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.
As for the way to handle it with Dr. Jones--go to the source of all earthly information--call Blanca. Given the economy, it depends on how much Elluminate costs; if it costs anything, it's probably a no go. I don't think your overdoing it if you use the tools on the web and give yourself plenty of time to draw some conclusions without last minute stuff--you need to ruminate on it.
ReplyDeleteI shall definitely need to ruminate. Perhaps Dr. Ferdig will comment.
ReplyDeleteOur school has a entire procedure for getting approval for something like. If I remember its very daunting. Is there anyhting is writing that you can go by?
ReplyDeleteNot that I know of but I shall ask ITE's administrative assistant who knows everything.
ReplyDeleteI called the administrative assistant and she does not know. I am going to write the proposal and send it to him via e-mail.
ReplyDeleteI'd say if you're going to do it, do it all the way. You might as well get the most our of the situation.
ReplyDelete