Managing references

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

As some of you are aware, I had a little hiccup with my reference management while I was writing my comprehensive exams. Unfortunately, I did not take my own advice, and tried out a new tool for an important time-sensitive paper. Fortunately, I had a back-up plan that saved me.

What I really need is:

  • A way to keep all my annotated PDF files organized. I'm file inept. Keeping things in folders doesn't work for me. I cannot consistently label things, and when I am looking for something, I want an easy way to find it. Also, I found that many of papers belonged in more than one category – but keeping multiple copies means that annotations get lost or misplaced and managing multiple copies is a pain. Search-ability is critical – I need to be able to find things when I'm looking for them.
  • A place to keep my notes. Even though I like to keep my notes with the annotated files, I also find that when I'm doing a literature review, I like to keep all my related notes in a single file.
  • A way to automatically generate my reference lists in papers. I'm a big believer in "cite while you write", that is, as I draft my paper I place my citations (at least most of them, occasionally, I'll just write stuff done and put in a note to find a reference).

My current solution to this problem involves three different software packages – one for each item.

For item 1, I use Mendeley. Mendeley lets me drag-and-drop annotated PDFs. In many cases it automatically finds all the information I need for referencing, and when it doesn't it has an integrated search function. I can create virtual folders to categorize my documents, and I can even create shared folders to share my reference lists with others. In addition, the search function in Mendeley works very well – it searches both my notes and inside the PDFs themselves. I blogged about Mendeley in a post on my inability to file things, and I extoll the virtues of Mendeley here; however, this was written before I discovered scalability issues when trying to use Mendeley for item 3.

For item 2, I use Microsoft Word. I find that I want all my related notes in one document, so I just dump them into Microsoft Word. When I do I literature review, I find the process to be similar to coding qualitative research results. I put all my notes and reflections into a single Word document, and then code it and draw up a conceptual framework.

For item 3, I use Bookends. I had tried to use Mendeley for this, but ran into scalability issues with the Microsoft Word plug-in. I submitted a bug report to the Mendeley development team, and they have now contacted me to tell me they are going to fix the issue; however, it took them several weeks to reply. I was working on a time critical paper, and needed something that just worked. When Microsoft pushed an update that broke the Bookends scripts, I posted a message to the message board and the developer responded within a day (given it was a weekend, I was impressed). Fortunately, I was able to work around the bug, and get things working again. Bookends works, is very scalable (works well on long papers with lots of references), and the developer is very responsive. Sorry PC folks, Bookends is a Mac only product.

So, there you have it. The three different tools I use to manage my references. It's a bit clunky, but it is working for me. What tools do you use?

Posted in PhD Ponderings, Research, Software How-to / Review | 2 Comments

Blogging from my iPad

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

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I’m writing this post on my iPad. This is partially a test to see if it works, but also, to see how easy it is to blog from my iPad. On my next trip, I plan to only bring my iPad (not my computer). So, if I want to blog while I’m away (more like on my travel blog rather than here, at GoingEast), I’m going to have to do it from my iPad.

I’m using the iPad WordPress app (available for free). It appears to be much improved from the last time I tried to use it. The new version allows me to include photos and to preview my posts before publishing.

In addition to the WordPress app, I’ve also purchased the iPad Camera Connection kit. The Apple version of the kit (as opposed to the cheap knock off I picked up in China), is nice and small. I took a few pictures of the tulips while I was out riding earlier this week, just to test it out. Here is a picture.

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The user interface from the WordPress app is a little confusing after you include a picture, as it seems that all you can do to get back to the edit screen is “publish”, which isn’t really what I want to do. Taking a closer look at the bottom menu bar, I can select the “edit” icon to get back into edit mode.

It only took me a few minutes to figure out the workflow to make this post. Overall, I think my blog post from the iPad is a success.

Posted in Blogging, iPad2 | 2 Comments

Finding my tribes … the search for the right academic conferences

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

Pursuing a PhD can be a lonely journey. Finding like-minded people to support you in your journey can help reduce the loneliness. The idea of searching out these like-minded people is often called “finding your tribe”; there is a great blog post about it titled “how to build your tribe – finding ‘your people’“.

Over the last year of PhD, I’ve been trying to find my tribes. I use the plural here, because I have a found a few tribes, but I’m still looking for others. I’ve found the tribe of PhD students within my cohort, where we meet at least once a month, keep in touch regularly on Facebook, and provide support for one another.  I’ve found a tribe with my supervisor and her group of students, and I’ve found a virtual tribe in #phdchat on twitter. But I’m still missing my tribe relating to the type of research that I do. There are a lot of great people doing research at Ottawa U, but none of them doing design-based research in faculty development to support technology adoption – actually there isn’t even anything close. So I’m feeling like I need to find myself another tribe.

Whenever I find myself feeling tribeless, I find that I start looking into academic conferences – places where groups of like-minded academics gather to share ideas. So far, the closest I’ve come to finding my tribe academically has been when I attended mLearn 2011 in Beijing. There, I met people who share my interest in both learning and technology.  I found other women that were also technology geeks! And I found other students who are planning to use design-based research methodology to study some for of technology-enhanced learning.

So, again, I am trying to find my tribes. In doing so, I’ve created a page (here and linked from the Academic Resources menu)  that lists a bunch of different academic conferences related to professional development in higher education, learning technology, or mobile learning. After several hours of compiling the list, I realize that it is a never-ending task, and yet, I don’t feel like I’ve found the “right” one yet. It is difficult to determine if the conference is academically oriented enough, or the level of value of the conference, simply from its description. So, if you have any suggestions, I’d be happy to review it and if appropriate add it o the list. Also, if you know of any blog posts where people who have been to the conference provide commentary, I’d be happy to link to those too. In the mean time, I’m planning to attend several move conferences in the next few months, in the hopes of finding more tribes.

Posted in PhD Ponderings | Leave a comment

Design-based research chain of inquiry

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

It seems that the theme this week in the virtual edu world is design. Change MOOC (#change11) is talking about how teaching is changing into a design science, and the topic for tonight’s #lrnchat is design thinking.

Design is near and dear to my heart. My last career (before I went back to school) was as an instructional design. I spend 10 years studying and practicing instructional design. Instructional design is all about designing learning interactions – either to support a classroom teacher or to support electronic learning. As an instructional designer, I appreciate the link between teaching and design science. I embody that link when I do my work.

When I began my investigations in research, I was immediately attracted to the idea of design-based research (DBR). It is an approach to research that has the potential to directly influence instructional design practice. What I struggled to understand was “what exactly made DBR research?”, that is, “how was DBR different from the practice of instructional design?”

After several months of reading, pretty much anything I could find relating to DBR in education, and a little bit about design sciences outside of education, I’ve finally made the connection. In my mind, I connected the different aspects of inquiry, into what I call the DBR chain of inquiry. This concept helped me to understand what was “research” in DBR. Below is an excerpt from my paper that describes the DBR chain of inquiry. I hope you enjoy it.

DBR Chain of Inquiry

DBR scholars often focus on the specific processes of conducting research, and fail to describe how the processes of DBR are related to inquiry.  Based upon a synthesis of the literature, I visualize the stages of inquiry in DBR as a linked chain, with each link providing information to the next. All links must be sufficiently strong to ensure sound research. In the figure above, I illustrate my DBR chain of inquiry with four links: (1) ground: the researcher must ground the design in theory; (2) enact: the researcher must implement the design in a real-world context; (3) evaluate: the researcher must assess and judge the enacted design; and finally (4) reflect: the researcher must retrospectively analyze the research project at its end. In the next sections, I describe each of the links in the DBR chain of inquiry in more detail.

Ground

Ground, the first link in the chain of inquiry represents the need for scholars to base the new design upon what is already known. The researcher must go beyond a traditional literature review, seeking to define the preliminary instructional-design theory or design principles that are used to ground the initial designs (Gravemeijer & Cobb, 2006). In addition, the researcher must gain an understanding of the context where the research will take place because organizational structures will also influence the design (Park & Zhang, 2011).

Enact

Enact, the second link in the chain of inquiry, represents the need to implement the design in a real-world context. Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc (2004) emphasize that in education, it is not possible to completely specify a design and that only a particular implementation of the design can be evaluated.

In the field of ID, the instructional designer captures the design in an instructional design document, which is used by an instructional developer to create educational resources, which in-turn is used by teachers to assist in the act of teaching. Together, the creation of educational resources and the act of teaching represent the enactment of the design. The design itself is not a thing that can be evaluated; rather, it is only the enactment of a single instance of the design that can be evaluated, in other words, the thing you are evaluating is the enactment of the design not the design itself. Even though a developer may try to be faithful to the intent of the design when enacting the design instance, it cannot be said that the enactment is the design (Sandoval, 2004) because it will necessarily vary according to the real-world context in which it is enacted. A design can never truly be evaluated: the best that can be done is to enact the design either multiple times or in multiple settings in order gain an understanding of which aspects of the design are reproducible or applicable across different settings. As a result, DBR emphasizes the need for multiple iterations of enactment.

Evaluate

Evaluate, the third link in the change of inquiry, is the means by which DBR uses the act of design and development to help formulate better theories (Edelson, 2002). As noted above, multiple enactments are necessary in DBR. Hoadley (2004) highlights this:

Implementation is one of the core challenges because the design-based researcher recognizes that any findings are composed of the interaction between design and enactment, between the general and the local. Iteration and replication are not checks against dishonest researchers or chance coincidences, but rather the fundamental mechanism for exploring how local and global interact, for probing the edges of design-oriented understandings. (p.211)

The evaluation of the enactments of design contribute to the knowledge and professional development of the research team, because the process of enacting a design is a form of inquiry (Barab & Squire, 2004; Richey & Nelson, 1996; van den Akker, 1999), and this form of inquiry is both informed by theory and informs theory (Brown, 1992; Edelson, 2002; Oh & Reeves, 2010).

Reflect

Reflect, the final link in the DBR chain of inquiry, is the point at which the researchers consider the project in its entirety. This retrospective analysis provides an opportunity for researchers to reflect both on the goals of the project and on the research process itself. The researchers use the information to revise the initial instructional-design theory or design principles used to inform the research design (Gravemeijer & Cobb, 2006). In addition, the retrospective analysis usually includes:

A narrative account (which is story-like, including actors, actions, intentions) of learning and how it can be supported and organized. And, to establish generalizability, the narrative analysis places the study in a broad theoretical context to show if and how the study is a paradigmatic case of the phenomenon under investigation. (Shavelson, Phillips, Towne, & Feuer, 2003, p. 27)

References

Barab, S., & Squire, K. (2004). Design-Based Research: Putting a Stake in the Ground. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 1-14. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1301_1

Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2(2), 141-178. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls0202_2

Collins, A., Joseph, D., & Bielaczyc, K. (2004). Design Research: Theoretical and Methodological Issues. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 15-42. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1301_2

Edelson, D. C. (2002). Design research: What we learn when we engage in design. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 11(1), 105-121. doi:10.1207/S15327809JLS1101_4

Gravemeijer, K., & Cobb, P. (2006). Design research from a learning design perspective. In J. van den Akker, K. gravemeijer, S. McKenney, & N. Nieveen (Eds.), Educational design research (pp. 17-51). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Retrieved from http://www.routledge.com/

Barab, S., & Squire, K. (2004). Design-Based Research: Putting a Stake in the Ground. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 1-14. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1301_1

Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2(2), 141-178. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls0202_2

Collins, A., Joseph, D., & Bielaczyc, K. (2004). Design Research: Theoretical and Methodological Issues. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 15-42. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1301_2

Edelson, D. C. (2002). Design research: What we learn when we engage in design. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 11(1), 105-121. doi:10.1207/S15327809JLS1101_4

Gravemeijer, K., & Cobb, P. (2006). Design research from a learning design perspective. In J. van den Akker, K. gravemeijer, S. McKenney, & N. Nieveen (Eds.), Educational design research (pp. 17-51). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Retrieved from http://www.routledge.com/

Hoadley, C. (2004). Methodological alignment in design-based research. Educational Psychologist, 39(4), 203-212. doi:10.1207/s15326985ep3904_2

Oh, E., & Reeves, T. C. (2010). The implications of the differences between design research and instructional systems design for educational technology researchers and practitioners. Educational Media International, 47(4), 263-275. doi:10.1080/09523987.2010.535326

Park, H., & Zhang, Z. (2011). Using design research for studies on ICT in classrooms. Journal of Teaching and Learning, 7(2), 53-65. Retrieved from http://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/JTL

Richey, C., & Nelson, W. (1996). Development research. In D. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology (pp. 1213-1245). London: Macmillan.

Sandoval, W. A. (2004). Developing learning theory by refining conjectures embodied in educational designs. Educational Psychologist, 39(4), 213-223. doi:10.1207/s15326985ep3904_3

Shavelson, R. J., Phillips, D. C., Towne, L., & Feuer, M. J. (2003). On the science of education design studies. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 25-28. doi:10.3102/0013189X032001025

van den Akker, J. (1999). Principles and methods of development research. In J. van den Akker, R. M. Branch, K. Gustafson, N. Nieveen, & T. Plomp (Eds.), Design approaches and tools in education and training (pp. 1-14). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

 

Posted in change11, Epistemology, PhD Ponderings, Research | 3 Comments

Reflections on writing

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working diligently at writing a couple of papers for my comprehensive exams. Throughout the process of writing, I’ve been observing how I write and where I get my inspiration.

I was struck by how writing processes are similar to design processes. I found myself working through multiple iterations of conceptual frameworks, tweaking each one, until I finally came to something that I’m happy with. What is particularly interesting is that this final solution has absolutely no resemblance to the initial draft.

My initial inspiration was achieved with the help of large sheets of paper and multiple coloured markers (bright white paper and good quality markers). I found myself drawing out concepts and trying to figure out how things were interconnected. I would borrow a structure form some other scholar, but quickly determine that my thoughts didn’t align. Before I could succeed, I had to give myself permission to create my own structure. This giving myself permission was a huge leap!

Whenever I got stuck on something, I would go out for a walk or go to the gym. Inevitably, I would be struck by inspiration and found myself needing to capture my ideas. I found swyping them in my phone to be slow, such that the idea escaped before I captured it, so I ended up buying the FlexT9 voice recognition plus swype keyboard. This turned out to be my savior (a worthwhile $5 purchase that I wish I did sooner), as I could just open a note in Evernote and talk into the phone. This talking is slightly slower that making an audio recording without being too slow, which caused me to form my thoughts before saying them. When I got back to my desk, my ideas were well formed and available on my computer. I’m not sure how I survived without it!

As I worked through iterations of my paper, I was amused to find myself needing to “draw a picture” of the structure of my document, in order for the relationship between information to become clear in my head. Once I had the picture, I could then explain how the different ideas where related. In one of my papers I used the picture to explain the structure, in the other I choose to use questions to form the structure.

The other ah-ha moment I had was that I found myself in the role of “subject matter expert” (SME). As an instructional designer I often work with SMEs to help them reduce the amount of information they want to present – so that they can present only what the audience needs, and not try to explain every nuance of the subject. I found myself wanting to “enhance” the paper by adding this nuance and that nuance, thereby making it confusing and impossible to follow. I found that the paper lost its impact because I was trying to say too much (I had a 15-page double-space limit). So, alas, I had to remind myself that although I may be the SME, my paper did not need to say everything that there was to know about the topic. It is better to just focus on a few key aspects and communicate them well.

So now I’m finding myself in the final stages of putting it down for a day or two, then re-reading and revising, and limiting “enhancements” to only those that are crucial. Its been a fun and yet stressful experience, and I’ll be glad when it has been submitted, and I can move on to the next challenge!

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Days to form a habit

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

I’ve read it before in many places. The number of days isn’t the same, but the idea is – repeat a process enough times and you will form a habit.

This morning I got up and found myself at a bit of a loss. In order to read all the articles on my comprehensive exams reading list, I made reading my morning priority. Every morning, when I got up, I would make myself a cup of coffee and read two or three articles from my reading list (when I was on a roll, I might keep reading and read 5 or 6 articles). For the last six weeks, I’ve spent almost every morning reading a few articles. Yesterday, I read the last article on the list. This morning, I got up and didn’t know what to do with myself.  I found myself looking for an article or two to read in order to prepare a PowerPoint presentation that I’ll be giving at the end of April. It was while reading the article that it occurred to me, I had formed a habit of reading an article or two or three first thing in the morning while I enjoyed my morning coffee.

Since this habit is actually a good one for my academic career, I’m going to try to continue it. It means that I need to find myself a list of articles that I want to read – perhaps I’ll create a folder, and every morning I’ll enjoy my cup of coffee with an article or two or three.

I wish I’d found this habit a little earlier in my academic career!

Posted in PhD Ponderings, Research | 2 Comments

Design-Based Research and Instructional Design

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

In looking at design-based research (DBR), I struggled with the different between research and practice and wondered where my research fits in. One big difference is in the need to inform all the design decisions with research, another is in the detailed documentation of the enactment of the design, and the evaluation of the enactment.

In practice, design decisions are usually informed by personal experience – good designers have a “gut” feel for how information should be organized. Average designers are good at following patterns set out by other designers or design by following clearly document processes like instructional system design. But where do these processes come from? How are they determined? This is where design-based research plays a role.

In my struggle to make the leap between instructional design and design-based research, I found myself asking: “what is design?” Design is a process. A design is a conceptual pattern. So, how do we capture our designs? In instructional design, we capture our design in the form a document called an instructional design document. There is no specific standard for this document, but similar to architectural blueprints, it does involve a special language that is standard within the community of instructional designers.

Once an educational intervention has been designed, the next step is instructional development. This is where enactment of the design begins. This can also be called the beginning of an instantiation of the design – that is the instructional developer creates a specific instance of the design. An instructional developer uses the instructional design document to create artefacts that support the educational intervention, usually with the specific context of the instruction in mind. These artefacts may be things like slide for the instructor, training manuals for the learners, or any other props the instructor needs to deliver the educational intervention. The instructional developer must make many decisions about the design in order to build the artefacts – this means it is an activity that forms the basis of inquiry. As a design-based researcher, I’m interested in what decisions the instructional developer made, why the instructional developers made the decisions they did, and the impact on the conceptual design.

The next step in enacting the design is the actual delivery of the educational intervention. In a classroom setting, this is when the teacher presents the lesson. Again, there are many decisions that must be made by the teacher, and these take into account the specific context of the particular class.  As a design-based researcher, I’m again interested in what decisions the teacher made, why the teachers made the decisions they did, and the impact on the conceptual design.

The final step in enacting the design is the evaluation. This is the phase that most educational interventions focus on – did student learning occur? Did the enactment meet the learning objectives specified in the design? But from a design-based research perspective, I’m also interested in the experience of the instructional developer and the teacher.  The evaluation of student learning is important, but it is not the sole focus of the evaluation process. I need to review the entire process and ask: does it work? Is it efficient, effective, and fun? How can it be improved? With this information, I then adjust the design and repeat the enactment process. Not until I have completed several successful instances of the design enactment, am I finished the enactment phase.

Once I finish the enactment phase, I go to the final phase of the design-based research process, theory building also known as reflection. This is where I look at the project in its entirety. I review the successful parts of the design and provide those to practitioners in the form of instructional design theory or design principles.

As an instructional design practitioner, I ask many less questions, and my involvement more often than not ends before the actual evaluation of my designs. I rarely see the enactment of my designs more than once. As a design-based researcher, I get to learn so much more about how people use my designs, and how the designs them selves work. It’s exciting!

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Comprehensive exams and qualitative research

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

As many of you are aware, my comprehensive exams are fast approaching. I’ve talked to several others about their exams and have learned that the process is very institution and faculty dependent. Given the horror stories I’ve heard about others, I’m glad that our comprehensive exams are actually useful. They are one more element in the supporting structure to help us be successful in completing our PhDs.

In our faculty, the comprehensive exams involve writing two 15-page papers in the span of 20-business days (4-weeks).  We are given three questions (one mandatory and a choice between the other two), which form the topics of our papers. The questions are determined by a small committee (your thesis supervisor and two others) and are approved by the graduate office (to ensure quality across the program). The questions are directly related to the students expected research topics (the student provides the committee with the general topics for the questions and a reading list that helps the committee determine questions).

In addition to answering the questions, students are encouraged to “take a stance” and use the papers as an opportunity to express their personal opinions and back them up with appropriate quotes and citations. Finally, if the written papers are accepted, the students then must successful complete an oral defense of the papers.

So, in the end, the student ends up writing two papers that should directly contribute to their proposals, and they get a practice run at an oral defense. At least that is how it works in principle, I can’t yet comment on how it actually works!

In preparation I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Not just reading, but reading, annotating, reflecting, and capturing my notes (quotes and key points) into massive Word documents. The act of transcribing reflections and margin notes helps the ideas solidify in my brain, and provides me with another opportunity to reflect on the key content.

Having finished one of my reading lists, it occurred to me that I needed to go through notes to discover the key themes. This in-turn had me realize the similarity of this process to qualitative research. I realized that this process, and especially the emphasis on expressing a personal stance, favours the students who do qualitative research. I can now see that many of the students in my cohort who are worried or are struggling are those that are not accustomed to there opinion counting. The weight of the experience of the researcher themselves is something that is taken as important in qualitative research, but is seen as not objective in quantitative research. So I see the struggles.

In making the leap that this process is really a mini qualitative research project, I find myself wondering if qualitative research software such as NVivo or HyperResearch would help with my analysis? I have no idea if these will be at all valuable, since I’ve not used qualitative research software before, but I figure I might as well give it a try. I’ll let you know what I discover!

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Re-defining myself

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

Today’s “ah-ha” moment isn’t about my academic learning so much as it is a learning about myself.

At dinner last night, I was chatting with my husband about the current iteration of my thesis idea. I’m developing various components to a program that supports iPad adoption among higher education instructors. In talking about the various components, I often wonder why no one else has thought about the ideas that I have. They seem so simple to me, so why hasn’t someone else done it?

I’ve spend the last three weeks delving deeply into the literature on technology adoption and faculty development. Reading the literature feeds my understanding, giving it more depth, and helping to explain why some of the things others do don’t work, but the core idea doesn’t come out of the literature, it comes from someplace deep inside of me.

I mentioned to my husband that I had a real intuition for this work (technology adoption that is). It was then that my husband pointed out, that I should by now, I’ve been doing it for 20-years! It was this comment that sparked a real “ah-ha” moment for me. He was right of course. In my early career at Nortel, I quickly became known for giving product demonstrations and as someone who could make the network work and describe it to anyone. I worked with customers, helping them understand what they needed to do to integrate our product into their networks. We called it “new product introduction”, but in academia, the same concept is technology adoption.

After Nortel, I re-established my identity as an instructional designer. In that capacity, I designed and developed training programs on pretty much any topic, but I always found that I was drawn to the technology projects. I’ve done several projects in other areas (mostly medical education), but I was never quite as satisfied with doing that work. On the other hand, ask me to write training on a new technology (or even an old technology), and I’m happy to explore how to use it, and build something that will help others use it too. I always excelled at (and had a passion for) writing training material for new technologies.

In making the career change to instructional design, I always felt that it wasn’t quite enough. The training program is only a piece of the puzzle. Technology adoption is much more complex than just learning how the product works in context – you also need to figure out the additional complexities around organizational influences that play a role in adoption. A successful adoption program involves a lot more that just building an awesome training course (although that is an important piece of the puzzle).

I knew that the PhD process was going to re-establish my identity (from instructional designer to university professor/researcher), but I didn’t expect this transition. As of today, I shall now identify myself as a technology adoption catalyst and instructional designer – with the technology adoption catalyst as the primary descriptor of what I do. I work with organizations to help them adopt new technologies.

Time to go out and design some new business cards!

Posted in PhD Ponderings | 2 Comments

Misappropriation and mixed-methods research

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Rebecca - @rjhogue

The other night I was reminded of the idea of cultural misappropriation – as a Unitarian Universalist (a faith that draws upon all world religions), we are particularly aware of the issue of cultural misappropriation, that is, using the symbols or practices of other faiths in a context that does not respect the spirit of the faith it is being taken from.

So, what does that have to do with research?  I see a parallel between Unitarian Universalism and mixed-methods research, and the concerns of cultural misappropriation align with concerns of researchers who are firmly positioned in a non-pragmatic paradigm.

Now, I should also make a note on the philosophical difference between mixed-methods, constructivist (qualitative) and post-positivist (quantitative) research paradigms. They each have fundamentally different purposes. Mixed-methods researchers seek to find solutions to real-world problems – they focus on “what works”. Constructivists seek to better understand the world, through close examination using various lenses (e.g. feminist, critical theories), and post-positivists seek to find generalizable “truths”. The fundamentals goals of each of these research paradigms is different, and therefore, the ways in which information is collected and analyzed is fundamentally different.

In Unitarian Universalism, we draw upon all world religions with a goal of finding our own personal truth. We may pick-and-choose the readings and practices of other faiths (in a respectful manner) in order to figure out “what works” for our own personal journey. In mixed-methods research, we seek to find “what works” in designing our research to answer our research question. In doing this, we pick-and-choose data collection and analysis methods to suit the specific needs of our specific research project.

A person practicing a specific religious faith may argue that the Unitarian Universalist is missing the essence of the reading or practice because they are just picking-and-choosing aspects of it, and not taking the entire faith practice in context. A researcher that firmly believes in only qualitative or quantitative methods, could argue that mixed-methods researchers pick-and-choose only aspects of the data collection and analysis methods, and therefore, are weakening the research by not using the methodologies in the manner in which they were intended.

So what can a mixed-methods researcher learn from Unitarian Universalism? It is given that mixed-methods researchers need to understand why they are using the methods they are. In order to avoid misappropriation of research methods, what they also need to understand (and articulate) is the limitations of the methods within the specific mixed-methods context – that is, what are you losing by taking the methods out of their original context.

Posted in Epistemology, PhD Ponderings, Research | 1 Comment