on your practice, scaffolding personal learning and development and an excellent way to explore thought process. Here was my first mistake, I wrote diary entries as a way to cross something off my to do list. They contained little information on my practices or my future goals and intentions.  Furthermore, diaries offer the author a platform to ask themselves questions and increase their ability to notice details in their practice. And there was my second mistake, I did not take reflective writing in my practicum seriously.  My third and final mistake was something I did not expect. I have never once revisited my diary entries to see how far I have come. This is vital to growing as an educator. How can I expect to improve my practice, if I don’t consistently reflect on what I have done, what I would like to do and most importantly the progress I have made as an educator?

I would like to propose an addition to the diary writing process. I think that it is important to tell others about your plans, as well as write them in a research diary. For me this would add a layer of accountability. Not only would I have the support and collaboration of colleagues, but I would also have someone checking in on my progress.  How I see this playing out, is a group of teachers asking each other about their day. Simple as that, what worked, what didn’t, what would you change. There are many times that I do not have a solution, but a quick conversation with another staff member produce many new ideas.

With this in mind, my blog has now officially become my platform to reflect on my practice, make new goals, examine my personal biases and question everything to develop a better understanding.

What do you want from your students: Information Retention vs. Skills Acquisition?

As an educator, it is important that I ask myself what I want students to ‘take away’ from any lesson or assignment. Once I decide what I want them to accomplish it is far easier to design a lesson, activity, or project for them to complete. In addition, how to mark becomes clearer, as I know what I want to assess.

I will be the first to admit that my lessons don’t always go as planned. Neither do my marking rubrics for created assignments. It is an unfortunate consequence of teaching, that I consistently 1) TRY 2) FAIL 3) ADJUST 4) FAIL AGAIN. This cycle seems to repeat itself, over and over until finally all the kinks have been worked out.

Looking back on one of the first assignments I created as a student teacher, I now see it was completely useless. First, the rubric I created did not award marks for what I wanted students to learn. Instead this rubric took away marks for unimportant technicalities and did not effectively evaluate the work students had done. Second, I did NOT give students enough information, guidance, or instructions to be successful. I ended up reducing the amount of marks the assignment was worth to the point of completion marks. It was a complete waste of time for both me and the students.

However, I did learn an important lesson. ALWAYS work backwards when creating content. Figure out what you want students to understand or be able to do, then work on how you can ACCURATELY assess them.  I now ask myself if every lesson, assignment, project, and test I give my students is a good representation of the knowledge or skills they have gained and/or a way to show me their understanding.

Earlier this week I read two articles that took an opposing view of what works in a classroom. In the first article by Dr. Barron and Dr. Darling-Hammond,they discuss the importance of inquiry and problem-based learning in their article Teaching for Meaningful Learning. They argue that students ‘LEARN’ when they are involved in the process and are given the tools to discover the answer. Rather than a teacher telling students the correct answer and students regurgitating the information on the next assignment or test. Whereas, Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2010) argue that minimally guided instruction (such as problem-based learning) negatively impacts a student’s ability to retain information. They further discuss that teachers often assume students have enough background knowledge and resources to help them solve the problem. Students then use working memory to participate in the minimally guided activity, but do not convert the information learned into long term memory. Therefore, students are unable to recall what they had learned from the lesson.

Here’s the thing. I don’t disagree with either article, but I also don’t agree with them. And here’s why. My classroom has 25 (ish) students, who are completely unique in their interests, abilities, and desire to learn. I, as a teacher, will never be able to teach the exact same as any other teacher. My job has too much variability to say one method fits all.

This is my proposed solution: Base your method of instruction on what you want students to get out of your lesson. If you want students to learn the “soft skills” such as communication, teamwork, and critical thinking then inquiry or problem-based learning could be the best method. This style of teaching allows students to collaborate with their peers and address a problem with the resources they are given. If you want students to learn new information or facts than a lesson with more guidance and teacher instruction could be the best method.

Students need both methods to become well-rounded learners. They need the information and resources to feel successful in the class, but also need the autonomy to explore, and problem solve. No matter which method you choose for your classroom, I highly (and humbly) recommend that you ensure you have an accurate representation of your students learning. Be able to accurately assess each student for the learning and progress they have made in your class.

For myself, I love when my students have the opportunity to ‘figure it out.’ In my opinion, there is no better expression on a student’s face than the moment they understand what you are teaching them. That being said, I have been caught more than once, using an activity that didn’t help them learn what I had planned to teach them.

So now go, inspired and ready to fail. Enter your classrooms with new ideas and an enthusiasm to try out something new.

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