I just made a discovery and it is HUGE!

My discovery was the library of all things. I made a joke of it in my last post. Please don't tell me that I am the only one that did not know that I could access it. I can get any paper I want. If UF does not subscribe, it can be done through Inter library lending. NEVER pay money. Jstore is there with full text. ERIC is there with full text. Educause is there with full text.

I chatted with a librarian and got the full directions on how to access whatever I want to access. I suspect that I am the only one of you that did not know about this. But in case I am not, she e-mailed me the complete conversation and if anyone is interested in directions, I have them.

I remember going there once in the past but I did not check it out thoroughly enough to appreciate it. The library has anything you want. Why fumble about on the Internet when you can just nip into the library and get what you want?

I am finishing up my teaching duties to date and can concentrate on my paper and the foreign thing. You can bet if I see an interesting abstract on the Internet, I am going to have the library page open too so I can really check it out. I just hope I don't get waylaid by interesting tidbits of information while I am writing my paper. I get lost easily; I just have to go chasing the varmit.

One more question. Is this the last post? If so, are any of you going to be checking back into the blog this coming week? Hey! The library thing threw me a curve ball. I don't know when I have felt so stupid. I need some keepers. I'm having separation anxiety.

Putting it all together..

I feel as if I am packing for a trip. I have all of these Word documents full of semi-pertinent URLs headed with queries. I am going through them and deciding which I shall use and which I shall not use. Some of them are good for background but are not pin point citations and others make one tiny point. Also, they are quite disparate in the samples they use. I feel queasy drawing conclusions about young adult USA southerners from a paper that deals with rural Indians (from India).

Also, I still don't have definitive research. I can't use editlib.org where all of the on topic papers seem to be (see my comment it Josh's blog). Those papers have titles like "Synchronous and Asynchronous Online Delivery: How Much Interaction in E-learning is Enough in Higher Education?","Opportunities and Challenges of Synchronous and Asynchronous E Learning", and, most of all, "Synchronous Versus Asynchronous: Delivery of Online Instruction and the Factors that Lead to Success or Failure." . And, that is just for this year. Ahr-r-rgh!

All I have is a great number of kinda sorta on topic papers lined up. Sometimes it is a stretch. It seems that every time I write a sentence, I better have a reference at the end of it, or I am toast. Most of the time these references are not a perfect fit or there is one tiny phrase in 384 pages of text that makes my point. I am like the lady who takes way too much on a trip. I have way too many "things" and some of those "things" may be inappropriate - I have to do a little twist here and little stretch there.

If I had a student card, I could go to the library. That would be novel now, wouldn't it?

All I gotta do is...

I am taking a good hard look at the Research Proposal submitted to Dr. Jones. It was hastily done and not complete enough. However, if I expand it in scope, language and referencing, I may have most of my expert paper done. I want to limit it to online learning and not include teleconferencing and other distance technologies. I would also like reference perceptions about communications in online learning.

I found an article that addressed some of my concerns as an online Instructor. It is called The Effectiveness and Development of Online Discussion by Olla Najah Al-Shalchi from William and Mary Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. I am pleased to say that my conclusions on how to generate interest in, at least, asynchronous discussion mirrored theirs. Motivation was of particular interest to me. I provide rubrics and I think this is essential. Why keep your expectations a secret?

I am still quite concerned about asynchronous communications. I think in the future that I shall take a vote on when they want me to offer office hours. If it is a late hour, then I guess I'll just have to take a nap prior to their preferred time. I am of the opinion that this is one of the reasons that the synchronous office hours are poorly attended - the student does not have a choice in what time they are offered.

What do you guys think of my plan for finishing this thing up?

No!

The Institutional Research Department thinks that my students would be concerned about their grades being affected by their responses to a survey. Therefore a survey may not be given until the grades for the semester in question have been submitted. I looked around out there and there is some evidence that students don't believe that survey results are anonymous even though I could not find papers on that subject exclusively (http://oea.uchc.edu/tips_creating/index.html;http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ748405&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ748405). The surveys may, after all, include unique identifiers. This belief would taint my results. Also, there is the Media Equation to consider.

Though disappointed, I have learned about writing a research proposal and about writing surveys. I am definitely going to include both in the final paper submission to Dr. Ferdig.

The Institutional Research Department did say it would be OK if I sent an e-mail to the students after the class was over and asked them for the following:

"Hello 'name of student',

Would you help me out? I would like to know, as an Instructor, what I could do to make online courses that I teach more engaging. In particular, I would like to stimulate participation in live office hours and in the discussion. Would you please take a few minutes to offer any suggestions that would help me do this? Say anything you want that might help me. You won't hurt my feelings or offend me (after all, thousands have tried and failed). I just want to help my present and future students get as much as they can out of any course I teach.

Thank you in advance,

Suzon"

This won't help my paper but maybe it will help me.

Suzon

The Media Equation and how it impacts my work.

I was not surprised by anything I read in the Media Equation paper. I enjoyed it very much and read the whole thing - not just what was assigned. I depend on the Media Equation while teaching my online class. I try to make the language I use friendly and engaging. I want my students to participate and that is more likely the more approachable I am.

To illustrate this, I have assigned a JavaScript Digital Storytelling slide show. To help pace them and model for them, I am posting a partially completed JavaScript slide show of my own. Every so often I update it to reflect an effort to comply with the posted rubrics. I check off the requirements as I meet them with my latest submission. The students are following me with tweaks to their own slide shows. We all suggest improvements to each slide show submission. The Media Equation is balanced and all is right with the world. I am being polite; they are being polite.

I wonder what the critiques would be like if there was a "moderator Instructor" to which we sent our critiques of the submissions? I don't think they would be nearly so polite but they would be much more informative. Hm-m-m, team teaching, anyone? That sounds like a very interesting idea. I would like to try that if I could get permission to do so and the cooperation of another Instructor.

This assignment has been a bridge between the face-to-face and the online, however. I have gotten to know what my students look like and have met their families or become familiar with their businesses and their hobbies through the slide shows. We have formed a real community through this slide show and we are nice to one another even though we are actually only digital constructs. We are real to each other through pictures and polite helpfulness in the nature of shared code and design suggestions. I think all of us are just loving this.

Also, my work for this class is communications in distance education. This paper was really right on point. I think I can set the tone in any online class I teach just by the formality or informality of my language, the amount of slang I use and how warm or remote my language makes me seem. With the appropriate language, the transactional distance can be reduced. What ever I do, it may as well be the real me - because that is how it is going to be perceived by my students. So, be careful, Suzon. To them, you are as you seem.

In addition, I can understand why something like Elluminate Live! provides the same capabilities on both sides of the equation. The part about Modality Matching was made so meaningful by my limited experience with Elluminate Live!.

Josh's post a couple of weeks ago talked about a teacher in Washington and a video connection with his students. They both could participate. This is so much more polite than a video lesson with no student participation.

I really enjoyed this reading.

Well, I'm going to send it to my Chair and cc the administrative assistant

I've got my proposal done. I thinks it's good but that is not for me to say. I took kind advice from Josh, Liz, Nancy, Mike and Debbie. I really appreciate the input. I just hope that Dr. Jones will at least take a look.
The URL is:

ExploratoryResearchProposal

Second Tweak of Survey

I have tweaked my survey. It is getting getting way too large and will probably take to long to get complete response. I shall have to pare it down and clean it up. This is the URL. Tomorrow I finish my proposal for Dr. Jones and get this show on the road.

http://home.ite.sfcollege.edu/~peterss/SurveySecondTweak.pdf

The papers I used to tweak this survey are located at:

http://www.flvs.net/educators/documents/pdf/archived_evals/FLVS%20Annual%20Evaluations/2002-03/Student%20Survey%20Results%202002-03.pdf

http://www.flvs.net/educators/documents/pdf/archived_evals/FLVS%20Annual%20Evaluations/2002-03/Student%20Survey%20Results%202002-03.pdf

Rough draft of the survey...

I've finished with a rough draft of the survey I want to submit to my students. I would appreciate your opinions. Please click on the following link in order to see my first try.

http://home.ite.sfcollege.edu/~peterss/SurveyFirstDraftPosted.pdf

There are a group of general questions regarding demographics. The Survey Tips page from the Illinois Center of Public Health suggested that I put these last. I thought they would work better if they came first since they would know the answers and could finish quickly. I would find these questions intrusive but I think the answers will tell me a lot about the time my students have to complete their school work and its relative importance in their lives. (School or your children - which is the most important?). What do you think?

Also, I tried to not to make my questions open - ended but I also wanted to make my survey friendly and casual so I did not include rated questions. You know, the questions with radio buttons beside numbers 1-5 indicating the degree of agreement. I know that these are easier to evaluate statistically but this is an exploratory effort and the sample size is too small for a serious statistical inference so the results will be reported as percentages (How to Write a Survey Report).

I am seriously interested in your opinions. So please post them to this blog. Josh, you did this sort of thing for a living at one time...

Angel has a survey tool!

I thought it would be a good idea to see if Open Campus had any statistics on LSM usage so I called our Open Campus Instructional design coordinator (Gloria Kersh) at SFC. I was going to interview her to get a broader picture of the relative usage of the synchronous versus asynchronous tools of our LMS (Angel). I was hoping for a counter. She had no information about this but she did tell me that our chief programmer just put up a survey tool on Angel. For me, this is huge. I was beginning to worry about having the time to program the online survey and the server smtp script and then convincing ITS that I could implement them without bringing the network down. This tool in Angel will administer the survey and collect its results (all I do is populate it with questions) while securing the anonymity of responding students.

Also, since my students have not seen any of the more sophisticated synchronous tools, any responses submitted to questions regarding their desirability would be suspect. I shall then reluctantly refocus my inquiry toward synchronous versus asynchronous communities. My class is definitely of the asynchronous nature. I shall definitely include a description of Elluminate Live!'s capabilities and include a question as to whether or not this would encourage them to attend synchronous communications but I cannot in good faith emphasize it.

All-in-all, my survey is to be of a most informal nature. I am doing exploratory research, after all. I just want to find out what SFC students think of our communication tools. That will then be a part of the overall paper concerning synchronous and asynchronous communication in online courses.

Tonight I am going to test that survey tool. I am going to pose one question. This is to find out the answer to my question (Do you need more help than I have given you in your Digital Storytelling slideshow project?)and to make sure that the survey tool works (Tips for Writing a Survey.)

I am still working on the proposal - it's harder than I thought it would be.

Well, I'm still working on my proposal. I am trying to determine exactly what questions I shall ask and how I shall ask them. I probably won't get this thing finished until next week. I found this really informative site that explains the types of surveys, types of questions and basically, all things about surveys. I am going to certainly study this site (Super Survey Knowledge Base) and several others (listed at the end) that look as if they might help. Then, maybe I can write a competent survey. Any help you guys can throw my way would be really appreciated. I am glad that I qualified this research as exploratory and that I limited my participants to Santa Fe College ITE students. I should be really careful not to get caught up in the details and attend to the large issues.

Methods Tutorial: some early steps in research This goes through the whole process. Im at step 4.This one is going to be a huge help. There are many more. The query I used on Google was: tutorial "survey questions " site:edu past year.

Survival Statistics from Survey and Questionnaire Design

10 Tips for Writing and Delivering Effective Poll and Survey Questions 10 tips from Adobe connect community.

Advanced Technology for Online Surveys Lots of links here.

I am most grateful for any suggestions that will keep me on task.

I'm working on the introduction for my proposal.

My main proposal source (http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR3-1/heath.html) states that I should grab the interest of the reader with a story. Therefore, my introduction is of a conversational nature. This is what I have so far. I seriously want your opinions. I do not want to embarrass myself in front of my boss...

Communication is the heart and soul of distance education. At Santa Fe College, the synchronous and asynchronous communication tools in Angel provide the potential for social presence but they are under-utilized by the students unless they are essentially forced to use them. As an exploratory research project, I would like permission to survey the students in my class in order to discover what would make the online experience more satisfactory at SFC.

When I began to teach Internet Programming this semester, I thought that there would be a lively attendance in the online office hours. I thought the students would be curious about me at the least. So far, I have had only one attendee. I have practically had to force them to use the asynchronous discussion. No matter how much I threaten and cajole, they avoid communications like the plague.

While taking a course in Distance Education at University of Florida, I was forced to attend office hours - once. Dr. Cavanaugh was using a medium called Elluminate Live!. It had the capacity for auditory communication and holographic input as well as typing. I was so fascinated by this application I returned to office hours every time they were offered and just lurked. Sometimes, even though I am quite shy, I was caught up enough to chime right in there. I then began to study the research regarding synchronous and asynchronous communication and their effect on student participation and student satisfaction.

Literature search:

During this study, I first wanted to know the ways that student participation have been measured and whether or not student participation influences student performance. I found that there is substantial evidence that class participation, no matter how it is measured, is an important factor in student success. I also found that the combined measure of participation (email, class utterances and discussion posts) and the course click count appear to be good predictors of exam performance in an e-learning course (Douglas & Alemanne, 2007).

I also wanted to know what factors influence the building of community in online instruction and to what extent they do this. My research indicated that transactional distance, instructor immediacy, lurking, social equity, collaborative learning, group facilitation, and self-directed learning, social presence has a great impact on the sense of community within online learning environments (Chongwony, 2008). I am particularly interested fostering social presence in my classes.

I also researched social constructivism in the context of social presence. The literature supported my casual findings that a facilitative teaching presence rather than didactic teaching presence does not mean that you ignore the student’s cries for help; rather, the students need more social presence and motivation in an online situation (Thomason, 2008).

What I want to find out:

What can be done that would encourage more communication by Santa Fe College students, create more social sense and thereby more student satisfaction.

Would these things help?

Synchronous office hours that could be thought of as a live discussion hour. I would not even call them office hours.

Would it help if it could involve auditory conversations as well as typed ones? There would definitely be more immediacy and a sensory social sense and by extension more student satisfaction. This would require an online tool such as Elluminate Live! or Adobe Connect

Would more instructor – student interaction in the form of assignments that require the instructors participation by modeling certain assignments help foster better communication.

I am trying this in the nature of a slide show in Javascript in which I participate and allow the students to critique.

Proposal for the department chair

Well, this weekend I am going to write my exploratory research proposal for the chair of my department and, hopefully, send it to him on Monday.I have several URLs that will help me do this. The main one I intend to use is Elements of a Proposal by Frank Parhares at Emory University (http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/proposal.html) Other information as to form of the proposal will be drawn from The Proposal in Qualitative Research by Anthony W. Heath from Nova University (http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR3-1/heath.html). These are for Doctoral Dissertation Proposals and since mine is just a tiny exploratory research proposal, the proposal I hand him will not be as complete as these documents recommend. I hope this is the right approach.

I also intend to include pertinent educational research including that regarding asynchronous communication versus synchronous communication (http://www.thejournal.com/articles/15513,http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/ijet/v2n1/schoenfeld-tacher/index.html,http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/AsynchronousandSynchronou/47683) which suggests that synchronous communication increases immediacy and social presence to a greater degree than asynchronous communication; social presence and student satisfaction (http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi/Chongwony%20Lewis%20K.E.pdf?acc_num=ohiou1199472454, http://etec.hawaii.edu/proceedings/2008/Kiriakidis2008.pdf ) which suggests that a greater social presence increases student satisfaction; increasing social presence in synchronous and asynchronous formats
(http://learning.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cop/CoP_Recent_Research/LearningCOP&SocialPresecnce.pdf,http://etd.fcla.edu/SF/SFE0001236/Schullo-Shauna-Dissertation.pdf ); and synchronous and asynchronous communication tools (http://www.asaecenter.org/PublicationsResources/articledetail.cfm?ItemNumber=13572 http://www.astd.org/LC/2000/0600_swider.htm). This is a progression hopefully leading to the conclusion that SFC needs a synchronous tool that is indeed "in the present"; such as Elluminate Live!
I also need to include a survey with references. This is not going to be easy.

I am preparing my proposal for the chair of my department in order to get his permission to "use" my students and the students of my generous colleagues as subjects for my exploratory research. How formal should this be? Should we just have a casual talk in the hall or should I present it in an e-mail so I have documentation that he agreed? Or, should I make a big
deal out of it and schedule an appointment with him?

I have links for writing proposals (http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR3-1/heath.html for one) and for support of the hypothesis of my exploratory research (Social presence and thereby student satisfaction would it increase if the synchronous tool at SFC had auditory and/or visual (web cam? avatar?) cues).

The reason for the survey involves an ulterior motive on my part. I would like for SFC to adopt Elluminate Live! or some other synchronous tool that increases social presence. Even though there is plenty of research to support the idea that increased social presence increases student satisfaction, I think my chair would be more interested if I could show that SFC students specifically would be more interested in communication with each other and the instructor if there a synchronous tool available that increased social presence. I am having to force my students to communicate with me and each other.

The problem is this: I have 3 documents to prepare. There is the research proposal for Dr. Jones, the survey and the research paper for this course including the analysis of my results. This analysis is going to include some statistical work so I am also going to have to research and implement this also. I hope to heck I can finish.

Do I dump the ulterior motive for another day and jettison the proposal for my chair and my survey and just do a plain old research paper? Help! I do tend to overdo.

A little more thought...

I have thought about my little project a bit more. I think that it should be conducted as exploratory research of communication technologies that SFC students actually use. I shall address key issues SFC students may have about the communication technology used in distance education. I want this exploration to tell me why, how, and when SFC students use the communication technology available and what kinds of functionality would increase the usage of this technology.

I think I am well on my way. I have found a a great website on how exploratory research should be conducted.

Will this dog hunt?

How I am going to do this…

I have begun to think about my little project and have come up with some ideas as to how I should proceed. Below is a tentative list.

LIST

1. Write a proposal to show the chair of my department (I need his permission for this).
2. Include a survey and encourage him to make suggestions as to the questions.
3. My survey must be professional quality. It must attempt to answer the questions I have posed. This is going to be the hardest part of this project.
4. To that end I have found some URLs that have tips on how to write a survey that will answer your research questions.
5. http://www.syberworks.com/elpodcast2_transcript.htm Lots of information - very useful
6. http://www.syberworks.com/articles/14surveytips.htm
7. http://www.syberworks.com/survey.htm Free trial for survey software
8. Begin preparing my student s for the survey and encouraging them to answer it.
9. A few friendly forays into this should begin now.
10. Sample post in the discussion.

Hi Ya’ll,
I have noticed that nobody visits my office hours. I was really hoping some of you would stop by so I could get to know you better. What’s the problem? Are the scheduled hours inconvenient for you? I know you all work and have families so I would make changes to accommodate you. Just let me know.


Well, what do you guys think? Do you have any suggestions?

I have selected a topic and I am so excited!

My topic is:
Post secondary students and their media preferences in online education.

The questions I want to ask are:

1. Why are the synchronous online office hours without participation (just like face-to-face office hours) when the student-student and instructor-student interactions are so lively asynchronously?
2. If the synchronous Instructor-student and student-student interactions were equipt with voice capabilities as well as writing capabilities (such as Elluminate Live!) would student participation increase? Santa Fe has Angel online office hours which is just typing.
3. Is the necessary scheduling of synchronous online activities causitive of lack of participation? That is, is it too much like having to attend class face-to-face at a particular time?
4. Do these students prefer the anonymity of asynchronous contact? That is, do they prefer the "I can plan and edit what I 'say' before I 'say' it"? situation in asynchronous communications?

I think a study such as this would help me provide better facilitation for my students. And, if the results showed that the students would be more engaged if we had Elluminate Live! or a similar application (speaking as well as writing, holography as well as typing) the proper person would have something to show the money people that would be indicative of possible impact so that we could acquire a technology as nice as that for our students.

There is research in this area but most of it is meta-analytical in nature. (http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/materials/clark/DE_Meta_Fin_Jan11-04.pdf and http://asterix.ednet.lsu.edu/~edtech/Lou/UndergradDE.pdf)

I would like to conduct an actual chat and survey with Santa Fe students in order to find my answers for Santa Fe students. Perhaps I can persuade Debbie, Liz, and Nancy to help me distribute a survey to their students as well as mine in order to increase the sample size. Since the students aren't genetically identical Sprague Dawley rats the Central Limit Theorem does not hold and I would definitely need more than my 13 students.

How about it ya'll? Am I biting off more than I can chew? Is this too specific, Dr. Ferdig?

Suzon

I don't know which topic to choose.

I need some help. I can't make up my mind. I have narrowed it down to several choices. I don't want to go wrong here because if I do, it's going to be a miserable 6 weeks.

If they all suck, I have more. Input, I need input.

1.Synchronicity in distance education: Eluminate Live! or Adobe Connect?

2.Resistance to new technologies by elderly learners (I probably could actually do this one - I have 3 elderly relatives that have computers and they do not want to learn how to use them. One of them is actually using a Video Writer and it still works.)

3. Web Quests and direct teaching: Do Web Quests actually increase student learning?

4. The tablet PCs and note taking in the traditional classroom.