Ph.D / Doctoral study - request for participants.

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Deleted member 66701

Deleted member 66701

Hi All

I am a doctoral student from Lancaster University, UK within the School of Computing and Communications. I am conducting a research study as part of my doctoral degree requirements. My study is titled Educational Resource Creation - A New Framework. The aim of the study is to investigate how educators create educational resources, the pressures this involves and best practices in the field. The answers to these questions will help provide a requirements framework for tools to help educators in creating resources, particularly around immersive technologies (Virtual Reality).

The study involves a 10 minute Qualtrics survey, If you an educator and interested in completing this survey please post here and I will private message you. I can't post the survey link openly as I have to do some minor vetting to ensure suitable participants first.

Many thanks.

Amiga!
 
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deuse said:
Or they worked harder ;)
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In some respects maybe. However, more survey responses = more data analysis - so it's swings and roundabout really.

Same with writing papers. 30 years ago, you could get away with maybe 10 - 20 references for a full length paper. Now, you wont get anywhere with less than 40. That's more reading, more annotating etc.

I actually looked at a couple of workload studies for Ph.D students recently and hours worked and publications produced have actually been increasing steadily over the last 25 years.


But sure, take any chance to get to denigrate anyone trying to better themselves, that's your normal MO. I'd really appreciate you not trashing a thread in which I'm asking for help.

What's your Ph.D in btw?
 
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Diagro said:
Who are the target audience for this framework?
You mentioned educators, but of which type?
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Anyone that has any teaching responsibilities - qualified or unqualified - across any sector (primary, senior, FE or HE).
 
Lysander said:
A lot of uni work has moved exclusively online at the moment. I'm not saying that's the reason the OP is doing an internet survey as part of his research, but the current climate does make online surveys a viable additional data collection method whereas before they may not have been considered.
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Yup, it's a bit difficult to pop vr headsets on participants for a study at the moment :)

As part of this study I will also be doing semi structured interviews (also online) but I already have the participants lined up for that. The survey will provide data to help triangulate the interview data.
 
deuse said:
I thought it would have been best to meet and ask people ou want to know so much about?
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You do know we can't meet people right?

Semi structured interviews of say 10 participants plus a survey that targets more people is a perfectly acceptable way of conducting a study. Interviewing more than 10 people (for a single researcher) is very unusual due to the amount of work that involves (transcribing, encoding etc).

I did not go for a Ph.D
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Ah, it's probably best that you stop sticking your nose into things you know nothing about then.
 
deuse said:
I thought it would have been best to meet and ask people ou want to know so much about?

I did not go for a Ph.D
I was to busy making money :)
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it's would have* not would have, and too* not to.

Happy to help.
 
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Diagro said:
Well. Sounds like a nice idea.
Although, how many education establishments can afford virtual reality technology?
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That's outside the scope of this study (as cost related issues commonly are in academic research). For example, there is a ton of educational research ongoing for the HoloLens and almost no one outside of Uni CS departments own any of those. Doesn't mean the research is pointless though as devices become cheaper over time - there was a time when the same comments could be made for computers within schools but look where we are now.

Having said that, I am also running an "in the wild" study with 19 schools (11 primaries, 8 secondaries), 3 FE colleges and 4 HE institutions that investigates mind mapping in VR - they all have their own VR headsets (Oculus Go's and Quests) so it's probably more prevalent than you think.

Also, as you are already probably aware, many educators either buy ready made resources or they make their own to suit their teaching style.
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That's included in the survey - it includes questions about resource creation from scratch, in collaboration, re-use internally, sourced externally and various pedagogy related questions relating to teaching and learning styles.

I can't see how a VR framework would aid me in creating teaching resources to teach my subject.
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It's not solely a VR framework, it's a general resource creation framework with specific recommendations for VR. Well, I hope that's going to be the case, I don't want to pre-empt the survey results. But in general, frameworks are there if someone decides the technology would be useful - it provides a set of guidelines and recommendations on how best to support and leverage the technology. It's perfectly fine for the technology not to be deemed useful for a specific area/sector.

Anyway, I wish you good luck. I got as far as finishing my Masters and then decided I'd end my post graduation education there.
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Cheers.
 
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Many thanks to those who have volunteered - you should now have a message from me with details.

If anyone else wants to help, please don't be shy :-)
 
Reality|Bites said:
Anyone else sat at a loss reading this and what is he actually trying to achieve?
What is the end result going to be?
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I'll expand on the initial description (although it's not really required for survey participation).

While there are lots of studies that investigate the educational benefits of technology for students (under the umbrella of 'Technology Enhanced Learning'), there is very little research looking at how teachers populate these tools with appropriate resources. Even if technology has benefits for the students, it's worthless if teachers cannot use it.

There are multiple pressures on educators when creating resources - time, whether it's topic or subject specific enough, if it can be used topic agnostically (mind mapping for example) etc. This is why repositories of resources exist - i.e. internally or externally. These are however often disjointed and do not provide a homogenous source. Then there are the tools used to create resources - often teachers use three or four different tools to create resources, often with different learning curves and skill floors.

What this study aims to find out is what pressures educators face, what type of resources they currently create (and how) and do they source resources externally and/or in collaboration with other educators, and what mechanism do they typically employ to do this.

By identifying teachers requirements, current frustrations and best practice in the field, we can attempt to provide an overarching framework (i.e. design/implementation guide) so that teachers may be better supported in terms of resource creation. This is especially important when institutions consider deploying new technology platforms for teaching and learning - i.e. immersive technology (AR/VR).

This falls under the umbrella of User Centred Design (my Ph.D is primarily in HCI), of which understanding how users actually work is the first central step. You don't go to users and ask them what they want - or else you end up with the Homer Simpson car!

Does that provide some clarity?
 
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ianh said:
Hi @amigafan2003 I can help if you need any extra. I've spent over 6 years as an engineering instructor where I continually create different training material from scratch after completing a Training Needs Analysis of the customers specific requirements, all of which falls under EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) Part 147 (Training) regulations and ISO 9001 (Quality Management) so my training material is regularly audited by outside agencies for Quality.
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Hi - that'd be great - it's mainly aimed at teachers but it would be good to get a different perspective :) I've just amended the "what sector do you mainly teach in" question to include "non-academic (i.e. workplace training)" as a response.

I will send you a PM with details.
 
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ianh said:
All done, so slightly longer than 10 minutes (about 30mins :D) but mainly due to longer answers to clarify how my workplace-type instruction works in the more education-type facility (School, College, Uni's etc) based questions. One thing that might help with time management is a "page X of X" or a percentage completed note.

On the topic of VR, overall I really think it would be a huge benefit in a training environment as long as educators remember it's not a magic bullet for everything. In specific cases it's a fantastic training aid whilst for other caes its a overly complex tool which takes away the personal touch from teaching, so teaching a whole lesson in VR probably isn't ideal but using it for certain aspects might be.
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Cool, thanks very much. You obviously gave some very detailed answers in the free text boxes if it took that long - so apologies for that but also thank you!

There is a progress bar at the top of the screen for the survey.
 
adolf hamster said:
done a bit of HE teaching/tutor work, including making back-end resources for making up mark schemes and organising electronic submissions if you're still wanting folk?
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It's more for people currently employed as a teacher/lecturer, but thanks for the offer :-)
 
=XDC=FluphyBunny said:
He gets to pretend he is better than everyone else and gets to call himself a Doctor.
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That's a bit rude. I don't know what I've done to deserve your ire.

Just look at his replies to people in this thread
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Care to point out any specific replies that cause you concern?

oh and for those offering help don’t forget Amiga has been very vocal about having absolutely no intentions of paying back what will now be substantial student loans.

Just something to keep in mind.
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FYI - you don't get a choice about paying the loans back - earn over a certain amount, it gets taken paye like - simple as that.

I'm perfectly happy to pay any student loan back under the terms I agreed to when taking the loan.
 
Many thanks for the offers of tasking the survey - you should have recd a PM from me with the details.

FYI - if anyone has started the survey but hasn't finished, please do so - I have now added entry to raffle for a 20quid Amazon gift card for all those that complete the survey :)
 
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