Design- Based Research: A New Research Paradigm for Open and Distance Learning Feb, 2007

1. Design- Based Research: A New Research Paradigm forOpen and Distance LearningFeb, 2007 Terry Anderson, Ph.D. Canada Research Chair in Distance Education

2. Presentation Overview • Traditional opening joke • Need for distance education research • Sorry state of current research • Methodological Orientations • Quantitative • Qualitative • Critical • Design-based • Dissemination and building a research culture

3. Why is Distance Education Better Than Sex? • If you get tired, you can stop, save your place and pick up where you left off. • You can finish early without feeling guilty. • You can get rid of any viruses you catch with a $50 program from McAfee • With a little coffee you can do it all night. • You don’t usually get divorced if your spouse interrupts you in the middle of it. • And If you're not sure what you are doing, you can always ask your tutor.

4. Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada Fastest growing university in Canada 34,000 students 700 courses Graduate and Undergraduate programs Largest Master of Distance Education program Only USA Accredited University in Canada * Athabasca University • Athabasca University

8. Distance Education Research • Can you think of at least one major contribution to practice made by distance education research in the last decade? • Why does this particular research result make a difference? • Question ; • context; • methodology; • clarity of presentation?

9. Typical DE Research • “Here is what we are doing at my university. Isn’t it wonderful !!” • “Here is what we are doing , why don’t you come and research it?” • Variable quality by journal, by conference, by region, by practice.

10. Defining Research • “the systematic study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions” (Oxford Compact Dictionary, 1991). • adjectives describing research as • disciplined, organized, • transparent, problem orientated, • public, creative, • scientific, systematic, • diligent, labourous • and accessible

11. Why Do Research in Distance Education? • Many unresolved questions of traditional distance education • - attrition; F2F tutorial value, paced vs unpaced; • new forms of distance education provision. • what combinations of group based learning are worth the cost and inconvenience? • Do face to face tutorials really make a difference or is real time video or audio conferencing just as effective? • How much does expensive multimedia really enhance student learning? • how important are real time interactions compared to asynchronous ones ? • Do Web 2.0 and social software tools really encourage new forms of communities of inquiry?

12. Why Educational Research‘Just Don’t Get No Respect’ • Most research is not valued by funders, other academics or worse by practitioners • Not funded financially • Education 0.01 % of expenditures • Health 3.0 % • High tech companies 10.0 - 15.0 % • Overall (Canada, 2002) 1.88% Rodney Dangerfield

13. Assessment of DE Research • Many experimental research projects do not display rigour in their design • Many generalize inappropriately • Cultural, linguistic and environmental factors often not taken into consideration • Few concerned with teacher and tutor support • Few studies based on current learning, pedagogical or psychological theories • Olugbemiro Jegede (1999)

14. A practitioner's perception of educational research • “answers are too narrow to be meaningful, too superficial to be instrumental, too artificial to be relevant, and, on top of that, they usually come too late to be of any use.” van den Akker 1999

15. Barriers to Educational Research • It’s nobody’s job • How many in this room have at least 50% of their job requirement to do research? • Negligible industry support • No large scale focus on particular problems • Nobody keeping score in meaningful terms • Pervasive lack of trust in research efficacy • In sum, lack of an effective research culture • (Burkhardt and Schoenfeld, 2003).

16. Who Should Do Research? • Action Research • Focused on an authentic problem • Designed and implemented by participants • Includes reflection ands with dissemination • Students as researchers • Why are students excluded from this rich learning experience? • Professional researchers • DE or educational technology researchers • Faculty teaching DE within a different academic perspective

17. How do we Build a Culture of Research in Distance Education?

18. Research Paradigms • Quantitative~ discovery of the laws that govern behavior • Qualitative ~understandings from an insider perspective • Critical~Investigate and expose the power relationships • Design-based ~interventions, interactions and their effect in multiple contexts

19. Quantitative Paradigm • Key words like “evidence based” “systematic review” “scientific research” • employs a scientific discourse derived from the epistemologies of positivism and realism • Long tradition borrowed from the natural sciences • Since context is so pivotal in education, a great number of studies must be done to eliminate contextual variance and combined using meta analysis. • Inordinate support and faith in randomized controlled studies

20. “those who are seeking the strict way of truth should not trouble themselves about any object concerning which they cannot have a certainty equal to arithmetic or geometrical demonstration” • (Rene Descartes,). 1496-1650

21. The challenge of meeting criteria for quantitative study • Control group assignment rarely possible • Blind assessment not practical • Contextual variables in natural contexts negate transfer and replicability • ‘What works’ in one context, at one time does not guarantee it will work again • Interventions are never controlled nor identical • Educational results must always be interpreted

22. Is meta analysis the gold standard? • Canadian example:

23. Quantitative Ex. – Meta-Analysis • Ungerleider and Burns (2003) • Systematic review of effectiveness and efficiency of ICT • The type of interventions studied were extraordinary diverse –only criteria was a comparison group and use of ICT • “Only 10 of the 25 studies included in the in-depth review were not seriously flawed, a sobering statistic given the constraints that went into selecting them for the review.”

25. Ungerleider, C., & Burns, T. (2003) . A systematic review of the effectiveness and efficiency of networked ICT in education . P.38 Ottawa: Industry Canada. Retireved Jan. 24, 2004 from http://www.lnt.ca/technology/ict/SystematicReview.pdf

26. USA Department of Education (2003) guidelines for Identifying and Implementing Educational Practices Supported By Rigorous Evidence:

27. Quantitative Summary • Can be useful especially when testing well established and consistent practice. • The need to “control” context often makes results of little value to practicing professionals • In times of rapid change too early quantitative testing may mask beneficial positive capacity • Will we ever be able to afford blind reviewed, random assignment studies?

28. Qualitative Paradigm • Many different varieties • Generally answer the question ‘why’ rather then ‘what’ or ‘how much’? • Presents special challenges in DE due to distance between participants and researchers • Currently most common type of DE research (Rourke and Szabo, 2002)

29. 1st Qualitative Example • Dearnley (2003) Student support in open learning: Sustaining the Process • Practicing Nurses, weekly F2F tutorial sessions • Phenomenological study using grounded theory discourse

30. Dearnley (2003)

31. “Support structures to facilitate personal and professional development within this context need to be in place and attention must be given to the provision of effective learner support.” (Dearnley, 2003)”

32. Johnson H. (2007). Dialogue and the Construction of Knowledge in E-Learning: Exploring Students' Perceptions of Their Learning While Using Blackboard's Asynchronous Discussion Board. EURODL • Four different ways of perceiving online learning were identified • Practical experience (Rosemary) • Interconnections (Sarah, Katherine, Cindy) • Expressing own thoughts (Anthony, David) • Flexible learning (Larry)

33. Qualitative Summary • Measure of quality is “critical appraisal concerning plausibility, internal consistency and fit to prevailing wisdom” • Burkhardt & Schoenfeld (2003) • But what if the only producers and consumers are researchers not practitioners? • Often the only answer that makes it to the practice is “it depends”!

34. Critical Example Friesen, N. (submitted). The Experience of Computer Use: Expert Knowledge and User Know-How. GLIMPSE: Phenomenology and Media. • “I will also show how the actual experience of computer use casts into doubt the educational efficacy of computers understood as instruments of cognitive amplification, or simply ‘mindtools.’ ” • Did my failure to save my work or to properly address my email message arise from a mismatch in "system" and "user" models? • “user knowledge of the system appears as embodied, performative and emphatically provisional in nature.” • http://learningspaces.org/n/papers/Computer_Use.doc

35. Do These Research Paradigms Meet the Real Needs of Practicing Distance Educators?

36. But what type of research has most effect on practice? • Kennedy (1999) - teachers rate relevance and value of results from each of major paradigms. • No consistent results – teachers are not a homogeneous group of consumers but they do find research of value • “The studies that teachers found to be most persuasive, most relevant, and most influential to their thinking were all studies that addressed the relationship between teaching and learning.”

37. But what type of research has most effect on Practice? • “The findings from this study cast doubt on virtually every argument for the superiority of any particular research genre, whether the criterion for superiority is persuasiveness, relevance, or ability to influence practitioners’ thinking.” Kennedy, (1999)

38. “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue -- that is why academic politics are so bitter.” Wallace S. Sayre, 1905-1972 quoted in, "Issawi's Laws of Social Motion" (1973)

39. 4th ParadigmDesign-Based Research • Related to engineering and architectural research • Focuses on the design, construction, implementation and adoption of a learning initiative • Related to ‘Development Research’ • Closest educators have to a “home grown” research methodology • Interventionist within a real educational context • Action Research on Steroids!

40. The Contextual Turn • Postmodern assertion of variability pervasively induced by uniqueness of any particular context • Context of: • Place – virtual, home, classroom, institution etc. • Actors – many individual differences, temporary and long lasting • Culture – including intra cultural heterogeneity • “Learning, Cognition, Knowing and Context are irreducibly co-constituted and cannot be treated as isolated entities or processes” (Barab & Squire, 2004)

41. Context creates Content creates Context deFigueiredo (2005) Learning Contexts a Blueprint for Research,

42. The Complexity Turn • Increased interest in viewing educational contexts as complex environments: • Not possible to precisely forecast or predict behaviour – explain and promote - but not predict • Interventions from the outside (teacher interventions) are conditioned and recursively amplified or extinguished by contextual variables • Resulting in emergent behaviours of organisms • Complexity “at the edge of chaos” provides opportunity for creativity and necessary change • See Underwood (2000) complexity theory; Pascale et. al (2000) Surfing the Edge of Chaos, Bennet, (2004) Organizational Survival

43. Design Intervention Evaluation & Assessment Context Pervasive effect of assessment

44. (Bannan-Ritland, 2003)

45. 4th Paradigm Design Studies • iterative, • process focused, • interventionist, • collaborative, • multileveled, • utility oriented, • theory driven and generative • (Shavelson et al, 2003)

46. Tutor Model On call 2 hours/week Part time, problem with knowledge of institution knowledge of a single course Personal relationship Subject matter expertise Personal knowledge base Call Centre Model Advisor on call 40 hours/week Full time, steeped in university environment All business curriculum Customer relationship Refers to academics for subject matter expertise Formal FAQ and data collection Design Based Example 1 - Athabasca

47. Call Centres: Answer 80% of student inquiries Saves over $100,000 /year

48. Stage 1: Informed Exploration • Literature review, theoretical extrapolation and expert and participant input • Often an ideal provides a vision and a guide as well as significant component of the measuring stick by which the ideal, as instantiated in actions within a real context, is measured.

49. Stage 1: Informed Exploration • Review of call centre literature • Interviews with current tutors and managers • Data collection on current processes and costs • Visit to other call centres, especially those in related but uncompetitive contexts

50. Stage 2: Enactment • Production phase – highly visible • Need for project management, tracking and documentation • Prototype articulation, design and construction • Designs should be widely circulated and critiqued