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Monday 6 October 2014

Draft questions



question As I wrote in Collecting data about engagement - quick questionnaires, quickconversations publics can be engaged at a range of  levels from
  1. engagement  with a research project's (prototype) products
    to
  2. engagement  with the research process that are generating and modifying  a research project's (prototype) products.
Juxtalearn will collect lots of data of type A before, during and immediately after the scheduled interventions. Our purpose within the 'Evaluating ways of capturing engagement processes' project should focus on collecting data about level B, and data about level A over a longer time period than for Juxatalearn. In the following paragraphs I describe some initial versions of questions that could be asked of people to help us understand engagement with Juxtalearn research. These are initial drafts, and will be developed further, ready for the first sessions which will occur in a week or twos time.

The Publics we will need to focus on include the  teachers and students of the classes within which the Juxtalearn tools and practices are tried. In addition, we need to consider the  representatives of schol management who will influence how the Juxtalearn interventions occur, and any future devlopments within the school resulting from the interventions.

 
Purposes: What are the aims and objectives of this engaged research? 
The purposes identified in my post entitled Collecting data about engagement - quick questionnaires, quick conversations can be rewritten to yield 3  research questions. Here are those reserach questions, along with some suggestions of questions for teachers and students.

  1. How  do the publics we have identified understand  the purposes of the Juxtalearn research?
    Questions  for students & teachers
    Why do you think the researchers are running the Juxtalearn  sessions at your school?
    (Don’t be afraid to tell us you don’t know as that is a perfectly valid answer.)
    The above  question could be asked immediately after a Juxtalearn session.
  2. How do members of these publics communicate with each other about Juxtalearn's research goals?
    Questions 
    for students

    Have you discussed the Juxtalearn sessions with your friends or class mates?
    If so, what sort of things have you discussed?
    Questions  for teachers
    Have you discussed the Juxtalearn sessions with your colleagues?
    If so, what sort of things have you discussed?

    The above  questions could be asked sometime after a Juxtalearn session, and more than once, e.g. a week after, then a week later.
  3. How do  members of these publics communicate with the research team about Juxtalearn's research goals?
    This can be answered by the Research Team.

Processes: (1) How does the research involve relevant publics in meaningful ways?  (2) When, and (3) how often, are publics be involved? (4) Where are these interventions likely to take place, and (5) through what mechanisms?
The meaning of the Juxtalearn interventions  to the publics immediately before, during and after the Juxtalearn sessions will be assessed by the Juxtalearn project itself, as part of the project's  evaluation workpackage. A description of the processes will also be recorded by the Juxtalearn researchers, e.g. in terms of both (i) the planned Juxtalearn interventions, and (ii) a record of how the interventions playedout in practice. 
To complement this, we will prompt for reposnses over a longer time frame, e.g. at monthly  intervals after the initial Juxtalearn workshop.  The following are draaft questions intended to find out if the teachers and studnets have made use of the Juxalearn approach outside of the Juxtalearn sessions, and outside of the topic areas used to  introduced to it in the Juxtalearn sessions.

Questions  for students
Have you used video creation to help you learn since attending the Juxtalern session on insert-date-here?
If so, how, and what topics have you used it in connection with?

Questions  for teachers
Have you used video creation to help you teach since attending the Juxtalern session on insert-date-here?
If so, how, and what topics have you used it in connection with?


Participation: measures of how the publics and  researchers participated?
The Juxtalearn project will collect data related to planned Juxtalearn events. We aim to complement this by enquiring about unscripted and unplanned interactions with researchers about the research, initiated by members of the publics, and interactions about the research between members of the publics  not involving Juxtalearn researchers. Data relate to both of these the themes will be collected in reponse to questions listed  under purposes.

To conclude, the previous paragraphs outline some draft questions intended to generate  data from students, teachers and school managers about their views of the engagement with Juxtalearn research. The maechanisms that these questions will be put to these publics is  likely to be through twitter and online surveys, though which will be used iss likely to depend on the preferences of memebers of these  publics themselves.

6 comments:

  1. That first interview question, "Why do you think the researchers are running the JuxtaLearn sessions at your school?" could yield really interesting answers.

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  2. On the question to students, "Have you used video creation to help you learn since attending the Juxtalern session on insert-date-here?" I'm not sure that we'll get any positive answers here, because the JuxtaLearn process includes participatory learning that requires the teacher to orchestrate it. Secondly, the JuxtaLearn process uses technology that might not be available elsewhere.
    The question posed to teachers could elicit more useful replies.

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    Replies
    1. Liz,
      Hmm, good points.
      Perhaps something like
      * Did attending the Juxtalern session on insert-date-here influence the way you approach learning ?
      * If so, in what ways?
      would be better, as it's focusing on changes as a result of the session, not so much on the precise nature of the changes.

      If the teachers' do run more sessions, or other teachers take up the approach, then the original question might produce positive responses. Is it possible that some teachers might incorporate the apprroach into their teaching in some way otr other, within the timescale of this project?

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  3. I suspect that rephrasing the question might trigger more positive responses. The term "video creation" is used in JuxtaLearn to refer to the process of creating a video to explain a tricky concept. Students are unlikely to do this spontaneously. However if we get them to use video to capture their reflections at the end of the workshop - a kind of video diary or vlog which they can then share with family and friends, we may then get a more positive response to the question "Have you created any more Vlog posts since attending the JuxtaLearn session on xx/xx/xx?" Many students have already created little videos on their mobiles and uploaded them to YouTube, and students will have viewed similar video diaries on YouTube so are likely to be familiar with the genre.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Gill
      I agree that asking about Vlogging in general might produce more responses, and I can see that students may be unlikely to spontaneously produce a video to explain a tricy concept. However, if we don't ask them, we won't know if at's the case!

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