H809-11. Unexpected feedback

I was stunned to receive some wonderful feedback about my blog from a student in one of the other tutor groups to which I occasionally contribute. To be honest, I am slightly uneasy about this particular blogging endeavour, the reason being that I am writing for an unknown audience. Normally I blog for myself, for a few selected readers, or with my students on our class blog. On the one hand, I want to be myself and express my views as freely as I am ordinarily accustomed to doing, and on the other hand, I am sensitive about causing offence or being misunderstood, or even seeming less than certain (I am a teacher, so I am not used to this role).

This tension is actually very interesting, now that I think about it. I am seeing it more from my students' point of view now (especially from the point of view of the 'complainers'.) I think it is actually very difficult to be 'reflective' on a blog. First of all, reflections are private. Secondly, at least to my mind, they come in fragmentary form. I often note down points on paper that I am having difficulty articulating, and so it certainly doesn't make sense to type them up in a blog post for unknown persons to read. I'm not sure I will make reflection a learning goal the next time I use the blog. And blog posts seem to demand their own internal coherence and structure, a sense of completion, whereas I like to draft and revise and leave things in fragmentary form until I feel ready to return to them. So I think these processes and the expected product are quite contradictory. Reflections involve a serious temporal aspect, whereas one is expected to type in the here and now into the little white box.

Sometimes, though, the ideas just flow, and then I can open up the box and just type away. I think this is when the blog comes into its own. But there is no way to predict when this will happpen...

H809-10. And the learning theory is...

I have just discovered that my instructional methods are firmly constructivist. It seems so silly that I did not know this before, but on second thought, English language teachers are not, to my knowledge, explicitly taught learning theories - why not, I wonder?

CONSTRUCTIVISM IN MY CLASSROOM
-active involvement of learners
-democratic classroom environment this is of course what I strive for, but what does it actually mean in a Turkish university? The usual interpretations do not apply...
-interactive, student-centred activities
-teacher as facilitator
-students encouraged to be responsible and autonomous
-collaboration and exchange of ideas in groups
-emphasis on social and communication skills
-research projects, films, class discussions
-modelling/coaching/scaffolding
-process and product of learning equally important

(from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_teaching_methods)
Some assessment strategies include:

• Oral discussions. The teacher presents students with a “focus” question and allows an open discussion on the topic.
• KWL(H) Chart (What we know, What we want to know, What we have learned, How we know it). This technique can be used throughout the course of study for a particular topic, but is also a good assessment technique as it shows the teacher the progress of the student throughout the course of study.
• Mind Mapping. In this activity, students list and categorize the concepts and ideas relating to a topic.
• Hands-on activities. These encourage students to manipulate their environments or a particular learning tool. Teachers can use a checklist and observation to assess student success with the particular material.
• Pre-testing. This allows a teacher to determine what knowledge students bring to a new topic and thus will be helpful in directing the course of study.

H809-9. Mapping papers onto learning theories...

I have read the introduction to the Conole et al. (2004) paper "Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design" and am now trying to fit (force?) the papers we have read so far on H809 into the table of learning theories presented in this paper. But first, a couple of background notes:

• Their main audience is non-expert e-learning practitioners.
• Their main aim is to demystify the learning theories which underpin research designs to enable practitioners to map relevant tools/resources onto a sound understanding of learning theories. (well, I for one did not feel that they were particularly successful in achieving this aim)
  

Hiltz and Meinke (1989)
I suppose the design of this study reflects an essentially behaviourist orientation, with its strong focus on observable outcomes, but isn't there evidence of cognitive/constructivist theories as well? In my Week 1 notes under the heading 'Views of education and learning', I wrote the following:

• "Education is the structuring of a situation in ways that help SS change, through learning, in intentional (and sometimes unintentional) ways" (432).
• learners as active participants
• collaboration as fundamental to learning; knowledge as subjective, not objective
• SS learn at own pace - SS do not learn what Ts teach
• motivation integral to learning
• social interactionist
• seems at odds with the heavy reliance on quantitative methods

Most of the above notes would, to my mind, suggest social constructivist assumptions, despite the very positivistic design (but am I confounding behaviourism and positivism? perhaps...) As others have pointed out in the forums, the design of this particular study seems more than a little muddled. And Oliver et al. mention that studies may subconsciously promote assumptions that contradict the research design - perhaps this study is a good example of that.

Wegerif and Mercer (1992)

Laurillard (1994)
Emphasising the context of learning so strongly, as she does, suggests a constructivist approach to my mind. But Table 1's descriptions are not really helpful, so this is a provisional answer. Later addition: I have just read some Wikipedia entries on this; I will now go for social constructivism.

Oliver et al. (2007)

Roschelle (1992)
Constructivist? Socially situated? I guess I'm not clearly seeing the difference between the two based on Table 1. The two young girls in the study are engaged in a hands on discovery task and the focus is on the sort of 'interlanguage' the two develop in trying to describe the scientific concepts, which suggests constructivism. In addition, the interaction between the two is vitally important and language is used as a tool to jointly develop knowledge, which would indicate socially situated learning.

* and here I must post my first rant. this was absolutely, positively the most poorly written and presented academic paper I have ever read. recently i came across a writer bemoaning the fact that team researchers, due to time pressure, do not always find time to revise their papers - this would seem to be a case in point. beyond that, it seems the journal editor was either drunk or blind. okay, i am anal to start with, but beyond the annoying visual errors, there were plenty of errors that actually affected the meaning of the sentences. i honestly found about 10 errors per page. this is really unacceptable in a peer-reviewed journal. i can mark students' writing all day and not feel this frustrated...

H809-8. I dig Diigo!

I was quite miffed to open up my Furled bookmarks this morning only to see a message that Furl was being "absorbed" by Diigo. It takes a lot of time to experiment with all the features of web applications and I was just starting to get familiar with Furl.

But my bookmarks were imported into Diigo in about half an hour, so no problems there. I installed the Diigo toolbar and...I'm hooked! I just love the idea of highlighting and commenting on web pages and having easy access to the notes afterwards. I can send web pages directly to Facebook. I have even invited a friend to join - I wasn't much interested in the 'social' aspect of social bookmarking before.

The only drawback I can see at this point is that the Diigo toolbar is not (yet) available for Safari, so as with Zotero, I am forced to use Firefox only.

H809-7. Know your audience

Not so long ago I participated in an 8-week Research INSET led by my director, during which time I worked with a small group of colleagues to design and administer an online survey to students studying in the School of Languages where we teach. Two colleagues subsequently used this data in a workshop which was presented to interested teachers who freely chose to attend. I remember being struck by the way our data were presented - just in simple, colourful graphs the likes of which you can create easily from templates in Powerpoint - but how impressive it looked and the sort of importance it seemed to take on in the context of the topic we were discussing. Suddenly it wasn't just numbers and comments anymore, but the actual thoughts and reactions of our students, and I saw the real value of the research we had carried out. I suppose an affective dimension was added. I felt fortunate to have been able to see that from the perspective of an audience member; I know that standing on the other side, I might have been thinking more about any perceived flaws in my data analysis. Certainly while conducting the research, doubts were already creeping into my mind as to what we would do with the data once it was collected. But even such a simple dissemination of our results to a roomful of our peers seemed to justify the effort we had put into the survey. And I could suddenly think of more uses to which the data could be put, whereas previously I had tended to think of data as sort of static, practically dead by the time it is collected.

So I did in fact try to envision possible audiences when preparing TMA 01. I thought first of my fellow practitioners and the potential for a workshop along the lines of the one mentioned above, as well as further workshops to be proposed to institutions such as The British Council. I thought of a possible conference presentation, and I also thought of writing up the results in publishable form, to be submitted to both peer-reviewed journals and to IATEFL special interest group newsletters. I think the same research question suffices for each audience, since my research into blogging behaviours is exploratory, and systematic investigation of learners' experiences of blogging is fairly sparse, so any data generated are likely to attract the interest of a wide range of researchers and practitioners.

And last but not least, on the INSET my director emphasized the value of sharing our classroom data with our learners. I found last semester that my students were very enthusiastic at the prospect of taking part in my research, so it only seems fair to share it with them. Their reactions to the key findings will likely provide much food for further thought.

H809-6. Cloudworks

I have just registered for this site (www.cloudworks.ac.uk) and am going to have a play around. (Geeky note to self: I figured out how to insert a screenshot into a blog post...)

H809-5. Technorati is soooo passé

So says my best friend, who shall be referred to hereafter as the

Massive Computer Geek. ©

My Skype window shook with the force of the link he vehemently batted my way:

Technorati - now completely useless

Whew! Now I won't have to face judgement...

H809-4. 3 roads converged in a dusty wood

I was sitting on the shuttle on the way home as it wormed through the murderous traffic leading to the Bosphorus Bridge, reading Genre in the Classroom: Multiple Perspectives. I grabbed this book off the library shelf the other day because I am studying genre theories in my Translation Studies course and I am teaching a research paper this semester to my non-native speaker Freshmen and need to develop some lesson plans that focus on genre and text type. I wanted to see what kind of overlap I would find between the two understandings of genre. I came across these points in an article by Ann M. Johns entitled 'Destabilizing and enriching novice students' genre theories' (2002, p. 239):

1. Genres evolve and change to meet the growing and changing sociocognitive needs of discourse communities;
2. Genres evolve and develop to meet the needs of changing technology;
3. Genres evolve to adapt to changes in ideology and worldview in discourse communities;
4. Genres change as individuals take liberties with textual conventions.

(Ramanathan and Kaplan, 2000, pp. 180-83)

It would seem that all four points are relevant to the debate going on Grainne Conole's blog about the possibility of 'academic blogging' gaining formal recognition.

And thus genre analysis has neatly encircled my two courses as well as my teaching practice...more later.

H809-3. I ain't no fly by night

That's just the title of the song I'm listening to by Seasick Steve as I down a bottle of Chilean red, having cooked a soul-warming chicken tikka masala. I was thinking earlier that a bottle of wine makes studying go down a treat, but as my eyes fog over I'm starting to revise that observation.

First thing when I got to work this morning I set about ruthlessly chopping and changing TMA 01. I rewrote most of the section on methodology and feel it's much more honest now, true to what I want to do rather than what I think might 'sound good' to others.

It's nice to have created a space in which to study/explore for the sake of it, rather than panting through the week to keep up with tasks and readings. I have been playing around a bit more with Zotero and RefWorks. I don't have enough evidence at this point to form my final opinion, but I like the intuitive nature of Zotero, which blends nicely with my intuitive - and beloved - Mac. I have also been experimenting more with Furl - it's certainly an improvement on storing bookmarks on different laptops, and in different browsers, which is what I was doing before.

In working through Week 6 materials in an 'iterative fashion', hahaa, I have come across Grainne Conole's blog entry on whether blogging will become an academic activity which will count as evidence of the blogger's research engagement. This intrigues me a great deal...I am working on genre analysis in my Translation Studies course and wonder if academic blogging will emerge as a new genre...(okay, this is an example of where I revisit a post and add something I found later: Blogging impacts on formal academic output.) I also learned what technorati authority is - honestly, at first I thought this was the latest goofy widget, or even a bad linguistic joke, but academics who blog are displaying their statistics on their sites. This is a rating which shows the number of blogs linking to a web site in the last six months. Are we going to start worrying about our technorati authority now? It's like the newest incarnation of the high school popularity contest - how cool am I? How many people like me? I find it fascinating (perhaps disproportionately so at this point given the red liquid at my elbow...)

In my class today I found myself lecturing my Freshmen about considering all the 'stakeholders in research', so clearly this course is worming its way into my teaching life as well. They clearly had no idea what I was talking about, but I keep chipping away...

H809-2. TMA 01

I worked on this from 11.00 to 22.30 yesterday and knocked out 1992 words, which means I can actually partially enjoy Sunday. Not entirely, though, because a) I am also doing an online MA in Translation Studies through University of Portsmouth and b) without intense studying I feel bored and strangely empty.

I'm quite happy with the paper. I do not call it a first draft because I don't do first drafts - I draft and redraft and edit and re-edit as I go. All that remains after that long process is final minute polishing.

Research question

What challenges do students face when they blog?

Justification

-Kerawalla et al. (2008): the first phase of their iterative research into blogging behaviours, carried out in an OU course (one of the ones I will be taking as part of the Diploma), stresses the need for further research in other contexts. My context differs significantly from theirs, so it will be interesting to compare the differences.

-Beetham (2005): discusses emerging issues in e-learning research. Of particular interest to me are the JISC strands which investigate learning from the students' perspective. Since Beetham acknowledges that many important issues are likely to fall outside the remit of JISC, it is up to action researchers such as myself to take up the slack.

-Laurillard (2008): goes into detail about the value of reflective practice and disseminating the results to a wider community of practitioners. I need to check on the LAMS sharing project she mentions.

-Oliver and Conole (2003): critique "evidence-based practice" as resting on unsuitable epistemological grounds and stress the empowerment of practitioners.

-Williams and Jacobs (2004): offer some questionnaire data on students' responses to blogging, some of which coincides with Kerawalla et al. (2008) and some with my own preliminary questionnaire data from last semester. A picture of blogging behaviours is emerging, but is not yet complete.

Methodology

-A broad discussion of quantitive versus qualitative approaches, bringing in Pring (2000) and his insistence that there is a "false dualism" between the two; some criticisms of the Hiltz and Meinke (1989) study; a dash of Oliver et al. (2007) and Wegerif and Mercer (1997) for good measure in the discussion on data analysis considerations. My data collection tools: Likert scale questionnaires, interviews and artefact analysis of my class blog.

H809-1. The reluctant blogger

Okay, I do blog. But privately, to amuse myself.

I tend to use my blogs for cathartic rants, so they are not necessarily suitable for public consumption. But I will try to rein myself in for the duration of this course.

I also have an old-fashioned streak; I keep lots of notebooks, full of both careful notes and random lists, brainstorms and other scribblings. I like things I can carry around and leaf through. I like to study on public transport. I like the smell of paper and using different coloured pens, especially my Muji set of felt-tips in their cylindrical plastic holder. I like the measured boxes of graph paper and notebooks with divided sections. This is why I cannot guarantee I will blog each and every day.

I also like to go back and revise my previous posts in a different colour. Thus I find the reverse chronological order of the blog most confining.

Since I am investigating my students' blogging behaviours, it will undoubtedly be most instructive to simultaneously investigate my own...I may not be readily generalisable to other contexts!