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August 14th, 2009
Common sense would say yes, they should. It certainly is the politically correct answer. Surprising then to see an article in ‘Studies in Philosphy and Education’ titled ‘Investigating the myth of the relationship between teaching and research in higher education: A review of empirical research’.
It is bold and important to ask these questions. Now let’s hope there are people bold enough to make some important changes to the way research and teaching are being connected.
Here is the abstract of the article:
Despite the widespread belief in a positive influence of research on education, the empirical evidence is lacking (Hattie and Marsh 1996). Several authors have questioned the appropriateness of the operationalisation of both aspects of the relation between teaching and research. This article takes a closer look at the research questions in empirical studies on the nexus between teaching and research and examines the used variables and their measurement techniques. The study reveals that the used variables and their operationalisation are diverse as well as limited. There is for example a diversity in the investigated population, the level of analysis (individual faculty, department, institutions), the nature of the institutions investigated or the questionnaires used. The operationalisation of both teaching and research is limited. Student learning or the way research is integrated into teaching are virtually absent and the measurement of research is mostly confined to the quantity of the research output. This calls for a more systematic research agenda in which student learning is investigated along with more fine grained measures of teaching and in which the relation of these two indicators and the research proficiency of faculty are looked at.
Verburgh, Elen and Lindblom-Ylänne, 2007, 26(5).
Tags: action research, philosophy, research, teacher education
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June 30th, 2009
Mobile phones are widely used by people, so why are researchers not making more use of them to collect data? In an upcoming project in Hong Kong I hope to get participants to record language learning experiences outside the classroom - and what better way to do this than by using a tool that each of them carries around all the time anyway?
This article talks about the technical aspects of mobile data collection and is a good read if you think you may be interested in this area. Recommended!
Please drop me a line if you are using mobile data collection - I’d love to hear about your experiences. Maybe we can exchange tips.
Tags: data collection, informal learning, mall, methodology, mobile, out-of-class, research
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April 8th, 2009
I was just watching Tim Berners-Lee’s (the inventor of the world wide web) talk on the future of the internet. He’s calling for the data sources that underlie most websites to be opened up (”raw data NOW”). At the moment there are vast amounts of data not accessible to anyone. Obviously, making them available to everyone has great potential implications for science. Imagine if all research data of every article you read in every peer-reviewed journal was available to anyone to check. In theory this is the case in good quality research publications, but when was the last time you checked that the existence or integrity of the data an article reports on? If, like me, you answered ‘can’t remember’, then this shows you how much of what we build our language sciences on is only ‘peer-reviewed’ in a cursory way. Equally importantly, what if someone wanted to test a different hypothesis using the same data? Or combine their data with that from another study?
The implications are huge and potentially even bigger when you take into account the growing influence of other technological advances, especially in the way people communicate and share information through (social) networks. Researchers are now starting to make more use of such networks to generate ideas from not just one or two, but hundreds or even thousands of people, to get feedback on their work from people outside their cosy professional circles, tap into much larger data/participant pools, and to develop ideas across disciplines. All this is in its early stages, but it’s exciting.
Practically speaking what I would like to do is this:
1) publish all my research data on my website, available to anyone (alongside the actual publications, which are mostly already available)
2) ask (not require at this point) all contributors to our journal ‘Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching‘ to submit their raw data and make that available on the journal’s website
3) papers submitted to our symposium (CALL and the Learner) at the AILA conference in Beijing in 2011 to be ranked and selected through social peer-review (for example using Facebook, or - if it takes off, which I sincerely hope, Google’s Friend Connect).
Of course there are issues around ethics approvals and perhaps (not so much in our field) patents etc, but these are obstacles we can find a way around.
If we want to, that is…
Tags: methodology, open education, research
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August 19th, 2008
Google documents continues to improve. The latest addition is particularly interesting for teachers and researchers as it lets you create online forms. Of course many services (like www.surveymonkey.com) let you do this but what is really exciting here is that Google lets you either publish the form online or email it to people. The recipients then get an email with your questions (multiple choice, scale, multiple options, paragraph) and answer them in their email programme, click the included ’submit’ button and the answers come to you.
The integration with other Google programmes pays off because the form results are automatically captured in your online spreadsheets, so collating results is a thing of the past. The spreadsheet programme lets you do sums, averages and other basic calculations or you can submit the results to your favourite statistical package.
This is an excellent tool for obtaining course feedback from your students, for doing quick surveys (what topic would you like me to cover in next week’s class?) and of course for conducting survey research. Teachers could also use this form simple tests.
You can also embed the form in your website. Here is an example:
Tags: research, tools
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August 17th, 2008
I was reading up on research on argument writing recently (in preparation for a textbook I am working on) and came across a very interesting thesis by Braaksma (2002). She investigated one aspect of what makes for the best approach to teaching writing, and in particular whether writing is best learned by observing others’, or by writing original texts. The argument in favour of observational learning is that it avoids cognitive overload (Alarmagot & Chanquoi, 2001); having to learn about writing through writing is more challenging than reading and reflecting on others’ text (Couzijn 1999) although it may not seem like this to the student at the time. Braaksma’s study showed that observational learning can indeed be more beneficial than learning by doing but this applied mainly to unfamiliar tasks. When learners have more experience with a particular type of writing (such as argument writing), they benefit more from practising their own writing. With new tasks, however, learning by observation was particularly helpful and resulted in the development of metacognitive strategies (such as the ability to plan ahead and to reflect on the writing process). For weak learners, the use of weak models was most beneficial (such as examples of poorly structured essays or those lacking good supporting evidence - of course with pointers and explanations to guide the learners!) nd for good learners, the use of good models. Braaksma suggests that weak learners gain insight by being able to identify the (incorrect) elements of a text as these are similar to their own level. For teachers this means that especially with inexperienced learners the use of observational learning is important, and that a mix of good and poor models could be used to support learners of all levels.
Alarmagot, D. & Chanquoi, L. (2001). Nature and control of processing. In G. Rijlaarsdam, D. Alarmagot, & L. Chanquoy (Eds.), Studies in Writing: Vol 9. Through the models of writing. (pp. 125-154). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Braaksma, M. (2002). Observational learning in argumentative writing. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
Couzijn, M. (1999). Learning to write by observation of writing and reading processes: effects on learning nad transfer. Learning and Instruction, 2, 109-142.
Tags: research, writing
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