EDTC 811 Summer Institute III
EDTC 811: This course is the third five-week intensive summer seminar for Year III doctoral cohort candidates. Candidates foster their development as scholars and professionals for service by presenting their scholarly work to a wider audience and provide a professional portfolio with a growth plan for continued learning and renewal.
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EDTC 803 Data Analysis and Report Writing
EDTC 803: With the program’s emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and innovative learning experiences, this course is an in-depth treatment of the research process and techniques for planning and designing research projects. Emphasis will be placed on the appropriate choice of methodologies for a variety of problem situations.
A mock proposal that would organize an Art and Soul Store fundraiser in order to raise money for the Glen South Food Bank. Project includes a fundraiser proposal, provisional timeline, key personnel flowchart, and mockup flier.
Reflection: This assignment helped me learn how to write a fundraiser proposal for a school board of education, develop a timeline of the fundraiser's objectives, description of work, and start and end dates, descriptive details of the activities, develop of hierarchy of the Fundraising Committee Key Personnel, and create an appealing mockup flier.
A graph-related project that consisted of exercises retrieved from Kuiper & Clippinger’s Contemporary Business Reports (5th ed.). Five exercises were selected, followed by the introduce-display-discuss technique. A table and figure follow each set of data. Bar, line, and pie charts were incorporated as figures for each set of data.
Reflection: This was a fantastic assignment that helped me understand the importance of creating visual aids using the introduce-display-discuss technique. Visual aids can help tell the story of the data they represent.
The following Report with Primary and Secondary Data assignment reviews a future dissertation proposal of a mixed methods study conducted on school librarians. The purpose of the study was to describe how ideas, resources, and social connections form a successful professional learning network (PLN) and how it helps develop a school librarian’s professional life.
Reflection: This assignment introduced me to developing a research study for my possible future dissertation. I focused on exploring how professional learning networks (PLNs) might help develop the professional lives of school librarians. The data collection section included a focus group initiative, developing an electronic survey of closed and open-ended questions, and final in-depth interview for participants in the study.
EDTC 806 Research Methods in Educational Technology Leadership
EDTC 806: With the program’s emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and innovative learning experiences, this course is an in-depth treatment of the research process and techniques for planning and designing research projects. Emphasis will be placed on the appropriate choice of methodologies for a variety of problem situations.
The purpose of this (mock) quantitative study was to explore how school librarians perceive themselves in the role of future ready instructional technologists and facilitators of professional learning. The study will also examine what type of technological and leadership skills school librarians must obtain in order to become future ready.
Reflection: This assignment helped me learn how to formulate the required components of a quantitative study for a dissertation. I learned how to properly write Chapters 1 - 3, including creating possible research questions, a thorough literature review of relevant studies and theory, and a methodology section that included the research design, population and sample, and using an existing instrument for data collection. I also learned how to write a letter of permission asking to use the author's existing survey with modifications.
The specific purpose of this (mock) case study was to identify obligatory roles and leadership components that school librarians need to recognize in forming more collaborative and supportive roles within their school districts. Their different kinds of leadership roles were examined for dispositions, along with their intraschool collaborative relationships.
Reflection: This assignment helped me learn how to formulate a mock qualitative collective case study. I specifically enjoyed learning how to implement the limitations, delimitations, assumptions, and researcher's position of the study. While performing additional references for the literature review, I learned a few more leaders in the field of librarianship. When creating interview questions, I learned to group my questions into categories so that they flow better when engaged in the interview.
Reflection: This assignment helped me learn how to formulate a mock mixed methods study. I learned from researching the literature that utilizing both qualitative and quantitative research methods permits for triangulation of data, ultimately enhancing the reliability and validity of the research study. The convergent parallel mixed methods research design permitted me to learn that researcher use this design in order to instantaneously compare and contrast both quantitative and qualitative data for validation intent.
The purpose of this (mock) convergent parallel mixed methods research study is to explore the collaborative interactions of school librarians and teachers as they utilize educational technology in selected school libraries. The research will ascertain whether or not the use of educational technology enhances the collaborative interactions amongst school librarians and whether these interactions lead to the effective implementation of educational technology. Both teachers’ and school librarians’ perceptions about how often they collaborate and how essential the implementation of educational technology to student learning outcomes will be evaluated and analyzed through a collection of data samples pertaining to survey and open-ended responses.
EDTC 809 Assessment and Evaluation
EDTC 809: This course provides an introduction to systemic inquiry using assessment methods to understand, evaluate and solve user and organizational needs. Candidates integrate their knowledge of research methods with the real-world challenges of conducting and analyzing research in educational and corporate settings.
The observational exercise included a concise, written documentation of occurrences and impressions depicted in keywords and phrases that were observed at a Reference Desk in a public library.
Reflection: I was a non-participant observer whose goal was to observe the interactions between a public Reference librarian and patrons. Jottings, full observational notes, and coding were included. While practicing the role of a non-participant observer, this exercise allowed me to code my full observational notes. The codes I created helped me realize the different types of questions that are asked by patrons in a public library.
Reflection: This project enabled me to create interview questions, establish preliminary codes, and devise an anticipated time-line for completion.
This (mock) qualitative research project was designed to explore the extent of how school librarians use Twitter, the social media tool, in order to enhance their professional growth. Communities of practice served as the theoretical framework used for the study. The method's procedures included data-collection activities, consisting of interviews and observation of participants’ tweets.
This (mock) mixed methods research project was designed to explore how an online community of practice of school librarians utilize Twitter in order to enhance their professional growth.
Reflection: This project enabled me to create a brief description of questions, both closed and open-ended, for the method section of a mixed methods study.
Reflection: Communities of practice served as the theoretical framework used for the study. The literature review helped me acquire references for my dissertation proposal. This project enabled me to fill out a mock IRB form for my intended study, devise a survey consent form, design a survey via Qualtrics, and create a set of interview questions for participants.
This (mock) explanatory sequential mixed methods pilot field study was intended to explore how informal learning through Twitter helps school librarians acquire innovative information and helps them develop into lifelong learners, ultimately improving their professional growth.
EDTC 810 Statistics for Educational Research
EDTC 810: Candidates develop competence in applying, synthesizing, and evaluating statistics from sources including dissertation, journals, technical reports, and websites. With an emphasis on the scholarship of teaching, candidates will move from basic to context-driven statistics, applying the fundamental concepts and procedures of descriptive and inferential statistics to real-world applications.
The purpose of this assignment was to compare two articles (one mainstream article and one scholarly journal article) that provided statistical analysis on how students are performing in online courses versus face-to-face classrooms. The mainstream media article explored a content analysis on several quantitative studies that focused on higher education online courses in comparison to face-to-face classroom instruction. The scholarly journal article explored how online and face-to-face students are performing in a first-year undergraduate college course. The statistical results from the two articles were analyzed and discussed, including evidence that formulated the studies’ conclusions, along with their strengths and weaknesses.
Reflection: This project enabled me to explore the difference in how a mainstream article uses data and statistical statements in its writing compared to how a scholarly article implements descriptive and/or inferential statistics in its work.
Reflection: This group project enabled us to work together and support each other in completing the website in a timely and efficient way. Creating my contributions on specific statistical concepts reminded me that in order to fully grasp material, one must need to teach it to others. The website will serve as a reference to viewers who are looking to sharpen their statistics knowledge, as well as our cohort when reviewing for the Portfolio Qualifying Experience.
(Co-authors: Hayet Bensetti-Benbader, Steven Lahullier, and Laszlo P. Pokorny)
The Statistical Sensations statistical concepts website was a group project designed on Google Sites to serve as a reference and explanation of various statistical concepts. Each web page features a different statistical concept featuring examples, videos, and data sets. Concepts include mean, median & mode, quartiles & box plots, z-tests, t-tests, and p-values. Each group member submitted a self-evaluation log detailing who completed what parts of the website.
An exhaustive peer evaluation of the “Group 2: Livin' on the Edge - of Significance” statistical concepts website. The website's required elements and contents were evaluated and assessed according to a rubric developed by Dr. Kip Glazer.
Reflection: This peer evaluation provided me with a chance to provide constructive feedback for both the website's content and design components.
Reflection: This assignment allowed me to practice creating null and alternate hypotheses, perform and report descriptive statistics, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), several different post hoc tests (comparison types of tests), such as Fisher's Least Significant Difference (LSD), Homogeneity of Variances - Levene, and Welch and Brown-Forsythe, and run and interpret graphs in SPSS.
A data set obtained from the ABC School Library Consortium was used for a statistical analysis of total annual [print] circulation, database usage, and collection count. The data set was used to run a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to compare the annual circulation means of ABC elementary, middle, and high school libraries in order to make inferences about the circulation of print collections in school libraries. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also used to compare the annual database usage means of ABC elementary, middle, and high school libraries in order to make inferences about the usage of databases in school libraries. In addition, a bivariate Pearson Correlation explored the strength and direction of the linear relationship between the total annual circulation and collection count variables.
EDTC 901 Dissertation I & EDTC 902 Dissertation II
EDTC 901 & 902: With the emphasis on educational technology leadership and the scholarship of teaching, in Dissertation I, candidates develop and refine their hypothesis, research contemporary related literature, and explain in detail their research method and procedures, as well as design all necessary research, permission, and data collection instruments. In Dissertation II, candidates will conduct their research, process the data gathered, draw conclusions, and reflect upon their study.
