Research

I plan for my research in the Learning, Design, and Technology program to focus on student to student interaction in learning environments. During my first year in the program, I have focused primarily on asynchronous online discussions. Over the course of this year, I planned to (a) work to connect theory to my ideas about student to student interactions and learning and (b) continue to bolster my technical skills, particularly as applied to data collection and analysis. I have made progress on both fronts. I have investigated theory in several of the classes I have taken this year (Foundations, Studio, and New Literacies). That investigation of theory has helped me begin to articulate a framework that I hope to build on throughout the program. I have grown my technical skills both through the studio course, and by making my own learning path.

Over the course of this year, I have been working on the following research:

Describing Discussion Data For this research, I was able to obtain nearly 250,000 discussion posts made in asynchronous online courses over two years at a large university. My goal with this data is to paint a broad picture of what activity happened in the discussion forums over that time.

Online Discussions: What is Quality? This research attempts to have faculty judge contributions to academic online discussions to determine their concept of quality in that setting.

Conference Presentations

I have submitted to present about the Describing Discussion Data project at the Distance Teaching and Learning Conference at the University of Madison Wisconsin and at AECT 2016.

Teaching

In my role at the Office of Online Learning, I facilitated two cohorts of Online Learning Fellows. In my role as facilitator, I led the group in several face to face seminar-style meetings, and I served as the instructor for a short online course experience.

Service

I reviewed conference proposals for AECT in the Division of Distance Learning, Design and Development division, and School & Media Technology division.

Future Goals

I would like to become involved in research with members of the Learning, Design, and Technology department. I have explored a few options for becoming involved over the past two semesters, but they have not worked out for a variety of reasons (e.g. time conflicts). Additionally, I would like to participate in the authoring and submission of articles to a variety of journals, for example TechTrends and Educational Technology Research and Development.