Meeting on 6.16.11

My meeting with Dr. Snider went really well today. It ended up being an awesome day. So much so that 3 members of my family noted I sounded happy.

I am a horrible interviewer or at least a novice interviewer. I asked leading questions and my biases came though. I asked about the “steep” learning curve and “laid out nicely” when it was not what the participant said. Dr. Snider says I have to disclose that she taught me a lot and has modeled how to teach online and I have styled my online teaching format to hers. I think students do struggle to learn the ways of the online classroom. They walk in thinking they have the skill and expectations and all of that fogs the class and they struggle and it limits the amount of learning that can occur.

I need to look into “the long interview” by sage for tips or google qualitative interviewing process. I need to ask open ended questions: no yes/no and I need clarify “all online classes” and “this online class you are currently in”.

I need someone read the transcripts to catch the bias that I cannot see.

Some themes that came out of the transcripts:

Nature of interaction-with reading, videos . . ..

Students says they get no feedback: maybe it’s types of feedback or the grade they get. How much feedback do they need? What type of feedback do they need?

In the face-to-face class, a teacher makes a comment and it is heard by all and each person takes it in as a personal comment but in a face-to-face class comments to one person is for that person. They don’t read professor’s comments. There is an air of singularity. How do you develop that community of practice? And shared communication?

Student perceptions of what the instructor does; what is the instructor’s work

Developmental aspects of the student and its influences on online learning—egocentric—it’s all about me like the younger student in the first focus group.

Learning-not learning when worried about others and their grades—is it a kind of lurking-it makes me think of the University of Houston (JOLT-Dec2010) Student perceptions and the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

The first focus group participants were more face-to-face students and the second was an online student. The second focus group she was able to take on the instructor perspectives.

Extrinsic/intrinsic motivation. The first focus group lady where she didn’t like second life the intrinsic motivation to play isn’t there. Assignments are due on Sunday but they complain about it and wish is was Friday, but they cannot think to turn it in on Friday It reminds me of the Courtney article and even though we remove the walls of the classroom in online learning, we don’t lose the power setup and because the teacher sets the deadline they do that deadline and not the ones they set for themselves.

They think they are technological proficient and they are not—stupid in America we rank number one in confidence but in performance tests, we rank much lower.

Codes:

Instructor’s work

Perceptions of online or F2F learners

Developmental aspects

Extrinsic power/motivation