I feel like MR’s comments have been ultra-helpful regarding chiseling down the scope of my Action Research.  Tonight we discussed Qualitative Research:  the purpose of this task is to have some sense of analysing the data we collect.  So do what makes the most sense!  How do I do that?  For me, I will not be using Survey Monkeys.  I will be using direct audio/visual interviews to analyze my ACTION  (my first action is going to be building a cohesive interactive website for pandytown enthusiasts to converge, communicate, collaborate, and create.)  I am going to run into a lot of questions/challenges.  In Florida, we are going to present our groups findings.  How do researchers handle problems like the ones I will run into?  How am I going to take a sampling?  My task is to struggle with the problems that researchers have when they they try to turn this information into reliable data….it has to be valid and reliable!  If other people are going to follow my procedure it has to be replicable….the “canons of acceptability” as MR says.

Pretty nervous about this.  My lack of organization has always been a concern and indeed part of the reason I’m getting my Master’s degree in the first place.

So let’s define Action Research:

The aim of participatory action research is to change practices, social structures, and social media which maintain irrationality, injustice and unsatisfying forms of existence. (McTaggart, 2002)

Action Research is :

- Frame Question
- Write a Formal Plan & Timeline

Cycle question: Specify how I do this. An action that looks at the larger question/problem
If I put this plan in place this is what I think will happen
Participatory Observation in Cultural Anthropology
vs.
Action Research for Social Change
In action research you are trying to change the setting/system by introducing the action
What do you want to introduce into the setting? What is your best guess as to the result of your action?

I know in my head what I am going to do for my Action Research.  Now I have to communicate that vision to others through WORK.

DO WORK SON!

1) Thinking with People–An Exercise in Data Analysis (Due at Florida)

The assignment will involve analysis of data that has been collected with the help of students from previous cadres and other action researchers. It will be a group project with your learning circle. Imagine that your research effort involves as an outcome the way is which people make sense of action research. You can create the situation that led you to create this data, but essesntially your task is to decide what a number of action researchers mean by “action research.” These entried have been collected in survey monkey. The definitions are accompanied by information on the age, gender and cadre of the person posting the definition.

Your task as a circle will to be to analyze this data collection. You are free to use the tools in survey monkey. To do this you will to log on as mriel with password omet. However this is more a qualititative analysis exercise. If that is a new term for you, look and read about it on the internet. We haev listed some books that you might want to explore but you can do your reading about research methods online.

NOW (listen carefully) most of you have not done qualitative research before. So don’t panic–Think Legos at virtcamp — this is a group project. Second–in case you are still breathing hard– the grade will be an A if you group attemts a solution.

You will need to find the major themes or ideas that some group of respondents used to describe action research. There are many different ways of doing this and your group should decide on a method of analysis. You might want to generate some different themes and then count how often these themes are mentioned. You may want to code each phase and then combine similar codes and find a way to organize your results into themes. The responses might fall into different categories based on some dimensions that you discover when you read them as a set. You might want to consider who made the statements. Depending on what you want to know, you might not need to use all of them. These are all ways of using data to understand a group response.

Read the data analysis chapters in your books and try one one or more ideas. Or read online. The purpose is for you to experiment with research methods, and run into problems that researchers face as a community. Then we will use these problems as a way of taking about the shared conventions that researchers have evolved for handling this problems. The goal of the activity is three-fold,

  1. to help you build a deeper understanding of action research
  2. to surface issues and methods in doing research
  3. to help you craft a section in your report that describes the approach (action research ) that you are using.

You will need to do your analysis BEFORE the midpoint meeting. Use your action research books for ideas on how to analyze data. We will discuss your results in Florida. Each of your groups will be making a 10 minute presentation. The end result will be a paragraph or two defining action research.

Presentation Due Jan 18 in Orlando

2) Short Description of Your Action Research Project

Write a short descriptive summary of your action research to describe your work to your new learning circle partners in your Circle Forum. This should focus on the nature of the problem you are working on and what actions you plan to take. You should try writing this fresh as a message in google groups. It should take you about about a half hour to write and can be completed in a few paragraphs. Do this as soon as possible and post in your learning circle on Google Sites. Then save this text and move it to your action research web site. This will be one of the several drafts you will use to craft your introduction.

DUE Jan 4: This should be ready on Jan 4th and be posted in Google groups.

3) Action Research Plan

Your revised Action research plan should be on your website and you should let us know in the learning circle when it is ready for review. Now you are going to write your outline for your final report–but don’t let that freak you out. We will take it one step at a time. As you see, you have worked on lots of it already.)You can make it an interactive outline with links to each section or one long page with headings. We will be filling it out. This replaces your current plan. The outline is color coded by course. 638a is red, 638b is green, 638c is blue and 638d is black.

Due Date for new draft is Jan 10th

Action Research Report Outline

PURPOSE:

The problem I am addressing (or the vision I am working towards) is (several paragraphs or more)

The overall goal of my Action Research is…. (a phrase).

MY WORK/COMMUNITY CONTEXT:

My membership/position in the community of practice that I am working in can be described in the following way. (You have written this in the first semester. Go find it and past it here. The problem that I want to solve…. or the situation that I want to improve is….(again you should have a draft of this text.

LITERATURE REVIEW

What I have learned about my topic from summarizing these findings is… This is where you will add the text of your lit review (saving the references for the end). For now can put the summary from the end of your lit review with a link to the literture review on your website. Your lit review will evolve over this and the next semester. You might want to keep the different versions and have this link take you to the recent one or just replace the old with the new version. Your online literature review can be extensive if you wish, but for the final report, you will need to focus on what was essentials so that you can share what you learned from the process with your readers. So it might be helpful to write a draft of your summary here.

RESEARCH QUESTION:

My main research question is….

You have worked on this but it is likely to have changed and it might change a number of times. If you want to keep track of the changes, I suggest you copy the old version to your blog each time and save this space for the latest version.

This question can be somewhat more general as it will cover your whole project.

Action Research Approach– We will be do a data analysis exercise to help you think about how to describe action research and how and why you are using it. This section will be collectively written in learning circles. You can use wantever one you want.

CYCLE 1: (PLAN OR REPORT)

FIRST CYCLE RESEARCH QUESTION: This question needs to contain two very important parts. The first part clear states what you will do in very specific language. And the second part shares your best guess at a outcome (the reactions of others that you expect to result from your action.) Your action research is a design experiment. You are designing with a eye towards deeper understanding of design action.

EVIDENCE USED TO EVALUATE THE ACTION: What evidence will you collect to tell you how other respond to your action. What will you look to give you direct or indirect evidence of what happened?

EVALUATION: How will you/did you evaluate the outcomes of your action?…..(Indicate your plans for your analysis in a paragraph or two).

REFLECTION: (to be added after the cycle is complete) Looking back on my action with the benefit of data, I now think… and if I were to do this again I would have. The think that worked best was… What most surprised me from the data was…


CYCLE 2: (Plan)

PLANNING THE ACTION FOR CYCLE TWO: The outcomes and my reflections on cycle one has changed my plans in the following way. (While the plans might change after completing cycle one, share your current thoughts on second cycle of action research)

CYCLE 3 (Place holder)

FINAL REFLECTIONS (You are not ready to write this yet but will be collecting ideas in you AR journal.

REFERENCES

Take these from the end of your lit. review and past them here.

(Congratualations…you have just completed your detailed outline of your final report. Now just keep writing and in July you will have a high quality thesis you will be proud to share with others. )