• Title
Development of Self-Direction Through Self-Reflection in a Webcourse
• Introduction
The work to create this Master´s Thesis began when I was asked to do my study about an eLearning-course which has took place in spring 2008. I was asked to collect material written by the students in their weekly reflections.
After I collected the reflections from the students´ blogs to excel-files I started to look different relations between the answers. I´ve got interested about the students self-direction when participating courses myself and I feel that it is quite essential for the success of the student in online learning. I wanted to find out how and also how teachers could support it. This is why I focused to different elements of self-direction also with the materials of this precise course.
Studying the self-direction also brought up the usage of tools, so I studied the relation between them. The more familiar the student is with the tool/tools he/she uses the easier it is to be self-directed. But the usage of the tools is just one part. In this process I noticed that the essence what I would want to find is how to help teachers/tutors to keep the students in the courses and studying actively. Self-direction is a big part of it.
• -existing work
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• -research question
Does self-direction develop in time? Is it so that who is self-directed stays so, who not does not develop? What is the identification of self-direction in self-reflections?
• -hypothesis
Self-direction can develop in time. Most students self-direction doesn´t develop. Self-direction can be seen in self-reflections through choices of student, developing of ideas and use of schedules.
• -goal
The goal is to find out how self-direction might develop in time and how self-direction is identified from self-reflections.
• Main part
• -method
Quantitative datacollecting, qualitative analyzing, focus groups
• -description of media project
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• -synthesis and analysis of material/data
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• Conclusions
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• -outcomes
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• -evaluation of the outcomes against the hypothesis
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• -evaluation of the outcomes against the goal
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• -implications
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Literature & other:
Brockett, R. G. and Hiemstra, R. (1991) Self-Direction in Adult Learning. Perspectives on theory, research and practice, London: Routledge.
Brookfield, S. (ed.) (1985) Self-Directed Learning. From theory to practice, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Candy, P. C. (1991) Self-direction for Lifelong Learning. A comprehensive guide to theory and practice, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hayes, C. (1998) Beyond the American Dream. Lifelong learning and the search for meaning in a postmodern world, Wasilla: Autodidactic Press.
Jarvis, P. (1992) Paradoxes of Learning. On becoming an individual in society, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Knowles, M. (1975) Self-Directed Learning. A guide for learners and teachers, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall/Cambridge.
http://www.tash.org/mdnewdirections/selfdirection.htm
http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-selfdr.htm
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr200.htm
6 comments:
It is posible and perhaps reasonable to put 1 & 3 together into the GENERAL LEVEL research question: "How to activate and motivate online students and keep them motivated?"
2. What is the benefit of using self-reflection templates? How can self-reflection templates motivate the student?
This is a zoomed in specific framing within [1 & 3] sisällä. The implicit hypothesis follows:
"Self-reflection templates are a way to [1 & 3]."
Altogether this is an excellent setting!
Thank you Mauri for your comments, they are taken under observation as you can see :)
~Sonja
I personally like 3rd title.
But I have one question: why do you like reflection templates so much? So much as I know templates are the first/easiest level of reflection. Why not study connection between reflection and motivation?
Or if the goal is: to find solutions to motivate online students then why are you concentrating so much to those templates?
Thank you for your comments Kersti! :) Heh, those reflection templates are so heavily involved since I was asked to collect the data from those and analyze it - so I think it´s quite likely that the templates follow me in one form or another ;)
(I wrote this to Kersti´s blog too, just want to have it also here)
Just wanted to introduce you this service. Hopefully you could use it in your thesis: The Social Media Classroom is a new project started by Howard Rheingold which offers an open-source Drupal-based web service to teachers and students for the purpose of introducing social media into the classroom. The service includes tools like forums, blogs, wikis, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets, video conferencing, and more. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_social_media_classroom_a_new_platform_for_education.php
Hi Sonja,
just few comments for you.
I think that self-direction is very important in elearning. At the moment I don't see where does the DILEMMA of motivation into this game.
Second question for me is 'the tool question'. I don't get it at the moment. What do you mean? And why is this 'tool question' so important in self-directed learning? To me self-direction is kind of state of mind and soul (sry not very academical approach).
Self-direction has a lot of do to with reflection, but very little with reflection templates. So I would left them out. There are much more important things what influence self-directed learning / behaviour.
About ground stone: to me self-direction is prerequisite just to get engaged and to be willing to take responsibility. It is not enough to keep students active during this course.
To me an interesting question would be: how does/can tutors behaviours support motivation during elearning course. I have not done any academic research, but to me it seems that in our elearning course tutors behaviour was crucial.
I would also widen hypothesis 4.
If you still want to write about reflection templates then it is perhaps useful to look terms like quality or depth of learning.
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