February 28th
Finally after a month of waiting for approval, I have received the approval for to begin the research project.
Having this time in which I was more focused on reading theory has given the opportunity to re-examine the proposal.
I am pretty much staying "true" to my research question but I am re-thinking the interview questions which I created.
I have found several gaps which I need to address:
- I do not specifically address the three principles of UDL, representation, expression and engagement. These are central to the UDL framework and I need to make sure that I address these during my intial interviews, the weekly memos, and the final interviews.
- Also central to UDL are the three networks which all learning engages: recognition, strategic, and affective. I considered affective when I was writing my questions but I need to review them to see if I also address recognition and strategic networks. The learning networks and the principles of UDL need to be considered simultaneously.
- My initial interview questions will gauge what students think about their learning as it occurs in their academic environment. I will be adding some questions which address the three principles.
- I am looking more closely at the weekly memos. I have found that I will be finding out the student's thoughts but these will be "after the fact." They will not be involved in design themselves. I have several choices
- I can take their responses to the weekly memos and incorporate them into the design of other lessons. The drawback here is that students will not be designing the lessons. This is more like Action research in which I take the information I learn and then apply it to future lessons. This is really not participation and I really want to focus my study on how participation changes the design of the lessons so the students have to "know" that they are desiging, that their suggestions are actually making a difference in the lessons which they are working on.
- I have to be careful that I am "leading" them into a path that I have already pre-determined and I am almost certain that they will expect me to do this. They will want to give me the answers that they think I am looking for. How do I keep this from happening? Only experience can help here...
- I can redesign the memos so that they are providing suggestions for the next lessons and I can write a memo about how I incorporated their suggestions into the lesson.
- I can use the wiki to design the lessons. I can put the objectives which need to be taken into account during the design and I can ask students to add their perspectives or ideas into the design page. Then they can see exactly how the lesson is evolving. The drawback is the time that is needed for this. Do I really have the time needed to do this?
- I can use the above method if we design a unit which we have not begun yet and which we will not begin for several weeks. This will give us the time to get started and not rush through.
- Also, using this method would allow me to keep the weekly memos so that I could look at those for what we are currently working on and the unit co-design for what we will work on later.
- Since students have already been working with me for several weeks, I wonder how the methods and strategies which I have already been using will affect the choices that the students make.