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.