Week 7

This week’s assignment was to complete peer reviews of my fellow classmates literature reviews. I completed two peer reviews that focused on: TrainingVolunteer Mentors Working With Youth and  

Teacher Self Efficacy and Student Self Efficacy: Should they be used in determining the achievement of Common Core State Standards? This task took longer than I anticipated.   I was constantly re-reading and rewording. I would often have to remind myself that we all have different styles of writing.

This task was extremely difficult I kept reading over the literature and questioning APA citations.  However, after the opportunity to read my fellow students literature reviews I was able to reflect upon 

my own literature reviews.  I realized I changed my APA citations by deleting a comma. This was an error I realized before to receiving feedback from my peers.  I’m sure this won’t be the first or the last unnecessary error. Peer reviews have many benefits, perhaps the most important of is the ability for a write to strengthen their own writing by contemplating the responses of an actual reader and receiving that feedback. Peer reviewing allows a diversity of opinions to be brought to the table. I have completed peer reviews but only in my doctoral studies.  I think it is a skill that develops with practice.

Having a rubric to refer to throughout the review process was a great tool that helped to keep my focus.  I would like to have a rubric provided for every assignment. Dr. Weaver provided the class with a rubric that allowed me to focus on reviewing the paper. The rubric provided set guidelines for peer-reviewers which asked us to complete specific tasks: examples include indicating the strongest part of a paper; areas that need focus; and indicating sentences or paragraphs that seem out of order, incompletely explained, or otherwise in need of revision.  This allowed me to comment on another's writing in a specific and constructive way. It’s easier said than done to take constructive criticism, but peer reviews are essential part of the writing process that all successful writers engage in at some point.

  

Even though I was somewhat hesitant to provide constructive feedback to my peers, for fear of offending them, I am actually looking forward to hearing what they have to say.   Hopefully, they share this opinion!  I’d rather get the feedback now rather than later. Thus, this assignment provided me with the opportunity to work on the constructive feedback I could provide and  receive based on my second draft and have a broader audience’s perspectives on my writing.   

I also found that using word track changes is much more user-friendly than  Googledocs. I can’t imagine editing papers on a hardcopy!

This specific assignment allowed me to better comprehend the criteria used to determine whether a paper is well written. I am prepared to begin the editing process once again. My first focus will by my APA citations! I think the million-dollar idea is an APA online checker!  I wonder if anyone has created a program for that yet?  

As I reflect on this process and my next step I think its always important to have a second set of eyes look over your work. However, I need to plan more in advanced. Often times I have a week deadline, life happens and before I know it a paper is due. In the future I going to make a cognitive effort to have a second set of eye look over my work.  I often know what I mean to say but sometimes it doesn’t always come out that way. 

Week #6 Reflection

This week my second draft of my literature review was due. I had a very very rough first draft.  This particular topic is becoming quite a challenge to me due to the limited research on using social media to increase parental communication.

The prior week I just compiled notes and research. I didn’t really begin the true writing process; however, I was fully prepared to devote every second of my time to writing the second draft of my literature review. Unfortunately, a wrench was thrown into my plans in the form of massive lake effect snowstorm. I live in Hamburg, New york, which is south of Buffalo. We got blasted with 80 inches of snow in two-day period. I was snowed in from Monday night, November 17^th to Sunday November 23^rd confined to my house eating the remnants of food in my pantry.  This made for a great opportunity to dive into the literature review, in between shoveling of course.   

I have been in contact with Dr. Dennis through email and met by appointment through Google hangouts. We went through the various library databases in search of (parent/adult/teacher/Educator/…training) She is also struggling to find research on my topic.  She is in contact with her colleagues trying to find articles, research and information as well as possible key search terms. 

As I write my second draft I feel as though I am constantly rearranging, adding, deleting and questioning myself. I am also fixing my APA errors as I construct draft two. This is a process once again that will be ongoing.  I look forward to my classmate and Dr. Weavers feedback and recommendations.

I once again used my outline to guide me through the writing process. I hope using the outline will assist me in keeping a coherent flow throughout my literature review. I am considering making a mind map to come up with some additional search/key terms, which I may have overlooked. I feel like I am researching more now that I did during the annotated bibliographies. I keep finding articles that steer me in different directions and hope I will find relevant research on social media and professional development.

It is imperative to take breaks after writing, reading, and researching.  After a few hours of work it was clear my writing would turn into incoherent thoughts. I found that a lot of the research I compiled never made it into my literature review.  This really frustrated me because I thought a majority of the information was very informative however it did not align with my topics.

I need to keep well-organized notes, and use keywords to refer back to the literature. I have compiled various pages of notes in Googledocs. However, there is no organization to it.  After reflecting on the past two weeks I found that it is usually better to research one very specific idea thoroughly than to attempt to tackle a big theme (or many ideas) and not be able to treat it (or them) in depth.  I am far from being done and I still have a lot of work to do!

Week #5 Reflection

This week I began organizing all of my annotated bibliographies and started drafting my Literature Review.  I also have been in contact with Dr. Dennis and will be meeting with her via Google Hangouts this Wednesday to search for more articles pertaining to how to guide teacher/parents to communicate using technology and social media. She said that I might need to make my own interpretations if we cannot find any research. The first draft is definitely a draft that will develop overtime.

The outline I created for my literature review has already been tweaked and revised.  I also realized I need to include the barriers and benefits of technology as well as the current statistics of social media and technology. 

I was once again overwhelmed going through all of my bibliographies and organizing them into topics.  I actually had more articles about using technology to communicate than I thought. However quite a few were outdated in regards to technology such as using voice mail and email as a communication tool.  I will continue to research studies to find more relevant information that pertains to my literature review.

I also had to return to printing paper copies of my articles. I tried to save paper and time however I had to return to my old habit of printing off a hard copy. This took sometime because I had to go search the various databases in which I found the articles. I can’t help highlighting, underlining and tabbing articles. My kitchen counter has been overtaken by articles, post notes and every highlighter color ever made.    

During the process of trying to do my work I began to empathize with my students who are now required to take all their common formative assessments online. I think that as a student technology is great tool but sometimes-traditional methods are also beneficial. Thus allowing students to have a hard copy as well as a virtual copy of the test would be more beneficial. We all have different learning styles and at this point in my career I am still learning my own styles, which can vary from assignment to assignment. Writing this literature review I will once again discover what works and what doesn’t for me personally that I can apply to my future research.


When I reflect on reviewing the literature from my annotated bibliographies it requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesizing information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills. After creating my outline I hope that it will allow me to organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it.

I do feel that it is important to be up-to date on the research I use but it is also important not to forget the older studies. Some of these studies have valuable results that could be used in my future research. I quickly learned that not all research studies are created equal. Thus writing the literature review will allow me to recognize which particular studies have been the most important to the furthering of knowledge in their particular research area. For example, Joyce Epstein  seems to be the lead researcher in parental involvement and her studies have been well documented throughout the research I have been reading.

I am looking forward to writing and developing my literature review. This will obviously be an ongoing and ever changing process.  I realize that writing a literature review can be a lengthy endeavor I need to give myself plenty of time. It is important to bear in mind that my reading and writing will feed into each other. Through my literature review I look to compare the results from a wide variety of published research.  

Week #4 Reflection

This week my assignment was to create twenty annotated bibliographies to use for my literature review.  At this point I have been able to compile sixty annotated bibliographies, which at first sounds like a lot, but personally I feel there are topics that I still need to research. This will be an ongoing process as I write my literature review.  At this point I feel like I could still read another sixty articles and still just be scratching the surface about the topic using technology to increase parental communication.  However, after reading all these articles I am more confident about the topic and I am interested to learn more. I also included in my search how to increase parental communications using technology with English Language Learners. This is a huge concern at my school and I would like to include this in my Literature Review.  

It is important for me to synthesize the research on my particular topic.  The more articles I read the more information I find I still need to gather.  Having completed the sixty annotated bibliographies has provided me with a good starting point for my literature review. This information will allow me to start an outline that will give me organization and structure to start writing my literature.  As I begin this process I am certain as stated above that I will still be researching articles to find information that I may have overlooked in my previous research.

I personally have learned that organization and time management is vital component to completing this assignment.  If you try to do too much at once it turns to frustration and mediocre work.  I find that this is also true in life. It reminds me of a quote that my father overuses “moderation is the key to success.”  Once again creating an outline for my literature review will give me direction and organization.  I find if I do not have clearly defined steps/outlined I often find that I can go off on a tangent and waste valuable time on areas not relevant to my research.

For this assignment I continued to use a graphic organizer template and GoogleDocs. I also I set goals in which I had to read 3 to 4 articles a night. I didn’t focus on a specific topic for this set of annotated bibliographies. However, I looked up other articles/research that I had from previous annotated bibliographies to guide my research.  It took me two weeks to finally organize my articles in alphabetical order as I created my annotated bibliographies/ order. This was a step that I often had to do at the end of my twenty articles which was extremely time consuming because I had to cut/paste and reformat. This saved me about an hour of time!

As I stated in my previous blog I enjoyed reading the dissertations.  This week I found a few dissertations that I thought would pertain to my research. Unfortunately I had to request some of them from ILL. Unfortunately, a few of the dissertations that I wanted to read I had to purchase.  I am impressed with the turn around time with ILL. It only took a day to receive this information.  I am still considering purchasing one of the dissertations because I think it could be extremely informative.  I also purchased a book from Amazon Social Media for School Leaders a comprehensive guide to getting the most out of Facebook, Twitter and Other Essential Web Tools by Dr. Brian J. Dixon. I am looking forward to reading.  As I reflect back to the first week of class (like you stated) prewriting actually did begin back when I selected my topic and I began writing my question stems. That was an “aha moment.”  

I still need to research teacher-to-parent communication and training techniques using social media. I have been searching the various databases and only find limited periodicals with a excerpt about schools/teachers using it as a communication tool. I am going to contact Dr. Dennis for some insight regarding searching this topic.  Hopefully it is as simple as redefining my search terms.  I am going to keep my fingers crossed. I am a little concerned there is limited research on this topic because from the articles I have read it seems there is limited research.  I know there is information out there I just need to keep looking!

Qualitative data provides a rich, detailed picture to be built up about why people act in certain ways, and their feelings about these actions. However, it is important to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative data analysis as this may influence your choice of data collection.

Advantages

•    Provides depth and detail: looks deeper than analyzing ranks and counts by recording attitudes, feelings and behaviors

•    Creates openness: encouraging people to expand on their responses can open up new topic areas not initially considered

•    Simulates people's individual experiences: a detailed picture can be built up about why people act in certain ways and their feelings about these actions

Attempts to avoid pre-judgments: if used alongside quantitative data collection, it can explain why a particular response was given

Disadvantages

•    Usually fewer people studied: collection of qualitative data is generally more time consuming that quantitative data collection and therefore unless time, staff and budget allows it is generally necessary to include a smaller sample size.

•    Less easy to generalize: because fewer people are generally studied it is not possible to generalize results to that of the population. Usually exact numbers are reported rather than percentages.

•    Difficult to make systematic comparisons: for example, if people give widely differing responses that are highly subjective.

Dependent on skills of the researcher: particularly in the case of conducting interviews, focus groups and observation.

Strengths and weaknesses of ethnomethodology

Strengths	Weaknesses
+ ability to examine complex cultural phenomena + orientation towards holistic perspective and tendency to identify diverse aspects of culture	- ethnomethodology’s status as a science. - whether to focus universal knowledge or specific knowledge - validity of the reports - needs skillful researcher and lot of time in the field

Different case selection criteria

Strategy	Purpose
Random sample	To avoid biases in the sample. The sample size is important for generalization.
Stratified sample	T o generalize for sub-groups within the population
Extreme/deviant cases	To obtain information about unusual cases
Maximum variation cases	To obtain information from cases that differ from each other
Critical cases	To achieve information about a case that has a strategic importance to the problem. The case of falsification.
Paradigmatic cases	To develop a metaphor for the domain that the case concerns

Strengths and weaknesses of case studies

Strengths	Weaknesses
+ results are easy to disseminate to a	- generalizations cannot be made easily
non-technical audience + o+ comparison between similar cases and situations observation of the effect of a “real context” easily. - cannot be reproduced easily (or even verified) - there may be observer bias.	- cannot be reproduced easily (or even verified) - there may be observer bias.

Strengths and weaknesses of grounded theory

Strengths	Weaknesses
+ identifies the situated nature a knowledge, as well as the contingent nature of practice + produces a 'rich' or 'thick' description that properly acknowledges areas of conflict and contradiction. + more likely to determine what actually happens	- overwhelming amount of data => difficult to manage - investigator needs to be well skilled with the method (Randolph, 2007) - no standard rules to follow ·       identification of categories ·       saturation of data

Strengths and weaknesses of grounded theory

Strengths	Weaknesses
+ identifies the situated nature a knowledge, as well as the contingent nature of practice + produces a 'rich' or 'thick' description that properly acknowledges areas of conflict and contradiction. + more likely to determine what actually happens	- overwhelming amount of data => difficult to manage - investigator needs to be well skilled with the method (Randolph, 2007) - no standard rules to follow ·       identification of categories ·       saturation of data