A book I was given for Christmas titled Changing Times: Work and Leisure in Postindustrial Society has inspired me to get on with preparing the diary instrument for recording how students spend their time. The book by Jonathan Gershuny is an excellent introduction to the issues of societal change and whilst it does not focus especially on students but on the wider population it has some very good sections on the use of time-diaries (and their problems) for collecting data.
As a result I spent the last three days building the diary form. This is actually an Excel spreadsheet which allows the student to enter up to three codes to describe their broad activity in each hour of the day. As I am less interested in the detail of what they do I am only using ten codes. Three of these cover different aspects of distance study - physical study time, online study time and time caught up in administration. One is for rest covering time asleep, two cover time spent at work and travelling (essentially commuting) and the last four cover home related activities such as domestic duties, social and leisure activities and time spent on the Internet shopping, banking and so on.
I am also asking students to record the time they spend on different aspects of the five learning activities they are scheduled to complete during the recording week. Clearly this is likely to be a best estimate unless anyone is keeping a stopwatch by their side but should provide data on the time they spend reading, reflecting, taking quizzes, posting and reading messages etc.
As well as setting up the student spreadsheet (together with instructions and guidance) I've also created the import file to analyse the base data once it is exported. This will give a clear picture of how an individual student uses their time across the week and will provide an at-a-glance view that should make initial comparison easier.
All in all it's been a good few days work to end 2007. I wish everyone well for 2008.
Sunday 30 December 2007
Wednesday 26 December 2007
Happy Christmas in the post industrial society!
I'm probably a bit sad but I find that the days before, during and after Christmas are a good time to take stock. Earlier this month I was reflecting on the title for this research. I included 'post-industrial' in the title to reflect the step change in the way distance education has moved in the last 10-15 years. Otto Peters is acknowledged as one of the Gurus of distance education theory and in the early 1980s he published a comparison of distance teaching with industrial production. As an engineer by background I found this particularly interesting and could see much of what he described in the way my College was set up. It could clearly be seen to organise its work around the needs of a correspondence style design and delivery. This was afterall its original approach but one that has not changed dramatically in the 19 years I have worked there.
Essentially only the technology used has altered whereas the pedagogy remains virtually the same. This has been in contrast with the expansion of information and communications technology which has forced change in the way in which distance learning is designed and delivered. Peters recognised this in the early 1990s and wrote that ‘in a post-industrial society the traditional industrial model of distance teaching will no longer satisfy the new needs of new types of students with their particular expectations and values which, seemingly, not only differ from those of the students in the industrial society but are in many cases even the exact opposites of them.’
It was this interpretation of post-industrial to which my title alluded. Doing further digging around in the last 3 weeks I have become more aware of how many different interpretations exist for post-industrial society. These include variations on post-modern society, information society, knowledge society and more. It may come as little surprise that my Christmas presents from my family have included several books examining these different meanings which I am reading through in between mince pies, turkey and the rest of the festive events!!
I hope that your Christmas has been peaceful and that 2008 is a good one for you what ever you do.
Essentially only the technology used has altered whereas the pedagogy remains virtually the same. This has been in contrast with the expansion of information and communications technology which has forced change in the way in which distance learning is designed and delivered. Peters recognised this in the early 1990s and wrote that ‘in a post-industrial society the traditional industrial model of distance teaching will no longer satisfy the new needs of new types of students with their particular expectations and values which, seemingly, not only differ from those of the students in the industrial society but are in many cases even the exact opposites of them.’
It was this interpretation of post-industrial to which my title alluded. Doing further digging around in the last 3 weeks I have become more aware of how many different interpretations exist for post-industrial society. These include variations on post-modern society, information society, knowledge society and more. It may come as little surprise that my Christmas presents from my family have included several books examining these different meanings which I am reading through in between mince pies, turkey and the rest of the festive events!!
I hope that your Christmas has been peaceful and that 2008 is a good one for you what ever you do.
Ethics Clearance
Just before Christmas I received the good news from my supervisor that my proposal has been cleared at the ethics review and this will now be reported to the ethics committee at IOE. This is a great relief as it means that I can go ahead with my data collection next month without worrying about getting retrospective approval. There are a couple of things to check in the letter to students but nothing too problematic.
The proposal still has to go through the formal review within the School but this may be delayed as finding a time when 4 of us are available may be tricky. That said I look forward to the discussion , hopefully later in January.
The proposal still has to go through the formal review within the School but this may be delayed as finding a time when 4 of us are available may be tricky. That said I look forward to the discussion , hopefully later in January.
The Intended Research Stages
The design for the research follows four distinct stages.
Stage 1: Pre-course questionnaire
All students commencing the first year of a postgraduate conversion course will be asked to complete a questionnaire. This will provide background details about individual students and a profile of the group as a whole. The information collected will provide variables for correlation with diary results and will enable adaptation and/or verification of Juler’s interactional network. Students will be encouraged to complete it as soon as they receive an introductory letter explaining the research with their study materials. The questionnaire responses will be reported in Excel and the variables and data will be entered into SPSS for analysis.
Stage 2: Module diary
All students taking the Information Management and Control module will be required to keep a 24 hour diary for a 7 day period. Additionally they will be asked to record the time that they spend on specific learning activities scheduled to be studied during the recording week. Keeping the diary and recording their time for activities will be an explicit learning activity within the module. Students will be required to submit their diary with their second assignment at the end of the module. The students will be provided with an Excel spreadsheet to complete. They will be provided with instructions in how to interpret and enter their time for a limited range of pre-determined daily activities. For assessment purposes students will be required to provide an analysis of their diary and to present the data in an appropriate manner.
The spreadsheets will be collected electronically and data retrieval used to strip out individual results into a summary spreadsheet. The results will then form variables to be entered into SPSS for comparison with the pre-course data so providing conclusions on student’s use of time and weekly commitment. The results for the scheduled activities will be compared with the estimated times to assess the validity of the rules-of-thumb used. Analysis of the diaries will also provide insight into student’s online time and provide evidence of how much time is appropriate for such learning.
Stage 3: Post-module questionnaire
All students taking the module will be asked to complete a short questionnaire on completion of the module. This will establish both their feelings about their use of time and give opportunity for any specific problems encountered to be identified. It will identify the level of usage made of the different resources during the module study period. Combined with other source information (see below) it will provide conclusions about the effectiveness of the activities and the time student’s devote to these. As with the pre-course questionnaire it will be administered online and the variables and data entered into SPSS.
The data collected through these three stages will be supplemented / verified by secondary data taken from College sources. These include:
Blackboard statistics – detailing access to different areas and discussion boards within the virtual learning environment. This provides a means for validating the accuracy of the student diaries.
Forum participation – detailing the messages posted by individual students and enabling rating of the quality of student engagement with the online activities. Results from this will additionally verify diary entries and enable validation of the assignment mark (including the mark for participation). The level of participation will also assist in validating student’s perceived learning as expressed in the post-module questionnaire.
Assignment feedback and mark – detailing the tutor’s view of the student’s performance in completing the assignment. This provides an independent verification of the effectiveness of the student’s learning through the activities completed.
Module mark – details the overall performance of the student and enables testing of the results from the post-module questionnaire.
Stage 4: Case studies
A sample of 50 students will be tracked over the succeeding three modules to establish how their circumstances and performance may change as they progress further with their studies. This final stage will enable validation of the results for the focus module. Each student will be asked to complete post-module questionnaires as they finish the modules. The extension of the research to cover these modules enables differences in subject to be considered for possible affect on the use of time. Students will not be required to complete a post-module questionnaire for their fourth module. Instead short interviews will be conducted by phone with each of the sample members to obtain overall views and to verify findings.
Thursday 20 December 2007
Submitting the Proposal
My ideas for my thesis crystallised over the sumer and autumn. In early November I attended the teaching week at IOE and talked through the outline proposal again with my supervisor. He agreed that it was viable and that it now needed to be formally submitted so that it could receive ethics clearance and approval from the research committee.
As I will explain my data collection is linked to a module running in February / March and requires a pre-course questionnaire to be issued in January. This placed an urgent time constraint (appropriate for this project!) and I spent 5 days working up the outline into a full proposal, complete with draft questionnaires, diary sheets and letters.
In order to complete the ethics statement I needed to demonstrate that the proposal had been scrutinised within the College as the data will focus on its students. I was also very keen to avoid problems resulting from lack of support within the College. Therefore before sending it through to IOE I submitted the draft to the College's Principal for her approval. This was especially beneficial as she has recently completed a PhD so understands the implications of research in the professional context. She made a number of suggestions for improvement in the draft. Following a detailed discussion the Principal gave her support for the research and forwarded a copy of the draft to the Chair of the College's Education and Research committee to keep the Trustees informed.
The thesis proposal was sent in on Wednesday 21st November. The following provides a brief summary:
Research Title:
Time and distance study in the post-industrial society
Research Aim:
To investigate the influence of work-life events on study time.
- The research will be conducted within the context of contemporary societal and workplace demands.
- The focus will be internationally dispersed vocational distance learning students studying with The College of Estate Management.
Research Objectives:
1. To examine Juler’s interactional network and verify its composition and structure within a 21st century international context;
2. To determine whether a relationship exists between the domains within a student’s life circumstances and the time they give to their studies;
3. To identify whether a boundary for the optimum weekly study time can be established;
4. To establish the viability of rule-of-thumb measures for quantifying study;
5. To establish whether different student age groups give time to online study activities differently.
Intended Outcome:
To offer conclusions as to whether study feasibility, as proposed within the Framework For Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area, can reasonably be evaluated.
As I will explain my data collection is linked to a module running in February / March and requires a pre-course questionnaire to be issued in January. This placed an urgent time constraint (appropriate for this project!) and I spent 5 days working up the outline into a full proposal, complete with draft questionnaires, diary sheets and letters.
In order to complete the ethics statement I needed to demonstrate that the proposal had been scrutinised within the College as the data will focus on its students. I was also very keen to avoid problems resulting from lack of support within the College. Therefore before sending it through to IOE I submitted the draft to the College's Principal for her approval. This was especially beneficial as she has recently completed a PhD so understands the implications of research in the professional context. She made a number of suggestions for improvement in the draft. Following a detailed discussion the Principal gave her support for the research and forwarded a copy of the draft to the Chair of the College's Education and Research committee to keep the Trustees informed.
The thesis proposal was sent in on Wednesday 21st November. The following provides a brief summary:
Research Title:
Time and distance study in the post-industrial society
Research Aim:
To investigate the influence of work-life events on study time.
- The research will be conducted within the context of contemporary societal and workplace demands.
- The focus will be internationally dispersed vocational distance learning students studying with The College of Estate Management.
Research Objectives:
1. To examine Juler’s interactional network and verify its composition and structure within a 21st century international context;
2. To determine whether a relationship exists between the domains within a student’s life circumstances and the time they give to their studies;
3. To identify whether a boundary for the optimum weekly study time can be established;
4. To establish the viability of rule-of-thumb measures for quantifying study;
5. To establish whether different student age groups give time to online study activities differently.
Intended Outcome:
To offer conclusions as to whether study feasibility, as proposed within the Framework For Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area, can reasonably be evaluated.
Tuesday 4 December 2007
Preliminary Work
The IFS provided the steer towards looking at time. In the report I referred to an interactional network proposed by Philip Juler. I had been directed to this during my MA when looking at distance learning students and the various factors that impact on their lives. Juler had (I think) developed his network when looking at discourse but so far I have not been able to find any published work by him that refers to this.
I initially developed a schematic outline for the research which I discussed briefly with my supervisor at IOE and the College Principal. If either saw immediate problems in it then I knew I would have to go back to the drawing board! Fortunately both were supportive.
Before finalising my proposal I spent the summer and early autumn of 2007 investigating what has already been written on time and study workload. A trawl throughthe main journals has yielded a number of articles related to time but mainly these centre on full-time students whereas my interest is in distance learners.
From my engineering and management background I am particularly interested in quantifying study. Ellie Chambers at the OU wrote several influencial articles and chapters relating to this in the early 1990s but little appears to have been done since then. I was at the OU earlier this month and confirmed that the rules-of-thumb used to calculate the time for reading, watching and listening to study materials have not changed in twenty years or so.
Now that we have online interaction I am also interested to know whether anyone has come up with any rules to cover quantifying this. So far as I can see there is nothing. Gilly Salmon suggests that it takes at least one minute to open and read a message posted online. Otherwise the best that I have found is advice to 'pilot' online activity and record the time taken. What I find concerning is the emergence of the 'digital natives' whose expectations for study are potentially a lot different to the older students.
A couple of months ago I read the EU document The Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area developed as part of the Bologna process. Credits and qualifications within this framework are expected to be described in terms of learning outcomes, levels and associated workloads. The definition given for workload is ‘a quantitative measure of all learning activities that may feasibly be required for the achievement of the learning outcomes’ and in tandem with this, time is considered to be that ‘required for an average student to undertake the workload’.
Two significant assumptions seem clear from the framework. First, that all learning activities can be identified and rated for the time they will take to complete. Secondly, that the average student and the time he or she has available for study can be defined. To my mind this means that only if these two sets of parameters can be identified will it be possible to determine whether study feasibility can actually be evaluated.
Society is changing and I know from my students that what was acceptable 20 years ago is no longer the case. Therefore I feel it is very important that the academic community discovers more about today's learners and the pressures that they exist within. These thoughts are what is driving this research and the thesis proposal developed from this.
I initially developed a schematic outline for the research which I discussed briefly with my supervisor at IOE and the College Principal. If either saw immediate problems in it then I knew I would have to go back to the drawing board! Fortunately both were supportive.
Before finalising my proposal I spent the summer and early autumn of 2007 investigating what has already been written on time and study workload. A trawl throughthe main journals has yielded a number of articles related to time but mainly these centre on full-time students whereas my interest is in distance learners.
From my engineering and management background I am particularly interested in quantifying study. Ellie Chambers at the OU wrote several influencial articles and chapters relating to this in the early 1990s but little appears to have been done since then. I was at the OU earlier this month and confirmed that the rules-of-thumb used to calculate the time for reading, watching and listening to study materials have not changed in twenty years or so.
Now that we have online interaction I am also interested to know whether anyone has come up with any rules to cover quantifying this. So far as I can see there is nothing. Gilly Salmon suggests that it takes at least one minute to open and read a message posted online. Otherwise the best that I have found is advice to 'pilot' online activity and record the time taken. What I find concerning is the emergence of the 'digital natives' whose expectations for study are potentially a lot different to the older students.
A couple of months ago I read the EU document The Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area developed as part of the Bologna process. Credits and qualifications within this framework are expected to be described in terms of learning outcomes, levels and associated workloads. The definition given for workload is ‘a quantitative measure of all learning activities that may feasibly be required for the achievement of the learning outcomes’ and in tandem with this, time is considered to be that ‘required for an average student to undertake the workload’.
Two significant assumptions seem clear from the framework. First, that all learning activities can be identified and rated for the time they will take to complete. Secondly, that the average student and the time he or she has available for study can be defined. To my mind this means that only if these two sets of parameters can be identified will it be possible to determine whether study feasibility can actually be evaluated.
Society is changing and I know from my students that what was acceptable 20 years ago is no longer the case. Therefore I feel it is very important that the academic community discovers more about today's learners and the pressures that they exist within. These thoughts are what is driving this research and the thesis proposal developed from this.
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