Archive for February, 2009

January 2009, Week 1 - a BLOG?!!

Monday, February 16th, 2009

The e-mail stated, “Good afternoon, your Project RITE blog is ready.  It is located at…”

“Wait, WAIT!” I said - “…a Blog?!  I need to write a blog?!”  Luckily for me, 2008 was a “learn about blogs” year, so the idea of doing a blog wasn’t scary or upsetting, I simply hadn’t factored in the time to WRITE on a blog.  Plus I wasn’t sure what was expected - what would the Project RITE folks LIKE to see on a blog from grant participants?

So an e-mail to Mary and a quick look at blogs from a previous year, and I feel a bit better. I already have an idea of what I want for Categories, and how often I’d like to post an update…but I am still not sure when I’m going to cram “write in my Project RITE blog,” into my work schedule - we’ll see!

[Note: The answer to "when" was evidently February, as I am now playing catch up on 4 months worth of blog posts! I'm hoping to be caught up to date on our project by the end of the week, as both online courses are now over half over and I have a moment to breath!]

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December 2008 - Course changes

Monday, February 16th, 2009

This project focuses on changes to two online courses offered by the Center for literacy Studies in conjunction with the Tennessee Division of Adult Education:

  • ESOL Basics: Fundamentals of Instruction for ESOL Instructors
  • Introduction to Learning Disabilities in Adults (also for instructors)

Both of these courses are offered free to instructors of low literacy adults and/or adults with low English language skills in Tennessee. Instructors self-register online and participate entirely voluntarily in these 6 week, 12 hour, online courses. There are no grades, only a complete/non complete designation, and instructors can use the hours towards maintaining certification. Almost all course assignments involve a discussion board post and replies are encouraged, but not required.

During December I met with the online course facilitator (and designer) for the ESOL Basics course, Sandra Fugate, and together we planned out which discussion board assignments/prompts would be modified to promote increased discussion (roughly one per week) .  The “theme” of these changes was to increase teacher sharing of resources/ideas/experiences for instruction via the discussion boards.  I’ve worked with Sandra before, so the collaboration was nothing new, but we were excited to be enhancing the course. Both of us found that shifting the wording of online course assignments to increase discussion renewed our interest and excitement in the course itself (which has been offered 4 times previously).

Using my conversations with Sandra as a template, I reviewed the Intro to LD online course (I am the facilitator and designer) and targeted at least one discussion board per week for changes - again with the idea of increasing the sharing of experiences, ideas, and teaching resources.

Also in December, we advertised these online courses via e-mail discussion lists.  The Center’s minimum registration to hold an online course is 10 - and neither course yet had that number of registrants. Without students, we can’t do the research!

Lots of work to do in January, but first we need registrants!

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December 2008 - the IRB Process

Monday, February 16th, 2009

The e-mail stated: “Congratulations! Your 2009 Project RITE proposal on enhancing student discussion board participation has been funded…Please send proof of IRB approval or exempt status….”  Ok, yeah, my director made me put information about IRB approval in the grant proposal.  Now that we *received* the grant, I needed to learn about this “IRB” process - as I’d never gone through it before.

Now other folks may tell you differently, but I found the IRB process to be fairly straightforward, IRB folks very helpful, and that completing the process itself assisted us in getting some of our research project tasks completed!  After reading through the materials, consulting with our research contact at the Center, and talking with the IRB Compliance Officer (scary title, nice lady), we were determined to be exempt from full IRB review.  All our online course modifications and research tools were either normal curriculum-type modifications, or study of existing data.

The process did make us design and submit the following in December:

  • Changes in our online course Evaluation
  • Photo permissions form
  • Drop out follow-up survey
  • Participants of previous online courses follow-up survey 

We  received IRB approval by December 19th - just in time to go home for the holidays! Whoot!

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November 2008 - Grant Revisions

Monday, February 16th, 2009

At the Center for Literacy Studies we have been repeatedly asking the question, “How can we improve participant networking on the discussion boards in our online courses?”  or “How do we get our teachers to ‘talk’ more online?” 

To this end, we submitted a proposal for a Project RITE Grant at the beginning of October, 2008. We heard back from the committee at the end of October, interested in the proposal, but requesting revisions.  We then submitted a revised proposal by November 10th, and receive notice of funding on December 1, 2009.  As our original proposal included a timeline beginning in November, we feel a bit like we started out a month behind on research tasks!  But writing the grant (my first ever) and then revising it, was a very educational exercise in and of itself. 

I did a lot of  research in online coummunity building techniques as part of the grant writing process itself.  We also had to clarify/make a research-based connection between  increased “conversation” in our online courses and increased learning in our online courses.  The process also did a lot to assist us in narrowing our reseracha nd analysis plan.  We have a LOT of online course data and needed to keep ourselves focused on analyzing onlya very small portion of it!

In November we did start the collaboration process, sketch out timelines, begin the ’survey of the research’ process, and problem-solve some technical details.  We are very excited and happy to be participating in Project RITE! View our Proposal Abstract!

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