Happy New Year all, I trust you had a well earned break and you are now celebrating how amazing 2014 will be.
I thought for my first post in 2014 I would share my own news: very excitingly I have moved into the analysis stage for the first survey in my research for my Masters in Education. I will still post all things e-learning but I will also share with you my research journey along the way.
So to start I will explain my research approach (and for your sake without the theoretical aspects of why).
To broaden my understanding and in an effort to prepare a practitioner survey that would ask relevant and reliable questions I scanned current literature and engaged in online conversations about e-learning across several social media networking sites over a period of 2 years. More than 96 individual online conversations (such as LinkedIn and Facebook group discussions) were documented to capture key words, themes, problems and solutions for the topics discussed. The data collected did not identify the writer in anyway, it simply highlighted the main theme of the discussion and the key arguments presented.
Once I felt I had a clear picture of the trending topics and key arguments the data was analysed to identify what might be appropriate categories for the main issues discussed. if you are interested in the categories you might like to visit my research blog http://www.tumblr.com/blog/gail-vet-tchr-methodology.
I wasn’t surpsised that quality e-design and learner engagement were quite topical during this time. The categories were used to formulate a list of possible survey questions for this research. Once the list of possible questions was formulated each question was carefully considered to ensure it would contribute to the aim of the research, hypothesis and questions asked. In the end a total of 50 questions were included in the practitioner survey. The survey was distributed to my personal online networks. This included Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress.
I am now ready to start surveying students of online learning. Even if you are a teacher who has undertaken learning using technology or totally online please feel free to complete the student survey (much shorter than the practitioner survey) https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6NXKBDL. I would love to hear about your experiences.
Future posts will expand on what practitioners revealed in the survey but for now I can reveal that I received 51 usable responses representing a cross section of the VET sector.
Secondary Education (high school) 2.08% Higher Education 12.50% Public training provider 47.92% Private training provider 22.92% Not for Profit 12.50% Enterprise training provider 6.25% Government 14.58%
Eighty six percent of the respondents claimed to be experienced VET teachers with varying experience with e-learning.
The survey moved into the respondents perceptions of e-learning starting with their own beliefs on how important it was for a teacher/facilitator of e-learning to actually have experience as an e-facilitator. Overwhelmingly 98.04% of respondents said it was important to have experience and only 1.96% said it was not.
Personally, I think this is a good start. Stay tuned for insights into what the e-learning practitioners had to say about e-learning in future posts.
Back in touch soon.
Technology in Vocational Educaton and Training (VET) 