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You will maintain a blog
concerning your personal research agenda.
INTRODUCTION
On the first day of the seminar, you will be introduced to the blogging
assignment. The development of a robust research agenda is not
something that occurs quickly and it will surely evolve throughout your
professional career. This assignment is included in this seminar
because developing a research agenda is something that requires the
kind of reflection and feedback that a blog can enable. According to Wikipedia:
| A blog is a website in which
journal entries are posted on a regular basis and typically displayed
in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog
or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an
article to an existing blog is called "blogging". Individual articles
on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts" or "entries". A person who
posts these entries is called a "blogger". A blog comprises hypertext, images, and links (to
other webpages and to video,
audio and
other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation.
A given blog will usually focus on a particular "area of interest". |
TASK
Your task is to maintain a blog concerning your personal research
agenda. To begin, the blog should include a description of the
goals of your research agenda. The research goals held by an
educational researcher are influenced by many factors including the
epistemological views of the researcher, his/her research training, and
the dominant research paradigms within his/her line of inquiry. Six
major types of research goals commonly pursued by instructional
technology researchers are described in the following paragraphs:
Theoretical Goals
Researchers with theoretical goals are focused on explaining phenomena
through the logical analysis and synthesis of theories, principles, and
the results of other forms of research. This type of research is
relatively rare because it requires levels of synthesis,
generalization, and theory construction for which most researchers have
not been prepared. In addition, this type of research usually requires
a long-term scholarly agenda that can be sustained for many years. One
example of research with theoretical goals within the field of
instructional technology is the seminal work of Gagné to
describe the basic conditions of learning and a theory of instruction.
Predictive Goals
Researchers with predictive goals are focused on determining how
education works by testing conclusions related to theories of teaching,
learning, performance, assessment, social interaction, instructional
design, and so forth. Instructional technology researchers with this
type of goal usually employ experimental (more often
quasi-experimental) methods to determine the effects of some form or
aspect of a technological innovation under controlled conditions. This
type of research dominated instructional technology for decades, but
reviews reveal that it has often been done poorly. In fact, until about
20 years ago, it was the only goal graduate students and young
researchers were encouraged to pursue. It popularity stems partially
from the fact that predictive studies using quasi-experimental methods
take less time and logistical support than other approaches, and many
research journals remain more receptive to reports of predictive
studies than other forms of research.
Interpretivist Goals
Researchers with interpretivist goals are focused on portraying how
education works by describing and interpreting phenomena related to
teaching, learning, performance, assessment, social interaction,
innovation, and so forth. Instructional technologists with
interpretivist goals draw upon naturalistic research traditions
borrowed from other sciences such as anthropology and sociology. The
popularity of conducting research from an interpretivist perspective
has increased dramatically among educational researchers over the past
20 years. However, a backlash against qualitative research has
developed in some circles and recent initiatives taken by the Federal
Government in the USA under the aegis of the Institute of Education
Sciences demonstrate a strong preference for funding studies with
predictive goals.
Postmodern Goals
Researchers with postmodern goals are focused on examining the
assumptions underlying contemporary educational programs and practices
with the ultimate aims of revealing hidden agendas and/or empowering
disenfranchised minorities. Although increasingly evident among
researchers with strong multicultural, gender, or political interests,
research in the postmodern tradition is very rare within the
instructional technology field. There are several reasons for this, not
the least of which is the fact that there are relatively few senior
instructional technologists capable of mentoring graduate students or
young researchers in this approach.
Design/Development Goals
Researchers with design/development goals are focused on the dual
objectives of developing creative approaches to solving human teaching,
learning, and performance problems while at the same time constructing
a body of design principles that can guide future design or development
efforts. Design/development research which is referred to in many
different ways such as design-based research, design experiments,
formative research, and so forth is the focus of this seminar. One
issue that remains unresolved is whether it is feasible for Ph.D.
students to engage in a design-based research agenda within the time
frame of a typical doctoral program.
Action/Evaluation Goals
Researchers with action/evaluation goals are focused on a particular
program, product, or method, usually in an applied setting, for the
purpose of describing it, improving it, or estimating its effectiveness
and worth. Sometimes called action research or evaluation research,
research with action/evaluation goals is similar to design/development
research except that there is little or no effort to construct theory,
models, or principles to guide future design initiatives. The major
goal is solving a particular problem in a specific place within a
relatively short time frame. Some theorists maintain that this type of
inquiry is not research at all, but merely a form of evaluation.
However, despite its primary focus on considerations of use for local
practitioners, it can be regarded as a legitimate form of research
provided reports of it are shared with wider audiences who may
themselves choose to draw inferences from these reports in a sense
similar to reports of interpretivist research.
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RESOURCES
There are numerous Web resources related to the blogging:
There are many interesting
examples of blogging.
Check out this one by famous IT blogger, Jay Cross, in which he debunks
the notion of learning styles:
http://metatime.blogspot.com/2005/12/learning-styles-ha-ha-ha.html
You might find Ray Schroeder's Educational Technology blog to be of
interest:
http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/blogger.html
Here is a fascinating blog maintained by a German Ph.D. student,
Sebastian Fiedler, who earned his Masters in our Instructional Design
and Development program:
http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com/
Here is an example of a blog devoted to educational research from the
University of Wisconsin:
http://wcer.blogspot.com/
The "Creating Passionate Users" blog includes a "Crash Course in
Learning Theory":
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/
This task is worth 25
points.
We will develop a rubric together to assess our
blogs. An example of a rubric can be found here.
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