1st broad search

After having difficulty determining a specific question for my Lit. Review, or way in which to address that question, I decided to tackle the key words in a modified form of my question. I set-out to search the ERIC ProQuest Databases (32) for combinations of theses key words. I chose to use combination of the words because if I used them individually I knew I was going to get information that might not be of interest for this work. I organized the results into the RefWorks Web Based Bibliographic Management Software and created folders specific for the key-word searches.

8 folders were created with combinations of the key-words (2 and 3): biology, online, concept integration (also used as a synonym for independent searches, intradisciplinary integration), gamification, and community college.

I read through the titles and general descriptors, as the database produced the results and picked the articles that seemed to address the topics of interest within the search. I kept in mind the actual search, not the Lit. Review; I wanted to see these key-words working together, therefore producing a larger result to work with and will be followed by a larger filtering in the next step. After producing all the results, I search for duplications of results and eliminated them.

Interestingly, some of the articles that I eliminated were not just duplications, but triplications. Therefore, they appeared in multiple of the searches of word combinations. This to me is an indication that I am hitting the relevant articles within my searches. Also, based on my professors and peer's feedback, I pulled back on the initial key-words I wanted to use making them more broad - community college vs minorities. As I skimmed through the resulting articles, many of the topics I did not address were part of the results; when searching for community colleges, many of the articles directly addressed the topic of minorities. Also, while I did not search for "web 2.0 tools", when using "online" as part of the query, these tools were a result of the search in a similar way than minorities. Consequently, the only word in my initial interest that did not surface as part of the results was "gamification" and thus, it also became a key-word.

The final tally of articles was 317 articles, organized into the 8 folders. I will now begin 2nd filtering step, skimming searches and eliminating duplications was 1st; reading the abstracts of the articles within the folders and eliminating those that are not relevant. I will use a wide discrimination range in order to keep as many articles as possible. If they are not relevant, they will be eliminated at later stages of the process - I just do not want to be as discriminatory at this stage. Also, I will keep a list of emerging topic and themes - still debating if to do it as part of the abstract reading or doing it after, as a summary step.

Lit. Review on Faculty Participate of Online Ed.

Today I'm keeping up with my reading - I will do more, but I wanted to start logging and summarizing my notes while they were fresh. I worked on the article by Loréal Maguire (2005) Faculty Participation in Online Distance Education: Barriers and Motivators.

The work by the author set-out to examine the view of faculty in higher education towards teaching through distance education. At the beginning it provides multiple definitions of what online learning is, but settles as based on asynchronous teaching and learning, web-based and online format.

Some of the benefits it presents for both faculty and students are:

• Interaction between faculty and students increases
• Reaching larger number of learner
• Increased diversification and globalization
• Meeting needs of non-traditional students
• New stream of students without on-campus facilities

The review was limited to published work within the last 10 years of publication (1995-2005), and used both qualitative and quantitative data for the work.

Some of the recorded information showed that intrinsic motivators for faculty are stronger than extrinsic and that faculty members, would like to showcase what others have done using and applying (implementing) technology. Faculty also describe befits such as:

• Lead to development of new ideas and diversification of programs
• Helps meeting needs of students, increasing student access

Inhibitors are mostly extrinsic. These factors include resistance to change and intimidation by technology. Job security is mostly the source of the intimidation by the technology, as well as what courses should be taught online. Extrinsic inhibitors include:

• Perceived lower quality in courses
• Concerns with misinformation
• Online is not appropriate for traditional students, leading to a decrease in student interaction
• Copyright and intellectual property
• Workload; time used in development is time taken from research
• Lack of recognition, mostly towards tenure and promotion
• Merit pay or stipends for development, or teaching online
• Lack of tech-support

The author continues to conclude that the literature does not consider cultural or contextual influences in higher education for distance education. Finally it concludes with potential questions for further research on the field.

Personal Note: Interestingly, while the article is 10 years form current date (2015) some of the topics and themes are still prevalent in the faculty discourse. Something not mentioned in the summary, but discussed in the article is the participation of the administrators. The review found some of the perceptions of administrators and in some cases it agreed with opinions from the faculty, while in others - specifically intrinsic in nature - it disagreed.

1st run... In a while

I guess that the original purpose of this blog was to journal my work in education, but i guess the title is journal - after all. 

Yesterday i did my 1st run after a month and a half of not doing anything, because i was getting massive pain in my shins. So, after getting new shoes on Monday, yesterday i went out again. 

The first time i went out... Well, the last first time... I was using the Couch to 5K app and i have to say it was great. This time around i am not using it because i think i can do more and starting where the Couch to 5K would start me would out me back and that will lead to not wanting to do - i know me. So i decided that i would do a walk to warm-up and run (lightly) until i hit the 1mi mark; take a 5min walk and then run again up to 2mi. 

That 2mi mark has always been my goal. I cannot run 2mi non stop, i've never been able to. So, yesterday i did my walk with the run to 1mi (survived), did the 5min walk and ran... Up to 1.5mi and that was it. 

I'll go at it again today, although i'm sore... I want to get to those 2mi with the walk break and then start lowering the break each run to get to a sustained 2mi run - that is the current goal. 

I'll keep updating!

On the focus of the Literature Review

Disclaimer: I am writing this from bed before i go to sleep and i do not remember the authors or the articles i am talking about - remember, this was meant to be a journal. I am debating if i will come back to and fix the authors, but that would take away from the integrity - although, this is supposed to be a journal and i should keep the information accurate... Decisions... Decisions...

Today i read two articles that presented general views on what a Literature Review should be. While i could say that they both had a general consensus - one focused on the Lit. Review being a comprehensive document, while the other focused on relevance. 

One could argue that relevance is an important factor and that both articles discussed it - but the reality is that the article that focused on relevance was more interested on how did the Lit. Review inform the work, rather than the community. This article presented the idea that there should be an emphasis, when developing the Lit. Review, that focused on preparation for the study and to "gain ideas" on what to do. Additionally, in contrast with the perspective of serving as foundation in which the work is started from and grown, it proposed that it really is a foundation as a guide. 

While i have not written a dissertation, i believe Lit. Reviews are essential components of any work. A properly written review, serves as both foundation in which other studies are built upon and as a source of ideas. How will you know what not to do, if you don't know what was done? As i told my students once, you can always be overdressed and fix it, but you cannot fix underdressed. You can edit information out of the Lit. Review if it does not support the hypothesis or the idea being presented. But it is imperative that the work that serves as scaffolding for future research, should be addressed. 

Maybe is my natural science background kicking in... But to me, reviews both in the literature as articles and as part of dissertations, gather what is know and place the reader (and the author is the first reader), in the right frame of mind to understand where the arguments will go and why are they being done in the first place. 

Digital Natives, Immigrants & Divide

The following is a post for a course...

The work presented by Prensky (2001) discusses the influence of the digital experience for students and makes a marked difference between those that grew-up digital (digital natives) and those that did not (digital immigrants). Throughout his work, the disparities between the two populations are described and there is an emphasis on the impact that technology and the digital era has had on those that have experienced it during their lives. Prensky (2001) focuses on these postures to validate a need to revise and therefore, change the current approach to education in order to satisfy the needs and interests of the new consumer of information.

In the article, Prensky (2001) mentions that “In math, for example, the debate must no longer be about whether to use calculators and computers – they are part of the Digital Natives’ world – but rather how to use them to instill the things that are useful to have internalized, from key skills and concepts to the multiplication tables.” (p. 5). This statement presents the core of the work. It presents the technology and how its access has become ubiquitous to the population, in addition to the need of implementing rather than combating technology. The importance of the availability of technology should not be ignored; by incorporating these innovations into the learning process, the students will be able to move forward from the current practice and develop new thought and practices form the standard. If students were to be taught using the technology or methods presented in previous generations, their work would be double as there will be a disparity between what they are experiencing in the educational environment and what the society will be expecting of them – it is moving back, to move forward.

To supplement the work in Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, I chose the work by Smith (2012) to update the argument presented by Prensky in the form of a review in the topic and how it impacts higher education in Canada. The author presents a comprehensive trajectory of the influence and support of the digital natives concept. It describes predecessors to Presnky’s work such as Tapscott in 1998 and Frand in 2000, in addition to successors such as Oblinger in 2003. Together, the body of work describes the proposed characteristics of the digital natives such as, innately tech-savvy, multi-taskers, speakers of the language of technology, gamers, and requiring instant gratification. Additionally, Smith (2012) presents the impact these characterizations have had in the educational discourse, specifically relating to educational technology; and the criticisms associated to the concepts of natives and immigrants, in addition to the digital divide. The work concludes by discussing the particular impact of the characterization in Canadian populations and concluding that the topic needs to be expanded beyond the current debate.

As evidence of the criticism Brown & Czerniewicz (2010) aim to explore the digital characterization on students in South Africa, and describe implications associated with this divide. Their work focuses on the failure of the characterization of the two groups, stating that the matter is not as simple as creating polar opposites but rather that there is a potential continuum within the generations (Brown & Czerniewicz, 2010). The characteristics such as the term “native” is confronted because of connotation in South African society associated with something native as something primitive. Additionally, it furthers the criticism by describing South African students belonging to the millennial generation, a supposed digital native representatives, that have not been exposed to the technology and do not share the characteristics of fellow millennial from other societies. Altogether, Brown & Czerniewicz (2010) describe the existence of a “digital elite” and propose the democratization of digital access. While the work presented does present the realities of the participants, the study focuses primarily on one of their designated phases. The study was ongoing for 6-years and most of the data presented in the article focused on a particular portion of the data. Because of the use of only that particular phase in the study, the last portion that comprised the largest pool or participants was not expanded.

The work presented by Brown & Czerniewicz (2010) and Smith (2012), further the conversation about the digital natives and immigrant. Both pose the existence of a continuum rather than a dichotomy as it relates to students and the impact of the digital era. While Prensky (2001) lit a fire, it is important to consider the reality and impact that technology has had on students and society. While there needs to be a bridge between the way students communicate and consume information, and the way this information is accessible to them; there is also a need to understand the expectations of instructor, student and ultimately society. To echo Prensky’s work, we need to understand how to implement the technology rather than change instruction for the sake of changing it. We need to bridge the gap, not jump the divide. In my experience, students pose a barrier when asked to use tools such as social media or use tools outside their comfort. Students need to understand how to use the available technology for purposes outside their own constructs and to learn how to implement them for other purposes. Likewise, the accessibility, familiarity and proficiency with the technology needs to be assessed rather than implied based on membership to a particular generation (Brown & Czerniewicz, 2010; Smith, 2012). This will indeed lead to the change proclaimed by Prensky (2001) rather than set generations opposed to each other or exclude members of society from the change.

Reference:

Brown, C., & Czerniewicz, L. (2010). Debunking the “digital native”: Beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 357–369. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00369.x

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–6. Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky - Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants - Part1.pdf

Smith, E. (2012). The Digital Native Debate in Higher Education: A Comparative Analysis of Recent Literature. Cjlt/Rcat, 38, 1–14.