Each of you talked through your projects. They all sounded like you are in a solid position to finish your proposal - and some of you sound like you are in a good position for getting started on your projects. Well done!
You wrote me an email with the list of IRB issues you will be dealing with, and I am just getting to composing my consolidated version so we can get some answers.
Good class tonight.
Next week we will review the course readings and talk through the exam. I will also take any last questions related to how to turn in work/finish the Proposal + IRB materials.
I will return the IRB materials as soon as I work my way through them.
See you next week!
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Monday, April 21, 2014
4.21 Research proposals turned in=> IRB drafts in process!
You turned in your research proposals along with an email where you gave me a heads up about:
what you thought went well
what you thought went not so well
what kind of feedback you want from me
We spent the rest of class working on IRB applications. You created accounts (noting that it takes 72 hours for the permissions to go through), read through the expedited/exemption categories and identified where your proposals would land, and looked at the submission portal.
The rest of the class was a workshop. You drafted your IRB materials, asked questions, and oveerall got a good start.
For next week:
Proposals returned with comments
IRB drafts due. The complete IRB assignment includes:
what you thought went well
what you thought went not so well
what kind of feedback you want from me
We spent the rest of class working on IRB applications. You created accounts (noting that it takes 72 hours for the permissions to go through), read through the expedited/exemption categories and identified where your proposals would land, and looked at the submission portal.
The rest of the class was a workshop. You drafted your IRB materials, asked questions, and oveerall got a good start.
For next week:
Proposals returned with comments
IRB drafts due. The complete IRB assignment includes:
- IRB application
- Informed consent form
- A/V consent form
- Debriefing form
- NIH training certificate
We will spend class talking about your research project. Each of you should plan to talk through your proposal, including
- the introduction (CARS moves)
- a detailed discussion of the research relevant to your project
- your proposed methods.
As a class, we will respond with support and suggestions.
You are almost done! Good class tonight and see you next week!
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
4.14 Set up for IRB work, workshop on thesis proposals, and reflecting on language use
We started class by checking out the links to the right which direct you to Kean University's IRB materials. In particular, I suggested that you read through the handbook (linked from the IRB page), with particular attention to the different levels of approval. Also read through the sample application form. This was created before the online portal was instituted, but requirements remain to turn in hard copies. You will use the forms/templates in the handbook and on the site to create your application. A complete IRB application includes: the Submission form (beginning with the first page in the sample); an informed consent form; an A/V consent form (if you will be recording any interactions); a debriefing from; and protocols/data collection materials associated with the project. For now, don't worry about the protocols.
In class you will work on creating your IRB account and drafting your materials for submission.
Workshop:
During the next part of class you workshopped your proposals so far, with particular attention to your focus, the place of your project in writing studies, whether you have made constructive connections to the research literature - and anything else you wanted to talk about. You were grouped with colleagues who had similar projects, and it looked to me like you gave eachother some good feedback, and all of you were good to go in terms of creating a draft for next week. I'm looking forward to reading these!
Wysoki and Selfe and Selfe
In some ways, the discussion of both of these articles had similar themes: literacy and literacy education are not neutral. Our language (and the way we use it) and our teaching are intricately associated with power structures in ways that put forward the interests of the 'more powerful'.
Our discussion of the term literacies and Wysoki's description of the "bundles of stories" (unconscious associations, belief systems, values, and narrative lines) associated with it characterized it as a term associated with colonization, homogenization, authorization of one set of discursive practices and identities as "correct", capitalism (buy in with a particular model of economic growth as "good" and natural) and a version of democracy the envisions "everyone as equal" through literate participation. Wysoki pointed out that these beliefs and values persist despite compelling and pervasive experiences where that is not the way the world works. And she asked why we would want to apply such a burdened term to what we do with computers and on the internet. She asked - why not name it something else? This was in 1999.
We then reflected on what it means that we persisted in naming many things "literacies" - and asked ourselves what it meant that we did - in terms of who garnered power from that move, and what it authorized? We noted that it authorized educational ownership of the internet, empowering "schools" to name the "right" and "wrong" way to use the internet; that this move was in collusion with economic interests who sell technologies to schools, and so on. Though we didn't make this move in class - there is also a need to step back and ask about who benefited and how in more detail before jumping on the anti-capitalist/business bandwagon. Even when it is difficult to actually step outside of the effects of ideological systems - it is important to strive to see them - so we can write messages to the future.
We then segued to Selfe & Selfe's analysis of the interface. Rather than repeat their analysis of Microsoft, we used their axes for analysis, and mapped the capitalist & class privilege, discursive privilege, and rational/logocentric privilege in the interface provided by blogger, the software I use to create public documentation of our classes. We only scratched the surface, but we noted that the kind of information about "use" (in the stats) was more useful to marketers (who opened the page, how often, when) than to educators, who might be interested in who read what page, when, and what they interacted with. We also noted all the opportunities for self promotion and for developing ways to make $$$ (surprise). Lots to think about here. We could have spent much longer ont his.
I have pasted in the calendar for the rest of the term. You are almost there!
May 12
In class you will work on creating your IRB account and drafting your materials for submission.
Workshop:
During the next part of class you workshopped your proposals so far, with particular attention to your focus, the place of your project in writing studies, whether you have made constructive connections to the research literature - and anything else you wanted to talk about. You were grouped with colleagues who had similar projects, and it looked to me like you gave eachother some good feedback, and all of you were good to go in terms of creating a draft for next week. I'm looking forward to reading these!
Wysoki and Selfe and Selfe
In some ways, the discussion of both of these articles had similar themes: literacy and literacy education are not neutral. Our language (and the way we use it) and our teaching are intricately associated with power structures in ways that put forward the interests of the 'more powerful'.
Our discussion of the term literacies and Wysoki's description of the "bundles of stories" (unconscious associations, belief systems, values, and narrative lines) associated with it characterized it as a term associated with colonization, homogenization, authorization of one set of discursive practices and identities as "correct", capitalism (buy in with a particular model of economic growth as "good" and natural) and a version of democracy the envisions "everyone as equal" through literate participation. Wysoki pointed out that these beliefs and values persist despite compelling and pervasive experiences where that is not the way the world works. And she asked why we would want to apply such a burdened term to what we do with computers and on the internet. She asked - why not name it something else? This was in 1999.
We then reflected on what it means that we persisted in naming many things "literacies" - and asked ourselves what it meant that we did - in terms of who garnered power from that move, and what it authorized? We noted that it authorized educational ownership of the internet, empowering "schools" to name the "right" and "wrong" way to use the internet; that this move was in collusion with economic interests who sell technologies to schools, and so on. Though we didn't make this move in class - there is also a need to step back and ask about who benefited and how in more detail before jumping on the anti-capitalist/business bandwagon. Even when it is difficult to actually step outside of the effects of ideological systems - it is important to strive to see them - so we can write messages to the future.
We then segued to Selfe & Selfe's analysis of the interface. Rather than repeat their analysis of Microsoft, we used their axes for analysis, and mapped the capitalist & class privilege, discursive privilege, and rational/logocentric privilege in the interface provided by blogger, the software I use to create public documentation of our classes. We only scratched the surface, but we noted that the kind of information about "use" (in the stats) was more useful to marketers (who opened the page, how often, when) than to educators, who might be interested in who read what page, when, and what they interacted with. We also noted all the opportunities for self promotion and for developing ways to make $$$ (surprise). Lots to think about here. We could have spent much longer ont his.
I have pasted in the calendar for the rest of the term. You are almost there!
April 21 Due: Draft research proposals; schedule conferences
Presentation on IRB application process
In-class work on IRB applications + conferences on research proposals
In-class work on IRB applications + conferences on research proposals
More work on research proposals
Write: IRB application
April 28 Due: IRB application Returned: Research Proposals with comments
Presentations on research proposals
May 5
Returned: IRB application with comments
Presentations on research proposals
Review readings + connect to research essays for Exam 2
Presentations on research proposals
Review readings + connect to research essays for Exam 2
May 12
Due: Final Exam, Final Research Proposals + IRB application
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
4.8 More discussion of research proposals, reflecting on the midterm, + Breuch & Bruffee
Tonight's class spent time on a range of topics and hopefully helped you get the big picture of where we are going for the rest of the term.
Research proposals: We started by applying the rubric to the second research proposals. The purpose of this exercise was to give you a chance to think in detail about features that make a good proposal - and to see how they look in writing. Your comments on this proposal indicate to me that you have a good idea about the different moves you will have to make, and are getting a more clear idea about what those moves entail. As we noted in class, the particular voice, kind of authority, organization and development for your proposal will depend on your topic. We noted that if your work is reflective, if you are working with a group where you are a member, and for any other kind of work where your sensibility needs to be explained + explored to validate and authorize your work, you will probably write from the first person. Other projects (surveys, literature reviews, and "objective" approaches) will work better from the distanced third person of more cientific writing.
We noted on the calendar that we did not do the drafty writing for the proposal, but that the Draft proposal (ready for feedback) would be due April 21. For this draft you should write the whole way through as best you can (including the timeline). This means you will need to have located the sources you will use to identify your niche, and to develop the detailed discussion in your literature review. See what you can do using the data bases/strategies identified at the end of the term, but if you are stumped or you want to check on whether you have identified the "important" sources - stop by my office and we will do some looking around.
Reflection on the midterm. Writing the midterm was meant to provide a chance to consolidate and use the concepts we have been working with this semester. You have read about a range of approaches to writing studies research along with some expamples of those approaches - and more importantly we have spent a lot of time thinking about the assumptions embedded within those different approaches and research projects. As you illustratd in your midterm writing - the "paradigms" suggested by Mertens are not really a perfect fit for most research; at the same time, the work as general classifications for typical groupings off assumptions about: the way the world works (ontology); the ways knowledge is realized or created (epistemologies); what is fair and moral in research practice (axiology); and appropriate means for envisioning, collecting, analyzing, and representing data (methodology).
Because these assumptions determine the kind of knowledge you will "discover", it is essential for you, as a researcher, to know how to identify the assumptions that underpin both the research you read and the research you do. So that is what we have been working on. So in some sense, the paradigms are names for the kinds of research different groupings of assumptions will produce. While sometimes the grouping make sense, as when someone with a worldview where there is one reality values precision and objectivity in data collection. But sometimes our assumptions are more muddy, as in some of the midterms, where you wrote that you believed in constructionist principles for the creation of knowledge, but yet felt that the broad studies with many participants produce more reliable or important knowledge. In theory, this is a contradiction - since social constructionist "facts" are highly contextual, and the results from very large studies usually need to be categorized in ways that erase or otherwise lose the differences within specific contexts. So it is important for us, as researchers to think about that: to know our own biases for what counts as "good data" - and decide how we want to conduct our studies in light of that thinking.
Keep on this. It really is some of the most important work of the course.
Breuch & Bruffee
Really, we spent 15 minutes on this. I think we did a reasonable job cutting to the essential points. For Breuch - it is the dilemma of how (and whether it is possible) to apply about post-modern theory in the classroom. Her set up indicated that post-process writing theory's real benefit was providing new ways to conceptualize definitions of writing, methods for teaching (as "indeterminate activities rather than a body of knowledge); and communicative practices (98).
Bruffee's focus in one sentence, is that providing learners/writers (structured) opportunities to engage in the discourses they will use in the academy is an important ground for learning. Discourse is internalized => needs places where it is modeled and practiced; directed, peer-peer encounters work for this.
Statistics a la Writing Studies, courtesy of Dr. Sutton
The rest of class was spent working with some of the quantitative data that writing program administrators often find themselves confronted with. I am sure this portion of the class was entertaining.
For next week:
Read: Selfe & Selfe, 739; Wysoki, 717 In addition to reading Wysoki, you might want to watch "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence"
We will also spend some time working on your researh proposals = specifically making sure everyone has references for the literature review - so come to class with material to work with and questions,
Good class and see you next week!
Research proposals: We started by applying the rubric to the second research proposals. The purpose of this exercise was to give you a chance to think in detail about features that make a good proposal - and to see how they look in writing. Your comments on this proposal indicate to me that you have a good idea about the different moves you will have to make, and are getting a more clear idea about what those moves entail. As we noted in class, the particular voice, kind of authority, organization and development for your proposal will depend on your topic. We noted that if your work is reflective, if you are working with a group where you are a member, and for any other kind of work where your sensibility needs to be explained + explored to validate and authorize your work, you will probably write from the first person. Other projects (surveys, literature reviews, and "objective" approaches) will work better from the distanced third person of more cientific writing.
We noted on the calendar that we did not do the drafty writing for the proposal, but that the Draft proposal (ready for feedback) would be due April 21. For this draft you should write the whole way through as best you can (including the timeline). This means you will need to have located the sources you will use to identify your niche, and to develop the detailed discussion in your literature review. See what you can do using the data bases/strategies identified at the end of the term, but if you are stumped or you want to check on whether you have identified the "important" sources - stop by my office and we will do some looking around.
Reflection on the midterm. Writing the midterm was meant to provide a chance to consolidate and use the concepts we have been working with this semester. You have read about a range of approaches to writing studies research along with some expamples of those approaches - and more importantly we have spent a lot of time thinking about the assumptions embedded within those different approaches and research projects. As you illustratd in your midterm writing - the "paradigms" suggested by Mertens are not really a perfect fit for most research; at the same time, the work as general classifications for typical groupings off assumptions about: the way the world works (ontology); the ways knowledge is realized or created (epistemologies); what is fair and moral in research practice (axiology); and appropriate means for envisioning, collecting, analyzing, and representing data (methodology).
Because these assumptions determine the kind of knowledge you will "discover", it is essential for you, as a researcher, to know how to identify the assumptions that underpin both the research you read and the research you do. So that is what we have been working on. So in some sense, the paradigms are names for the kinds of research different groupings of assumptions will produce. While sometimes the grouping make sense, as when someone with a worldview where there is one reality values precision and objectivity in data collection. But sometimes our assumptions are more muddy, as in some of the midterms, where you wrote that you believed in constructionist principles for the creation of knowledge, but yet felt that the broad studies with many participants produce more reliable or important knowledge. In theory, this is a contradiction - since social constructionist "facts" are highly contextual, and the results from very large studies usually need to be categorized in ways that erase or otherwise lose the differences within specific contexts. So it is important for us, as researchers to think about that: to know our own biases for what counts as "good data" - and decide how we want to conduct our studies in light of that thinking.
Keep on this. It really is some of the most important work of the course.
Breuch & Bruffee
Really, we spent 15 minutes on this. I think we did a reasonable job cutting to the essential points. For Breuch - it is the dilemma of how (and whether it is possible) to apply about post-modern theory in the classroom. Her set up indicated that post-process writing theory's real benefit was providing new ways to conceptualize definitions of writing, methods for teaching (as "indeterminate activities rather than a body of knowledge); and communicative practices (98).
Bruffee's focus in one sentence, is that providing learners/writers (structured) opportunities to engage in the discourses they will use in the academy is an important ground for learning. Discourse is internalized => needs places where it is modeled and practiced; directed, peer-peer encounters work for this.
Statistics a la Writing Studies, courtesy of Dr. Sutton
The rest of class was spent working with some of the quantitative data that writing program administrators often find themselves confronted with. I am sure this portion of the class was entertaining.
For next week:
Read: Selfe & Selfe, 739; Wysoki, 717 In addition to reading Wysoki, you might want to watch "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence"
We will also spend some time working on your researh proposals = specifically making sure everyone has references for the literature review - so come to class with material to work with and questions,
Good class and see you next week!
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
3.31 Research proposals
We started class by reading through the description for the research proposal assignment, and talking about how the focus and purpose for your individual projects with shape the particular format of your proposal. The assignment (linked on the right under course documents) lists the "moves" you will want to make in your proposal, but this "list" is not meant to be a formula. Rather, you should organize and develop your proposal in a way that will make the most comprehensible + compelling presentation for your subject material.
You then wrote into your plans for your project and we did some group brainstorming in response to your informal presentations.
The rest of the class was devoted to discussing and applying the expectations for the project proposal assignment in more specific ways.
We negotiated the valuation (weighting) of features for a rubric to assess (in terms of what aspects of a given proposal would need more work) and evaluate (assign a grade). We talked through several different point systems, all of which made clear to us (once again) the organic nature of writing => where its different accomplishments (use of appropriate discourse, clear focus, logical organization, in-depth development) are in many was so interconnected as to be difficult to separate in terms of both evaluation and assessment. For example, discursive choices (which voice/style you choose, what/how you establish authority, the depth and kind of critical examination => writing issues identified by Bartholomae) in some sense DEFINE how to establish/inntroduce a focus, possibilities for organization, and demands for development. For example, to meet the discursive expectations of writing studies research, an essay must authorize its focus and points through references to the research "conversation" and evidence created through a critical the project's data. In a very real sense, the newest and most difficult aspect of this assignment will be to write within "writing studies research" discourse, and as we talked about valuing the different features of the rubric, I made my claim that the points should reflect this = both so that student put their efforts there, and so that the rubric carries a clear message about what is important (the central learning task).
The rubric we "tried out" in class is listed below (thank you Mary Ellen).
1. Audience: writing studies discourse =
voice/style, authority drawn from other researchers = joining the conversation
(CARS article—finding a niche and occupying it) 20 points
2. Focus/purpose: stated on assignment sheet, frame a study appropriate to writing studies research (includes resources, methods, problem statement—deals with the same issues and be coherent), significance, all parts of proposal are within the focus. 30 points
3. Organization: establish the context or place yourself within it, elaborating, define terms before discussing, purpose and focus have to be early on in the organization,
15 points
4. Development: appropriate development (relevant to the focus), sufficient development, position the focus within the research, raise questions, include elaborations on methods, literature review, connections to writing studies research and focus
30 points
In our discussion of how to grade & coach the sample research essay, we found that we had slightly different perspectives on what needed work in this essay = though overall there was close enough agreement to provide a basis for talking about how to make use of the rubric as a tool to develop/work on your proposals.
Good class!
For next week:
During the first part of class I will return the exams and we will have a brief discussion to consolidate learning fromt he first half of class, we will revisit the rubric in terms of Sample Project 2, and we will take a quick look at Bruffee & Breuch. Obviously, we will not be able to all these things and an hour and 15 minutes, but we will at least set you up so you can continue your contemplation of these materials on your own as they apply to your work.
Dr. Sutton will provide some work with quantitative analytic methods during the second half of class.
You then wrote into your plans for your project and we did some group brainstorming in response to your informal presentations.
The rest of the class was devoted to discussing and applying the expectations for the project proposal assignment in more specific ways.
We negotiated the valuation (weighting) of features for a rubric to assess (in terms of what aspects of a given proposal would need more work) and evaluate (assign a grade). We talked through several different point systems, all of which made clear to us (once again) the organic nature of writing => where its different accomplishments (use of appropriate discourse, clear focus, logical organization, in-depth development) are in many was so interconnected as to be difficult to separate in terms of both evaluation and assessment. For example, discursive choices (which voice/style you choose, what/how you establish authority, the depth and kind of critical examination => writing issues identified by Bartholomae) in some sense DEFINE how to establish/inntroduce a focus, possibilities for organization, and demands for development. For example, to meet the discursive expectations of writing studies research, an essay must authorize its focus and points through references to the research "conversation" and evidence created through a critical the project's data. In a very real sense, the newest and most difficult aspect of this assignment will be to write within "writing studies research" discourse, and as we talked about valuing the different features of the rubric, I made my claim that the points should reflect this = both so that student put their efforts there, and so that the rubric carries a clear message about what is important (the central learning task).
The rubric we "tried out" in class is listed below (thank you Mary Ellen).
2. Focus/purpose: stated on assignment sheet, frame a study appropriate to writing studies research (includes resources, methods, problem statement—deals with the same issues and be coherent), significance, all parts of proposal are within the focus. 30 points
3. Organization: establish the context or place yourself within it, elaborating, define terms before discussing, purpose and focus have to be early on in the organization,
15 points
4. Development: appropriate development (relevant to the focus), sufficient development, position the focus within the research, raise questions, include elaborations on methods, literature review, connections to writing studies research and focus
30 points
5. Correctness:
bibliography, consistent format, consistent citation, spelling,
punctuation, grammar, sentence structure.
5 points
5 points
In our discussion of how to grade & coach the sample research essay, we found that we had slightly different perspectives on what needed work in this essay = though overall there was close enough agreement to provide a basis for talking about how to make use of the rubric as a tool to develop/work on your proposals.
Good class!
For next week:
Assess the 2nd sample research project using the rubric. Come to class prepared to evaluate both the essay - and the rubric.
Read:
Bruffee, 395; Breuch, 97
I have not assigned the chapters in Mertens on quantitative analysis (although they are there for your reference). Rather, during the second half of class you will apply some of the analytic approaches described in Chapter 13 to several data sets under the direction of Dr. Sutton.
During the first part of class I will return the exams and we will have a brief discussion to consolidate learning fromt he first half of class, we will revisit the rubric in terms of Sample Project 2, and we will take a quick look at Bruffee & Breuch. Obviously, we will not be able to all these things and an hour and 15 minutes, but we will at least set you up so you can continue your contemplation of these materials on your own as they apply to your work.
Dr. Sutton will provide some work with quantitative analytic methods during the second half of class.
Have a great week (looks like it might finally be spring!) and see you soon.
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