I am torn between three ideas for my ILA. Initially I had hoped to collect data from a group of university students undertaking a Popular Culture course as part of their teacher training. Unfortunately, my first plan appears to have fallen through.
The focus of the ILA was to be in relation to the students creating Pinterest Boards to represent ‘kids these days’. As part of the Popular Culture course, each student was asked to provide a link to their Pinterest board via a blog they had created for the course. I had then planned to track the students’ next free-choice blog post to see if there were any similarities between what students posted.
Three questionnaires were made available to the students to complete at different stages of ILA. These questionnaires were put on the Google+ community page created for the course. These were made available the week prior to the commencement of the ILA. Since the students were studying the course by distance education, the idea of providing all questionnaires prior to the ILA was to allow the students to work through the questionnaires at their own pace. I did not want to put the questionnaires up too early however as I was worried the questionnaires would get forgotten.
The first questionnaire was to be completed prior to the creation of the Pinterest board. The second was designed to be given after the Pinterest boards had been created. The final questionnaire, I had hoped, would follow on a week later after the students had made their next blog post. Although a reminder was given, and the option for students to complete only the final questionnaire was given, only one student completed and returned the questionnaires. I have considered writing yet another reminder, but for those who completed the Pinterest activity on time (or early in some cases!), responding to the activity now, almost 3 weeks on, seems outdated.
So it now appears I am back at the initiation stage of the process but, like I said, I do have other ideas. Since each student has been asked to write a reflection about blogging, I am considering the idea of using students reflections, as opposed to questionnaires, to collect data about their blogging ‘experiences’. The submission for this reflection has just been extended so I am concerned about the time available to document and report on this ILA.
My third idea is to go without questionnaires or reflections and just evaluate the content in a range of the students blogs. By comparing different blogs, I could document the similarities and differences in the required blog posts that students were asked to make and also I could look for similarities in the free choice posts students made.
I must admit, there have been many challenges for me throughout this course. Not only has my ILA fallen through but I am now the only group member left in my group! I’m still here and battling on though but any ideas for my ILA would be very much appreciated! 🙂
Information Learning Nexus 