Design based for lisbon 2011

Research Methods in Distance Education: Design Based Research Terry Anderson PhD Seminar Nova University, Lisbon March 2011

Tuesday’s Agenda
Lecture – Research methods and in DE
Design Based research
Break
Design Based research in Action
Athabasca’s Elgg Project

The context of Distance Education Implementation
Disruptive innovation (Christensen, 2008) simpler, not wanted by main stream customers
Rapid gains in functionality
Cheaper
Adaptive
Moving from peripheral to mainstream (blended and online for full time students)

Good Research
Good Theory (see http://www.learning-theories.com )
Good Question(s)
Good methodology
Brave conclusions
Important applications
Spans multiple iterations

Because much e-learning tools and context is so emergent - need for
Demographic studies
Who is using what for doing what?
How are they using multi-use tools?
Visualization of activity and relationships
Network analysis - SNAPP
Connection between context and type of use
Data mining/analytics
Sharing and making visible research and practitioner results

Research Paradigms

Research Paradigms
Quantitative ~ discovery of the laws that govern behavior
Qualitative ~ understandings from an insider perspective
Critical ~ Investigate and expose the power relationships
Design-based ~ interventions, interactions and their effect in multiple contexts

Paradigm 1 Quantitative Research
employs a scientific discourse derived from the epistemologies of positivism and realism.

“ those who are seeking the strict way of truth should not trouble themselves about any object concerning which they cannot have a certainty equal to arithmetic or geometrical demonstration”
(Rene Descartes)
Inordinate support and faith in randomized controlled studies

Quantitative 1 – CMC Content Analysis
Anderson, Garrison, Rourke 1997-2003
http://communitiesofinquiry.com - 9 papers reviewing results focusing on reliable , quantitative analysis
Identified ways to measure teaching, social and cognitive ‘presence’
Most reliable methods are beyond current time constraints of busy teachers
Questions of validity
Serves as basic research as grounding for AI methods and major survey work of the future
Serves as qualitative heuristic for teachers and course designers

Quantitative – Meta-Analysis
Aggregates many effect sizes creating large N’s more powerful results.
Ungerleider and Burns (2003)
Systematic review of effectiveness and efficiency of Online education versus Face to face
The type of interventions studied were extraordinary diverse –only criteria was a comparison group
“ Only 10 of the 25 studies included in the in-depth review were not seriously flawed, a sobering statistic given the constraints that went into selecting them for the review.”

Is DE Better than Classroom Instruction? Project 1: 2000 – 2004
Question: How does distance education compare to classroom instruction? (inclusive dates 1985-2002)
Total number of effect sizes: k = 232
Measures: Achievement, Attitudes and Retention (opposite of drop-out)
Divided into Asynchronous and Synchronous DE
Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Lou, Y. Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L., Wallet, P.A., Fiset, M., & Huang, B. (2004). How does distance education compare to classroom instruction? A meta-analysis of the empirical literature. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 379-439.

Primary findings
DE and CI are essentially equal (g+ ≈ 0.0 to low average effect) on all measures
Effect size distributions are heterogeneous; some DE >> CI, some DE << CI
Generally poor methodological quality
Pedagogical study features account for more variation than media study features (Clark, 1994)
Interactive DE an important variable*
* Lou, Y., Bernard, R.M., & Abrami, P.C. (2006). Media and pedagogy in undergraduate distance education: A theory-based meta-analysis of empirical literature. Educational Technology Research & Development, 54(2), 141-176.

Summary of results: Achievement Achievement Outcomes *Significantly heterogeneous average effect Type of DE k g+ Sig. Combined 318* 0.013 * > 0.05 Synchronous 92 – 0.102 * < 0.05 Asynchronous 174 0.053 * < 0.05

Summary of results: Attitudes Attitude Outcomes *Significantly heterogeneous average effect Type of DE k g+ Sig. Combined 154 – 0.081 * < 0.05 Synchronous 83 – 0.185 * < 0.05 Asynchronous 71 – 0.034 * > 0.05

Summary of results: Retention Retention Outcomes *Significantly heterogeneous effect sizes Type of DE k g+ Sig. Combined 103 – 0.057 * < 0.05 Synchronous 17 0.005 > 0.05 Asynchronous 53 – 0.093 * < 0.05

Equivalency: Are all types of Interaction necessary? Anderson, 2003 IRRODL

Anderson’s Equivalency Theorem (2003)
Moore (1989) distinctions are:
Three types of interaction
student-student interaction
student-teacher interaction
Student-content interaction
Anderson (2003) hypotheses state:
High levels of one out of 3 interactions will produce satisfying educational experience
Increasing satisfaction through teacher and learner interaction interaction may not be as time or cost-effective as student-content interactive learning sequences

Do the three types of interaction differ? Moore’s distinctions Achievement and Attitude Outcomes Moore’s distinctions seem to apply for achievement (equal importance), but not for attitudes (however, samples are low for SS and SC)

Does strengthening interaction improve achievement and attitudes? Anderson’s hypotheses Anderson’s first hypothesis about achievement appears to be supported Anderson’s second hypothesis about satisfaction (attitude) appears to be supported, but only to an extent (i.e., only 5 studies in High Category) Achievement and Attitude Outcomes

Bernard, Abrami, Borokhovski, Wade, Tamin, & Surkes, (in press). Examining Three Forms of Interaction in Distance Education: A Meta-Analysis of Between-DE Studies. Review of Research in Education

Because much web 2.0 tech use is so emergent need for:
Demographic studies
Who is using what for doing what?
How are they using multi-use tools?
Visualization of activity and relationships
Network analysis
Connection between context and type of use
Data mining

Quantitative Research Summary
Can be useful especially when fine tuning well established practice
Provides incremental gains in knowledge, not revolutionary ones
The need to “control” context often makes results of little value to practicing professionals
In times of rapid change too early quantitative testing may mask beneficial positive capacity
Will we ever be able to afford blind reviewed, random assignment studies?

Paradigm 2 Qualitative Paradigm
Many different varieties
Generally answer the question ‘why’ rather then ‘what’, ‘when’ or ‘how much’?
Presents special challenges in distributed contexts due to distance between participants and researchers
Currently most common type of DE research (Rourke & Szabo, 2002)

Qualitative study of Social Software
Critically important:
In early stages of adoption
To track effects of user competence and efficacy
As contexts are personalized
as tools are appropriated by users for entirely different tasks than those intended by developers

Qualitative Example
Dearnley (2003) Student support in open learning: Sustaining the Process
Practicing Nurses, weekly F2F tutorial sessions
Phenomenological study using grounded theory discourse

Core category to emerge was “Finding the professional voice” Dearnley and Matthew (2003 and 2004)

Qualitative example 2
Mann, S. (2003) A personal inquiry into an experience of adult learning on-line. Instructional Science 31
Conclusions:
The need to facilitate the presentation of learner and teacher identities in such a way that takes account of the loss of the normal channel
The need to make explicit the development of operating norms and conventions
reduced communicative media there is the potential for greater misunderstanding
The need to consider ways in which the developing learning community can be open to the other of uncertainty, ambiguity and difference

3rd Paradigm Critical Research
Asks who gains in power?
David Noble’s critique of ‘digital diploma Mills’ most prominent Canadian example
Are profits generated from user generated content exploitative?
Confronting the “net changes everything” mantra of many social software proponents.
Who is being excluded from social software

See Norm Friesen’s Friesen, N. (2009) Re-thinking e-learning research: foundations, methods, and practices. Peter Lang Publishers

Is the extraction of information from the masses exploitative or empowering?

Why does Facebook own all the content that we supply?
Does the power of the net further marginalize the non connected?
Who benefits from voluntary disclosure?
Why did the One Laptop Per Child fail?

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Paradigm Wars Rekindled
Current research “more resembles the pendulum swings characteristic of art or fashion, rather than the progressive improvements characteristic of science and technology” (p. 16).
Slavin (2002) in Educational Researcher
Solution to embrace “evidence based learning”
Projected to increase from 5% to 75% of US Gov. funding by 2007 for “research that addresses causal questions and uses random assignments ….” Slavin, 2002 p. 15

Do Either Qualitative or Quantitative Methods Meet Real Needs of Practicing Distance Educators?

But what type of research has most effect on practice?
Kennedy (1999) - teachers rate relevance and value of results from each of major paradigms.
No consistent results – teachers are not a homogeneous group of consumers but they do find research of value
“ The studies that teachers found to be most persuasive, most relevant, and most influential to their thinking were all studies that addressed the relationship between teaching and learning.”

But what type of research has most effect on Practice?
“ The findings from this study cast doubt on virtually every argument for the superiority of any particular research genre, whether the criterion for superiority is persuasiveness, relevance, or ability to influence practitioners’ thinking.” Kennedy, (1999)

4th Paradigm Design-Based Research
Related to engineering and architectural research
Focuses on the design, construction, implementation and adoption of a learning initiative in an authentic context
Related to ‘Development Research’
Closest educators have to a “home grown” research methodology

Design-Based Research Studies
iterative,
process focused,
interventionist,
collaborative,
multileveled,
utility oriented,
theory driven and generative
(Shavelson et al, 2003)

Critical characteristics of design experiments
According to Reeves (2000:8), Ann Brown (1992) and Alan Collins (1992):
addressing complex problems in real contexts in collaboration with practitioners,
integrating known and hypothetical design-principles with technological affordances to render plausible solutions to these complex problems, and
conducting rigorous and reflective inquiry to test and refine innovative learning environments as well as to define new design-principles.

Design-based research
Methodology developed by educators for educators
Developed from American pragmatism – Dewey (Anderson, 2005)
Recent Theme Issues:
The Journal of the Instructional Sciences, ( 13 , 1, 2004),
Educational Researcher ( 32 , 1, 2003) and
Educational Psychologist (39, 4, 2004)
See bibliography at http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSIGs/DesignBasedSIG/
My article at www.cjlt.ca/abstracts.html

Integrative Learning Design (Bannan-Ritland, 2003)

“ design-based research enables the creation and study of learning conditions that are presumed productive but are not well understood in practice, and the generation of findings often overlooked or obscured when focusing exclusively on the summative effects of an intervention” Wang & Hannafin, 2003

Iterative because
‘ Innovation is not restricted to the prior design of an artifact, but continues as artifacts are implemented and used”
Implementations are “inevitably unfinished” (Stewart and Williams (2005)
intertwined goals of (1) designing learning environments and (2) developing theories of learning (DBRC, 2003)

Amiel, T., & Reeves, T. C. (2008).

Design Based research and the Science of Complexity
Complexity theory studies the emergence of order in multifaceted, changing and previously unordered contexts
This emerging order becomes the focus of iterate interventions and evaluations
Order emerges at the “edge of chaos” in response to rapid change, and failure of previous organization models

Call Centres At Athabasca: Answer 80% of student inquiries Savings of over $100,000 /year Anderson, T. (2005). Design-based research and its application to a call center innovation in distance education. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 31(2), 69-84

D-B Research examples Design-Based Research Strategies for Studying Situated Learning in a Multi-user Virtual Environment Chris Dede, 2004

Graduate Student Resource Hub in Design Research in Education
http://www.lkl.ac.uk/projects/designresearch/

Need to study usability, scalability and innovation adoption within bureaucratic systems
Allow knowledge tools to evolve in natural context through supportive nourishment of staff

Conclusion
Education research is grossly under-resourced to meet the magnitude of opportunity and demand
Paradigm wars are unproductive
Design-based research offers a promising new research design model
It can be used for Doctoral dissertations see
Herrington, J., McKenney, S., Reeves, T., & Oliver, R. (2007). Design-based research and doctoral students: Guidelines for preparing a dissertation proposal.

Design Based research in Action
Phase 1 Exploration – surveys, talking to faculty and tutors, investigating open source tools, setting research questions
Phase 2. Building the intervention – Elgg through two versions and 85 plugins (on going)

Phase 3 Evaluation – Before and after survey’s see:
Anderson, T., Poelhuber, B., & McKerlich, R. (2010). Self Paced Learners Meet Social Software. Online Journal of Distance Education Administration, 13 http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/Fall133/anderson_poellhuber_mcKerlich133.html
Dr students – Use of past student archives
Ongoing iterations and development of tools
Phase 4 – Testing in multiple contexts
Development of design principles/patterns

Survey Results –Anderson et al 2004
78% indicated they would interact with other students if they were also able to proceed through the course at their own pace .

Survey Results Anderson et al 2004
Only 29% of the student respondents had participated in the optional (credit and non credit) interactive computer conferences

Undergrad Survey Sept. 2009 Draft Results AU Unpaced Learners social Software Survey, Anderson Sept 2009 sent to 3763 undergrad students who enrolled in AU ungrad courses in Aug.2009 24.7% response rate N=820

Draft Results, AU Unpaced Learners Social Software Survey, Anderson Sept 2009 N = 820

Draft Results, AU Unpaced Learners Social Software Survey, Anderson Sept 2009

Draft Results, AU Unpaced Learners Social Software Survey, Anderson, Sept 2009.

Draft Results, AU Unpaced Learners Social Software Survey, Anderson, Sept 2009. 25.12% N = 820

Draft Results, AU Unpaced Learners Social Software Survey, Anderson, Sept 2009. N = 820

Draft Results, AU Unpaced Learners Social Software Survey, Anderson, Sept 2009. 47.93%

Draft Results, AU Unpaced Learners Social Software Survey, Anderson, Sept 2009. 61.95% 31.47% 6.59%

Draft Results, AU Unpaced Learners Social Software Survey, Anderson, Sept 2009.

Lots of Support
“ Not networking with other students, and not having peers is one drawback in doing individualized studies through Athabasca, with these technologies available could solve this problem.”
“ I think that hearing other people's opinions is a great way to spark new thoughts of your own. I also think that it is a great way to ask questions rather than emailing back and forth or making long distance phone calls.”

Lots of Concerns
“ People have other commitments and might not be able to join in, they like to do things on their own time.”
“ I am not part of a social network due to the fact that I work in mental health, I am concerned about my privacy.”
“ I'm scared as a first time user of e-learning, that I may miss something”

Survey Conclusions
We have a very heterogeneous population of net users and non users
Many of our learners are “don’t know” about web 2.0 tool use in formal education – are they literate????

Challenges to AU Moving to Connectivist Pedgagogy
Personal competence, literacy and tools
Dealing effectively with disruptive technologies
Crystallized ways of thinking about our educational development and delivery model
Developing Tutor Networks
Union contracts ???

How to insure we all are learning professionals?

My Personal Learning Network Professional, Hobby, Personal News Produsage, networks Personal Hosting: Blogs, E-portfolios, Presentations, Profile Bookmarks Tags Resources Collections Photos Books Formal Education Provider(s) Production Tools Email Social Networks I PLE Identity

Open Net Athabasca University Athabasca Landing E-Portfolios Profiles Networks Bookmarks Blogs Media lab Secondlife campus AUspace AlFresco CMS Moodle Library Course Development ELGG MY AU Login Registry OERs, YouTUBE Discovery Read & Comment Single Sign on CIDER Research/Community Networks Sample CC Course units and Branded OERs Passwords Passwords

Network Tool Set (example) Text Text Stepanyan, Mather & Payne, 2007

Access Controls in Elgg

Design Based research in Practice
Athabasca Landing
Elgg based
Started in 2008
1600 users (2011)
Unpaced
Paced Courses
Informal Learning

The Demo!
Elgg

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