CBR-Month 5
AR/CBR Reflection Blog Entry
1.What are you doing to plan your data cycles (i.e., phases) to evaluate the success of your AR/CBR project?
Currently I am planning my data cycles by reestablishing contact with the V.P. of my CBR school and formally introducing the CBR. My purpose is to outline CBR objectives for the staff and I, as well as to gain his support and permission to access as much of the school, staff, and older students as possible to research.
I am not sure if this is too soon but I wanted to start sending out my surveys to the staffing team for the schools. I want to send the surveys to all the students but select from them the study group required from my CBR. This could give me an ample opportunity to do my research. And perhaps afford me an opportunity to see what time restrictions I would be working with (I.E. FCAT, holidays, district mandated trainings, etc)
2.What kinds of data are you planning to collect and analyze to show that your AR project is effecting changes and growth for yourself, your intended target audience, and your AR/CBR project setting: Quantitative (e.g., Surveys or Self-Report instruments), Qualitative (e.g., field notes, personal logs, record sheets, interviews, video taping, audio recordings)? How will you measure and report the results of these data once collected? Please answer both of these related questions thoroughly.
I am planning to collect the data from my CBR by a series of videotaped interviews occurring at the beginning middle and end of the training. These interactions with the professional seek to assess the initial feelings and observations about professional development pre training, their feeling about PD during actual training and their assessments afterward. Prior to the first interview the trainers will have received an online survey to gain initial insight as to where their thoughts and experiences are regarding professional development
I have recently though of the possibility of interviewing the Supervisor of Technology to gain his insights into the current state of professional development in the school, The concept of interviewing the V.P came to mind but this is still a brainstorming piece because I am not sure if his insights would be useful or not for the data collection process.
3.How is your Action Research textbook assisting you with your AR/CBR evaluation or data collection processes? I strongly recommend you read parts III and IV of your McNiff & Whitehead textbook if you have not. These sections succinctly explain the designing and doing components of completing a quality AR/CBR project? At present, I have not spent very much time critically plotting out my CBR Data collection processes according to my textbook. I do plan to look into it to find out if the strategy I am currently planning is refined enough to be successful. Making sure that I have enough data vs. making the CBR process time sensitive to my students are the balancing act that I feel like I will have to do to make sure that I accomplish what I need to for my work and their PD.
I am very concerned to how much data and in what format it is gathered is sufficient. Also the concern that I have as I am pondering this is whether or not there will be some reluctance from my students to agree to the level of interviewing/data collection that is important to my research because of the possible time that may be required
4.What learning objectives do you hope your AR/CBR Challenge will address? Brainstorm ways to introduce your AR/CBR challenge to your target audience. How do you plan to capture their attention and make them part of the solution?
I seek to inspire the staffing team at my CBR school to more effectively use a deep well of technology already existing in their school environment and my CBR Challenge seeks to uncover inexpensive practical ways to do this. The Drop Back In Academy DBI has 51% of their curriculum on a computer system requiring Internet access. Since the students already require the internet for their studies and are on the system at least half their day, I would like to find out what the teacher want and need to supplement for their environment and try to find some technological supplements using the iGoogle platform and at least 1 Web 2.0 technology. I want to find out what my teachers do with their student population based on the requirements of the curriculum and the state standards and show them ways in which they can incorporate more technology into them.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
2 Comments
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Thursday, December 16, 2010 – 12:19 PM
Try to align your district standards with your CBR project. Your qualitative data will be vital to your project. Begin with the end in mind. Reflect on how your learning outcomes will the project’s processes and successes with your learners. Try to get your students involved in the planning and assessment processes as much as possible at the beginning stages of your CBR project. Be flexible and allow your learners’ to guide “The Challenge”. Create a learning community in which both you and your learners guide your CBR project. Use technology as a way to extend human creative performance. Always ask yourself, “What can I do with technology that I cannot do without it? At the moment, you are not explaining how your data will be analyzed. You are reporting your data collection methods, but not your data analysis methods. You need to consider your data analysis methods and data reporting plans for evaluating your CBR project. What is you metric of analysis on your surveys? means, median, modes, sums, percentages, or what? How will you analyze the interview data? Constant comparison method or other? How will these data be aggregated and reported?
Tuesday, January 4, 2011 – 01:57 PM
