Grad School: I'm Headed to Fairbanks

Time for a brief grad school update.

I have submitted my final papers for this semester, and I have achieved a landmark: I am finished with my coursework!

This semester I was taking a research elective (Design-Based Research, which was absolutely fascinating and helpful for my current and future research agenda) and conducting an "innovative experience" (basically an internship intended to help me synthesize the things I've learned in my coursework and begin applying it to a real-world problem in a way that "stretches" me.) Both were excellent learning adventures, but I feel drained--I am definitely at "the end" of this semester, limping my way to the finish line. I think it is because I kicked off this semester with comprehensive exams, which meant a ton of extra reading and preparation during Christmas break (normally a respite from the hectic, 60-hour+ per week schedule of the semester.) Honestly, I am tired...really, really tired.

But despite this fatigue, I feel great, submitting those last papers from this semester!

For my innovative experience, my final paper was a reflection on the things I had done and learned, and when I submitted it to my advisor and our program director, I shared my joy at reaching this point.

In response, one of my professors encouraged me to think of it this way:

The drive from NYC to Seattle is about 2,800 miles. To get to Fairbanks, AK, it's another 2,300 miles. When you've completed coursework for the program ... you're in Seattle. But ... you need to get to Fairbanks. ;-)

Truly, I'm grateful for this encouragement. I have said to a few people that I am now "ABD" (All But Dissertation.) One fellow academic commented to me that I should never say that; ABD is often used to indicate folks who got to this point where I find myself...and then stall out, not completing the degree.

I needed that encouragement too. I am NOT going to end up at "ABD" status. I'm proud of the work I've completed so far, and by the grace of God I'll see this journey through to the end. It's been quite a trip so far; I've enjoyed it thoroughly, but I am not at the end.

So I'm taking a rest stop in Seattle for a few days here...but I'm headed to Fairbanks.

Image by J. Stephen Conn [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Educational Design Research in my Future

I am nearing the end of my final coursework for my doctoral program. That brings up some mixed feelings for me–I am definitely excited to be moving on to the next phase and starting my dissertation, but this does feel like a conclusion to things as well. It has been a joy working with my cohort throughout the past three years, building friendships even though we rarely meet up in person and live on several continents.

A key part of my course work this semester has been practicing peer review. I have found this so very beneficial; we are at a point where the members of our cohort have become real friends, and it’s a pleasure to read each others’ work, and reflect upon, critique, and encourage our classmates to continue to strengthen what we have developed. I have enjoyed getting to know how my friends think about our field, and this is one aspect of the cohort model that I have found so beneficial for me: we develop relationships that are strong enough that we don’t take it personally when we hear the critique; we welcome it, because we know that our friends are looking out for us to help us make our work ever stronger! It is strange to think that we will not meet up online regularly after this course wraps up. And while I know we will continue to keep in touch, it will be different not interacting with them on a weekly basis.

Education Design Research: Design, Evaluation, and Implementation

In the current module of the design-based research course I am taking this semester, we have been focusing on three key tasks: design, evaluation and implementation. Design is (obviously!) an essential aspect of design-based research, but these other two tasks (evaluation and implementation) are also extremely important.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the design of a proposed project to address a real problem for the pre-service teachers I currently serve: how can I best help prepare them for the challenges of technology integration? In crafting my design, I have conducted what I think is a thorough review of the literature. Honestly, at least half of the reading I have been doing in my doctoral program for the past three years has been focused on this topic, so while I have certainly read new things this semester, I find I have been revisiting things I’ve read previously, and I find that I am synthesizing from many sources, seeing how the pieces fit together, and designing a way to address this problem.

Image by US Department of Education [CC BY 2.0]

Education Design Research - Analysis and Exploration

Image by Charlottes Photo Gallery [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

I am currently taking a course entitled "Design-Based Research." Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking a lot about how to best create a design-based research project that is both realistic in scope and also helpful for my current role as a teacher educator. Also, I am working on a sort of guided study project concurrently, and I am finding much overlap between these two projects. I have a lot of thoughts swirling around in my mind right now, so as I am reflecting on my work over the past few weeks, I will try to distill them into a few key themes.

Getting Started with Education Design Research

This semester I am taking Education Design Research (EDR) as a research elective for my doctoral work. While I had heard of EDR before as a methodology, I really had never learned too much about it, so this course is is a great opportunity to learn more. EDR is also known as design-based research (DBR). This terminology may be more familiar for some, as it is sometimes used in other fields beyond education. I am fascinated by this approach so far, and I am interested in learning more!

The text we are using for this course is by McKinney and Reeves (2012), and I found their definition for EDR helpful; they describe this methodology as “a genre of research in which the iterative development of solutions to practical and complex educational problems also provides the context for empirical investigation, which yields theoretical understanding that can inform the work of others” (p. 7). The basic idea of EDR, then, is to develop an intervention to address a particular problem in education, while at the same time also generating theoretical understanding of the situation. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods can be used, depending on the nature of the research question, and from the reading I have done so far, EDR seems to be one way to make mixed-methods research a reality. (There is some contention about the used of both quantitative and qualitative methods in the same study in education; I can not speak to weather this is the case in all disciplines.)

Taking this as an introduction for the uninitiated into the idea of EDR, I feel that I should say that am not fully certain about just what this approach looks like in practice. I have looked at several examples of EDR studies, and it seems like there is a wide variety among them. So…a few parts are still a bit muddy for me.