day 3

Pacing, scope and sequencing are critical parts of instructional design and teaching. I felt a bit off on all three last night - tried to cover too much, too quickly, and not necessarily in the right order! Thanks, everyone, for hanging in there and being patient. 

Last night was the only night for data collection, though we could easily spend 2 or 3 full days on the topic. I emphasized that not only do we have new Internet tools for traditional methods of data collection (e.g. online interviewing), but we have the Internet itself a site for research. I had wanted to cover 1) Mendeley Q&A; 2) discussion of the readings around tools; 3) demonstration of DiscoverText as a transition to the idea that the Internet itself is presenting a new context for data collection; 4) discussion of the readings around online community & the ethical dilemmas presented by the Internet as a site for data collection. Well, we got through 3 of these anyway.

Mary Alice did an awesome job sharing some of her Mendeley tips and answering some recurring questions. The .pdf annotation feature isn't working consistently and is causing concern. We talked about how the tradeoff with free, open source, new software tools is that they are free, new and open source. That is, proprietary software tends to work better because you are paying for it - lots of work has gone into developing it to the point where the glitches are worked out. Working with glitchy software can be really frustrating for researchers, especially novice ones. Heck, I wouldn't even use this stuff before tenure - the learning curve wasn't worth it. Others who have more skill and patience and inherent enthusiasm for the tools will adopt it earlier. I loved Mary Alice's idea for setting up the watch folder in the drop box, and I hadn't known about the ability to export the .pdfs with the annotations or the importance of the DOIs in the new APA manual. 


After that we spent a bit of time on technology jargon and I demonstrated gmail chat (including the new audio/video feature) and Skype with Ginny's help. None of this seemed to be terribly new to most folks, but I knew from the questionnaires I sent out that a few people had never used it before. I need to check in to how to record Skype conversations since that will be key to using the tool for data collection or collaboration.


The first round of discussion could have gone on much longer and I did feel bad cutting it off, though I think the whole group debrief did cover the essential concepts - especially that we can't avoid looking at CMC as part of our data collection when seeking to understand human interaction. I would really like to make this point in our book, too. Twitter and virtual worlds were raised as sites for data collection, too. The discussion of trade-offs around choosing tools for data collection is a critical one, and we framed it as how to make a case that you are choosing the method that is most appropriate for your study (rather than a convenience argument which is unlikely to fly with an audience.)


And then, we moved to DiscoverText. Teaching the tools themselves has been the most stressful part of this class, in part because I am learning them myself, in part because no good technology training has one instructor for 14 students. I do wish I had the time to put together extensive training materials - but they would soon be out of date and it takes days to put together good instructional materials for one tool, let alone the number I'm trying to introduce in this class. At minimum I should have an assistant who can go around and troubleshoot while I demonstrate. I do need to keep encouraging the students to help each other out and take the time to help each other troubleshoot, which they have been great about doing. (Thanks, everyone!)


I was completely out of steam by 9 pm and was mentally adjusting the schedule while closing the class. We didn't have a very energetic closing discussion or debrief of the tool, so I'll have to revisit its possible uses on Wednesday. I heard a few people sharing ideas about what they could use it for, so that's cool. 


I wish I could finish out the second discussion I had planned for today, but there won't be time, so I'll just have to let it go and let us move on..not easy for me...!