Not Lost Not Yet

I think I am a little behind on my Literature Review. I am not sure why I drag my feet so much with Lit Review sections. I enjoy the work. I am curious about what others are doing. I love to synthesize information. I really enjoy proving my topic’s worth. However, when it comes to due dates looming and revisions and adding more sources, I just drag my feet. Maybe this is one of those self-sabotage things where because you feel you HAVE to, you don’t WANT to. But, if it was optional, I would be motivated to do it. I am 40 years old. This shouldn’t be an issue any more. Right?  

So, I still have Lit Review work to do. This is what is left to do: I need to revise. I know what level of synthesis is missing from my review so far. So, I need to expand on each of those sections. I also know that I just a few more resources to plug into the review. Maybe I need to reserve a different day of my week for the longer papers. Maybe Sunday is a day of mentally checking out so that it makes it difficult to do the thinking work necessary of a Lit Review. Haha. I made this bed… 

I am in the process of working on my portfolio. It is slow going since I am learning different tech tools as I go. I have experience writing a blog, but creating a structure for a page with content that is engaging takes more time than just writing. So, the design itself slows me down. Sure I can just type up the information needed for the portfolio, but I can do better than that. I want it to look professional and interesting and engaging. So, I am like the Tortoise in the race against the Hare. Slow and steady will win the race.  

As far as the methods section, I have it outlined in my head and some in my notes. I just have to actually write it. I haven’t typed it out yet because I have been focused on my Lit Review. I have this sense that if I do the methods section before the lit review that I will forget to do the review. It is just a weird, illogical thing that is kind of holding me back right now. It is similar to when you are trying to pay off debt. Do you start with the biggest debt first and pay minimums on the small debt, or do you start with the smallest debt and pay the minimums on the biggest debt. It’s like if you don’t stick to one game plan, then nothing gets paid off.  

I am feeling more confident in the methods for my study after our class meeting where we shared out our plan. It really helped to talk about it. I have thought and thought about it, but talking about it with others, especially the professor, builds confidence in a way that really nothing else can replace.  

I have recently discovered that I haven’t completed an actual study from start to finish on my own. I am in the middle of a CoVid study, and it has made me realize that all of my previous work only anticipates collecting data, but it isn’t actually reporting data. Usually it is because of time. Research takes more than a semester, so most professors just have us “finish” the article by writing out what I would do since I don’t have time to do it.  

So, the methods section of an article is where my inexperience begins! I have this idea of what is supposed to be there, but because I haven’t really gone through the full process of a study, I constantly second guess myself of what should be there. So, discussing it in class, listening to how others will approach their study, and planning out the fine details not only helps to flesh out the methodology section but it also helps me to write with more confidence in a section that is not complicated.  

There is always something going on with me. Since starting my PhD program, both of my parents have died, I had a baby, the pandemic led to mental health issues, my anxiety has led to physical health issues, and emotional exhaustion has challenged my drive to work… on anything. So, the blizzard that shut Texas down was a much needed break. I was fortunate to not have experienced power or water issues, just snow. Regardless of the blizzard’s lack of impact on me, since it was a welcome interruption, I am always dealing with emergencies or illness or exhaustion interfering with my academic work. This version of life is not new to me. I have spent a lifetime striving to climb the walls, catch up to the pack, and push past the crowd to get to the finish line.  

Surviving a childhood filled with poverty and trauma has prepared me to not only be resilient but also to be adaptable. My experiences have taught me to trust myself and my abilities. In my every day, that looks like me listening to myself, my motivations, and my drive, to hear what I am capable of doing today, then doing it. If I can’t meet a deadline, I make an alternate plan. I communicate with my professors. I reschedule with my husband. I make a new To Do List and I keep on pushing forward, one blog reflection at a time, one article at a time, one notecard at a time.  

So, am I OK if I don’t meet my deadlines? Yes. Does it disappoint me? Yes. What do I do about it? When plan A doesn’t work, then I go to plan B, then plan C, then D. I am a high school teacher after all. Having multiple game plans comes with the territory.  

I think the methodology sections sounds the easiest to write, but I think I might make it harder than it is.  

 
The methodology section has been repeatedly described to me as a recipe for others to follow if my study was to be repeated. So, I feel very confident in write a how to section for doing the study. However, the tricky side to this is that I have to have a research-backed process for doing the study they way that I do it (I think). This is tricky because I am not totally sure if this is what is expected and second, if it is what is expected, then how do you find the research to back me up? 

The good news is that this component of the methodology section forces me to evaluate my process more acutely. It makes me ask over and over why do I want to do things the way that I do? For example, if the population I want to study is faculty, I need to ask why? What other research has used faculty as their population? How did they approach studying them? Was is through a survey? Interviews? Video observation? Once, I get those questions answered, then it is on to the next set of questions: what options are available for me to do a survey? Are there already tested interview questions that I can use or imitate? If I record faculty, how will those files be stored, anonymity kept, and how do I analyze that data?  

 
So, yes the methodology section is potentially the shortest section of the paper; however, it might be the most deceptive section of the paper. Our methodologies is what makes or breaks our trustworthiness as researchers and writers. So, if I don’t take the time to justify my process decisions, then all the work of the paper will be useless or ignored if my methodology isn’t credible. 

As a high school teacher, we are constantly coached and professionally developed to engage and motivate students. So much of my time as a teacher in a high school classroom is spent on thinking of ways to make my lessons more fun and more engaging. In order to do that, more often than not, some form of social engagement is included. So, when we were all forced to a fully virtual classroom this year in response to the pandemic, that component went missing.  

Without proper training and time for designing, constructing online courses for high school has been a real challenge. There has been very little consideration by our leaders is in preparing teachers for this transition. As a result, many teachers as well as students are struggling to do their respective jobs because it isn’t interesting, satisfying, or motivating to do class without social engagement.  

Working this problem backwards, it is clear that educators need practical and accessible training in both online course design as well as how to engagement and motivate students online. However, before you can train teachers to do this, it needs to be clear how it is currently being done that are producing successful results.  

 
I think my research on defining social presence in the online classroom will definitely contribute to this issue since it is a problem yet to be solved. The study I am interested in doing will also contribute to increase the body of work that aims to clarify the meaning of social presence.  

After my first assignment on the dissertation topic itself, it got me thinking about something that has been plaguing my thoughts since I first fell into this topic of social presence in the online classroom. Originally, when I read Patrick Lowenthal & Chareen Snelson’s article called “In Search of a Better Understanding of Social Presence: An Investigation into How Researchers Define Social Presence,” I was immediately curious if educators agreed with their results. I also wondered what students’ view was. So, it made sense to expand on this study and start with perceptions of the educator in defining social presence. However, at the end of the article in the Conclusion section, Lowenthal and Snelson (2017) stated that “This suggests that as useful as social presence might be for collaborative online learning experiences, it is not necessarily required or essential for students to learn online.” 

At first, I just thought that was a strange thing to say without any further explanation. As a writing teacher, I regularly train students not to bring in big statements at the end like that. I felt that the statement undercut the other results they described. So, I have definitely been wondering if designing for building social presence opportunities in an online class is even valuable. At the time, I saved that thought for later, for a future research project. However, it is dissertation time, so this statement must be accounted for in the literature review.  

 As a result, I have been considering different categories of research needed to prove my study has educational value. A few categories that initially come to mind are the following in no particular order: social learning in the online classroom, connecting social learning and social presence, defining social presence, the educational value of social learning, and the educational value of social presence. Other areas might also include communities of inquiry and social presence, teacher presence and social presence, and the connection between social presence and online learning. The good news is that these categories open up many doors of background that will help develop my topic in detail. The bad news is that these categories provide a lot of work to do!!!!  

So far, my article collection count is 100, covering the variety of topics listed above. I am nowhere near done collecting nor am I close to finishing evaluating on a deeper level the contribution each article will make. The majority of them are relevant for sure, but there are some I need to review, some that are new, and some that I am rethinking because of the age of the article. My goal this week is to actually add more organization to the articles I already have. I’d like to see some of the categories above used as banners to break down the kinds of information contained in each article. Ultimately, this will help me to focus the contributions of those articles.  

*sigh* What would be so helpful is if CoVid 19 shut the schools down again so that I could just work on this since this feels more interesting right now. Don’t tell my boss, or my students for that matter, I said that.  

It feels like ages since I have written here. What have I been doing? Oh right, there’s been a pandemic. My whole life slowed to an unexpected halt last spring, and I have been kind of floating along since.

However, it is time to refocus on the task at hand. I am so grateful to announce it is time to do a dissertation!!! WHOOHOO!! I know it seems strange to cheer on what seems like a long and arduous task, but this moment also marks the end of this phase of my life. I am not one to live by regret so that empowers me to go, with full gusto, into the moment that is this semester.

My topic for this momentous occasion is social presence in online learning. While that may sound tedious and boring, let me describe what it really means to me. You know when you are in a group of people, whether it is friends, family, a class, a dinner, any group setting really, and there is this atmosphere of equality, synchronicity, harmony, or like an all is right in the world moment? Or maybe: have you ever been in a discussion or debate and there was a fair give and take of ideas, opinions, information exchanged and you walk away feeling more alive than you had before you started the encounter? Well, I think somewhere in those moments of being is where social presence lies. It is this intangible presence that seems to link those engaged with something more. In a classroom, this presence can make or break a lesson for teachers, but when it really comes into being, social presence creates this life in learning that is irreplaceable and influential for an indefinite amount of time. I know this because I am both a teacher and a student. I have had these experiences on both sides of the spectrum. I know there is something to it, something more.

While so far this is all anecdotal, my research has also shown some of my experience to be similar to others in the same position. The literature echoes what I have said as well: the vague idea of social presence has yet to be clearly defined. According to Lowenthal & Snelson (2017), researchers do not use the same definition for this term, for this experience.

And now, with the jolt in the education world that has forced us all into a digital space, that experience of equality, synchronicity, harmony has been absent. With the unplanned moved to the virtual classroom, there has definitely been something missing because students are failing and teachers are dissatisfied. The future of education is unclear. This leaves me wondering if social presence couldn’t be a bridge from what has been to what can be in the digital classroom? In order to find out, we must first have a clear and coordinated understanding of what it means so that we can ultimately create it in a digital space.

Since the term “social presence” is still unclear in the literature, it makes sense to pursue this as my path for a dissertation. However, I would like edit the literature review I have so far. I think it would make this study more relevant to eliminate older studies and add any new studies published in light of the pandemic. Focusing on the last 10 years would be ideal since the “digital classroom” of today is vastly different than the one from the 1990s.

As far as how this study is going to work, that is up for design adjustments. Ideally, I’d like to apply a mixed-methods approach, utilizing both a quantitative survey as well as a qualitative follow-up interview. This is probably my biggest area of concern. I need to do more research on the best quantitative approach for this study as well as for the qualitative approach. I have a study in mind already to imitate for the qualitative portion, but then I need to know what method I will follow for data analysis. I wholeheartedly believe this is a relevant study if this topic is to warrant further research. Defining our terms is imperative. However, I don’t want to ruin its credibility by not having enough support in the methods section.

So, here we go!

I think my research design is adequate, so it needs definitely needs improvement. Specifically, I don’t think that the literature to support my research plan is solid. I need to go back and review the sources I used for my literature review and expand on those. I also need to support my research plan with research-based methodologies for Computer Mediated Discourse Analysis and data collection. I know that I have the sources in my previous work collection, but I am not sure where. So, once I have those parts of my research plan, I think the plan itself will not be a clear method for others to follow.

I think my intended methods do make sense for Discovery Learning since the data I want to collect must come from those who experienced the instructional design with me actually knowing ahead of time what I will discover. Also, using open ended style initial survey allows for me to follow up for more extended feedback into areas for more clarity. These components directly align with the Discover Learning model.

Again, for improvement, I think I need sources that clearly support my methodologies so that my process is research based rather than what seems to make sense. I also need to improve on the clarity of my methodologies so that it can be a replicated study.

User Centered Design (UCD) is very similar to the theory that I presented in class. Discovery Learning (DL) is meant to support the learner and the learner needs. Discovery learning aims to develop the higher order thinking skills on Bloom’s taxonomy: analyzing, evaluating, and creating. A primary goal of a discovery learning model is that students can creatively solve a real-life problem, so this type of learning model draws learners out of the traditional form of “learning” where information is memorized and regurgitated and puts students at the helm of their learning. In discovery learning, students are expected to actually do something with the new information they have gathered. Ultimately, that means they should be able to innovate with it.

In a traditional classroom, a teacher has the information and then delivers that information to students. The focus on the class design is on how best to deliver that content, not necessarily incorporating students into the lesson. They are simply on the receiving end, and sometimes expected to prove they understood the lesson. However, with UCD and DL, students become the center point that the lesson revolves around. The design attempts to meet students where they are with the prior knowledge, allows them to find for themselves, ideally through problem solving, whatever skills and content is required, and instead of grading the work, provides student feedback so that students can continue to grow.

I pride myself in being practical, so if I need to create an instructional design document, I want the content to be applicable to real life classroom work. So, the work I did was fairly detailed since the skills I wanted to focus on were embedded in a larger assignment. As I went through the document one last time before submission, I, of course, am re-thinking my choice of topic. What I was hoping to do was hone in on student’s ability to recognize opinions versus facts. At first glance, this seems easy. However, students in AP Language courses are dealing with excellent writing, so the phrasing of ideas and facts often sound similar. The differences, therefore, are often subtle. So, I am wondering if I submitted the final research project today instead of the instructional design. I guess I am not feeling totally confident about the differences. Maybe the research plan includes how to collect data, how to analyze data, and limitations. I can think of a few other parts, but in general, what I submitted today seems like 90% of a research plan.

What went well for me is that I had a clear problem I wanted to design instruction to address it. What seems problematic is that I am not totally sure that what I envisioned came out clearly on the document. Where I go from here is revisions for clarity, and more than likely, revisions for simplicity. Something I’ve learned in this doctoral program is that topics for research are more achievable when they are simple rather than complex.