Keith Trigwell and John's presentations
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Sooner or Later (Supertramp)
Topic: Seminars
Thought the last entry was getting too long so decided to post it in a next entry.

Keith presentation although alright didn't engage my attention as much as Noel's (which is quite surprising since I was more interesting in Trigwell and Prosser work in the MSc!). I think perhaps because he was looking at students' perceptions and approached to learning from Oxford University and since I'm somewhat prejudice towards them decided to not pay much attention :). He talked mostly of the development of the model for student learning, particularly the 3P model (Presage, Process and Product) and how each part of the model relates to 'real' life such as degree result, deep and surface approach, teaching workload etc.

He did mention that in the Oxford undergraduate system, the humanities/social sciences tended to a lot more preparation for their work before a tutorial (and this perhaps increased their deep approach??). He also mentioned something called adoptive and adaptive learning by Blackmore which seems as something that might be of some interest to look up just to check what it is about.

Keith did have something interesting in his findings, that students had 1st class honours tended to perceive their workload as being appropriate and the same for good teaching. Which perhaps just means that students who are probably bright/ intelligent just think workload and teaching are good because the work is easy enough for them :)

They looked at the perception of students, their approaches to teaching and their motivation and conception. Keith was able to identify two clusters from these results. He found that for English, law, maths, history and physics students that the clusters were significantly different for each other for all the scales. However for engineering students the "good teaching" and "clear goals and standards" for perception was not significant between the clusters, and for the languages the deep approach clusters were not significantly different and for the Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) students, the clear goals and standards were not significant either.

In John's presentation he employed the use of path analysis (wasn't quite sure how this was different to structural equation modelling - SEM - but found a chapter on it on the internet - it seems that SEM is an extension of path analysis which includes the latent variables). So, John decided to test the causal relationships between demographic background (age, sex etc), perceptions of academic environment, and study behaviour for predicting outcome measures (he used marks I believe for this one) by controlling the effects of each of the predictor variables, and test whether they were acting as mediating variables. His path analysis obviously assumes that these are the only variables that affect outcome measures. In the end his results suggest that perceptions of academic environment and study behaviour both individually act to predict (or cause) the outcome measures and also, that both the perceptions of academic environment and study behaviour act through one another to cause the outcome measure.

This finding was not wholly accepted by Keith as one should expect since his framework suggested that Perceptions of academic environment and study behaviour was acting together to make the reality or perspective of a student and does not have a causal relationship between them.

In the discussion forum, John, Keith or Noel mentioned that Meyer was putting together an ASI bibliography for group disciplines. This sounded as something interesting to get my hands on.

I think this session was really good, just got to meet Ramsden and Meyer and would have met all of the famous people from my MSc research :).

Students' perceptions and approaches to studying: a colloquium cont'd
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Surfin' USA (Beach Boys)
Topic: Seminars
Well, didn't get to finish talking about the seminars yesterday since I had to go to a driving lesson and when I came back I had to go to a meeting for the International Students' Day Debriefing and then got chatting with Gill. Anyway, here it continues, and continuing with Noel's presentation which I made the most notes for.

So, was talking about Meyer's orchestration classification. Noel did a study in 2000 in which he used this classification to describe the clusters of students he found. One of the clusters he described as dissonance had relatively high or similar scores in all the sub-scale for deep and surface and on of the subscale of strategic approach, but had low scores on the organised studying (strategic) subscale.

Not sure if this is anything useful but I guess its a way of grouping of students, not sure if this helps me in anyway in my linear programming research. For example, does being dissonance or having any of the deep, surface or strategic approach affect the way in which students learn using software? I mean is there any literature of that kind?? Is it even worth looking at. What I am getting at theory as far as I know doesn't point to a difference - but will keep it at the back of my mind.

Noel also mention something he called the 3Es (explanation, enthusiasm and empathy) which he probably attributes to the student's perception of a course (the 3Es makes me reflect back on the 5Es!! - wondered if he picked that up when he was looking at Checkland's SSM).

Noel also mentioned that different disciplines/ subject students may have different experiences (this obviously peaked my interest when I heard this statement but he didn't elaborate too much!).

Noel also talked about a study by Thomas and Bain (not sure of the spelling) in which they found the study approach a student may employ made depend on how students are assessed for example they looked at students being assessed by essays and then followed by multiple choice and found that the multiple choice assessment increased the surface approach scores and lowered the deep approach scores (I think!) - but he said that the students who had high deep approach scores continue to have the highest deep approach scores although not as high as before. Noel goes on to explain it seems easier to induce a surface approach than a deep approach.

Noel described a study that they were doing presently in which they sent of a learning and studying questionnaire at the beginning of a module and a Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire at the end of the module and then small-group interviews were conducted. They did this for subject areas in electronic engineering, history, biology and economics (hearing all these disciplines again peaked my interest!). It seems now that they are calling strategic approach "organised effort".

This exercise had a bit of a test-retest experimental behaviour. Of course Campbell and Stanley thought the test-retest was a bit weak (but Noel did supplement his results with interviews so wonder how that works!).

One of the things that Noel said in their pre-test:post-test discussion(since students perception of the course change from the beginning towards the end) is that since LP is taught as a part of a larger course, does the perception of the teaching of LP influenced by how the first part of the course was taught? For example if the student hated how a teacher taught the statistics component will they have a negative attitude to how LP was taught even though it was taught quite alright?

Anyway, got to speak to Noel during coffee since there wasn't a question session directly after his talk. So, I cornered him during the making of his coffee and told him I was interested in learning and teaching across disciplines and was interested in knowing why he chose the range of subjects to conduct his study. He explained (bit ambiguous but got the gist) that they were aiming to look at the soft, hard and applied disciplines. I reckon he was using a more distilled version of Biglan's framework. I asked him if his preliminary analysis showed any differences between the disciplines and he did indicate to me (which I did read somewhere) that the humanities and the arts tended to have a deep approach whilst the sciences a more surface approach (not something you wanted to be telling scientists who for years decided they were better than the humanities!). (Although Keith I think in his presentation did mention that these questionnaires were developed from a humanities perspective and may require us to develop questionnaires that are discipline specific). I told Noel that I was doing my research on linear programming so I can have a common ground for comparing these disciplines, as most of the studies tended to amalgamate the different disciplines.

Students' perceptions and approaches to studying: a colloquium
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Fire and Rain (James Taylor)
Topic: Seminars
So, I went to a colloquium yesterday which was led by John in the Wilson building which is a part of the Higher Education Policy and Practice Research Group (HEPPRG) - of course we had two of the big names there: Keith Trigwell and Noel Entwistle. So, cool to meet these people! Never got that at UWI.

Anyway, I just want to make some summaries/ comments of their presentations etc here. Whilst Keith and Noel did two presentations, John did two, because his first one was just on the background of students' perceptions basically deep, surface and strategic approach. John mentioned a Biggs who in 1993 used a systems approach for learning. John actually was setting up this presentation for his next presentation by presenting a series of possible causal hypothesis between approaches to studying and perceptions of academic context. John also explained that Trigwell and Prosser (1997) saw that the perceptions of academic context and approaches to studying were actually all in one framework, and these two things taken together are a view of the students' reality that is they were not related causally but exist side by side.

For Noel's presentation underlined that approaches to studying was not inherent to a student and may change depending on the context, and thus states that it may be part habit and part the influence of the course. He seems to be doing most of his research in electronic engineering and when looking at the teaching-learning environment for electronic engineering they were concerned with ways of thinking and practising (WTP). He also mentioned a new questionnaire that they were developing called the Experiences of teaching and learning (ELTQ) which contained the ALSI (have no clue what this is!) and items on experiences of teaching. I am not quite certain who this questionnaire target i.e. teachers or students. But given that his past research has been on mostly students, I'm going to guess students. Noel mentions also Meyer work. Noel explains the ASI asked for typical study situations, Meyer work looked at contextual situations, and from this Meyer was able to develop some terms for the way of studying, which Meyer called orchestration (just like a choir!). Meyer has two types of orchestration: harmonious and dissonance (or was it discordant?).

Back to the Research Poster
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: A Beautiful Morning (The Rascals)
Topic: Seminars
Well .. I started the poster in powerpoint .. did the little graphics I said I was doing and then started writing stuff about linear programming ... but it began to sound like a powerpoint presentation rather than having a feel of a poster.

So, although my little diagrams are looking cute have no idea why they are there. So, went looking up on the internet and found this site that seems to give some good tips on research posters. Well, the first thing they said is to get an idea and stick to it!!

Now, that is where the problem lies .. I have no idea what my poster is about it .. except it must have bits of the masters and bit of what I hope to do for the PhD.

I did create a cool name for the poster (well cool for me). I've decided to call it "Learning with Software: White-Box or Black-Box?" and as a subtitle "A research into the benefits of learning linear programming with software".

So, now I'm thinking what the idea of my research is. So, the site says I must have a succinct message.Rebecca said that her supervisors said to use the Research Day as an opportunity to solicit ideas and feedback from the persons there. I think the succinct message is then Help Me! Share some ideas! Give me Feedback! on my research. Not sure if that works as the idea.

So, my succinct message is that learning linear programming can't be taught with either black-box or white-box software, but which is better for learning?

Research Day Poster
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: Dreaming of You (Selena)
Topic: Seminars
Well, I have to create a poster for the Research Day coming up on the 29th and I have no clue what to produce. Never mind that I'm suppose to be sending a draft of it to my supervisors tomorrow :). So, I'm going to be brainstorming in this little section right now (an also fulfilling my requirements of updating my blog :D).

So, according to Doug I should have about 12 or 13 slides. Right, so Slide 1 is going to be easy. Slide 1: The Benefits of Mathematical Intermediate Steps in Education Software by Anesa Hosein IET/CSET/CALRG. Supervisors: James, Doug and John.

Right Slide 1 is finished.

Onto Slide 2: I think something about linear programming - but I note that my title has absolutely nothing on linear programming ... so big problem :). Ok, so something with a title like Which Maths? and then answer "Linear Programming" and then put a little information what is linear programming (copy it from U500 presentation :D).

Alright Slide 3: Previous Research in Linear Programming (quote our research here), so which part of the research? Three major sub-areas in linear programming: Formulation of the problem, Solution of the problem and Interpretation of the sensitivity analysis. (Not liking how this slide is shaping up! - hmm I think the problem is with the title - change that and you can change these slides)

(Hmm slight idea: if able draw a diagram of a black-box/ calculator/ computer with the problem one side going into the computer/software with the answer coming out on the other side. And a next diagram with problem going into the computer and solution coming out with the steps - probably could use something easy like algebra - so everyone can understand).

Going to post this and do it from scratch in powerpoint :) and see what I churn out.

Keeping this research blog up-to-date
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: You Raise Me Up (Josh Groban)
Topic: PhD Skills
I've decided to ensure that I at least place one entry in this blog a week - so, going to make it every Wednesday. This is to fulfill one of the PhD skills which requires that I keep a research journal/ blog and keep an updated personal-research page ... so, got to do that. The blog is easier though :) ... but will have to update my personal-research page since it is looking a bit bland.

BSRLM Conference in Lancaster
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys)
Topic: Seminars
Well, there is a BSRLM Conference coming up on the 19th November and James suggested I attended it. The abstracts and the programme have now been uploaded to the Internet. I am not quite sure how useful it will upon looking at the abstracts although it will help me to network (one of the requirements of the PhD Skills!) - there are a few abstracts that look somewhat interesting not sure if it is quite up my alley. But saying that, I won't mind going up to Lancaster!!

Just wondering if it is worth it ... probably should just go and see what kind of work and presentations people are doing so I can broaden my scope when I come to think about my methods and research questions. Besides the conference charge is quite cheap (25 pounds before the day or 30 on the day). The train ticket might cost most of the money and I might have to spend overnight. Anyways, I'm meeting with James today, will carry the programme and abstracts when I meet him and see what he thinks.

Come to think of it, not really sure if I'm meeting James, but hopefully I will, since wanted to wait on his input before I sent off the meeting notes (with Doug).

PhD Skills
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Take Me Home, Country Roads (John Denver)
Topic: PhD Skills
Well had my meeting with Doug yesterday on mostly the PhD skills. James couldn't make it since he had a problem with his eyes, and John didn't turn up.

The PhD skills are a bit tedious to go through, but Doug and I did well to plough through the first three sets and decided what I should prepare and how to identify what I can do to accomplish these skills.

In some sense, I'm not sure what the use of it is but I guess they want to ensure everyone's PhD is standardized and the students come out as a functioning 'person' when they graduate rather than being stuck only as a researcher.

In some sense, it was good since there were some stuff I hadn't considered such as a publication plan and a publication agreement. I think my publication agreement is just going to be everybody names are included unless they want to opt out :).

For some reason they want to ensure that we know about how projects are funding and how funding is acquired. I can't see the use of it right now, but reckon if I want to go teach and research in a higher education institution it might be useful to know. Perhaps even if I want to do third world development that will be a plus since most of the projects for third world usually have to bid funds from IDB, IMF or one of the UN organisations such as UNDP or UNESCO. So, that might be useful.

Some things to consider when analysing and writing up
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Can't Think Straight - Gilbert O'Sullivan
Topic: Data Analysis
Well these are little juttings I made whilst doing some things - so what to make sure I keep them in consideration:

(i) I have to look up some plausible reasons for using a 5 point Likert scale versus a 7 point scale like Albritton et al. Hmm ... can't find any good papers to say why I shouldn't except one that says I should sort of use the 7 point - but they were actually trying to support their use of the 7 point scale (some people Wyrwich and Tandino). However, I could indicate that since the analysis was intended for chi-square and there were so few intended respondents, there was a higher likelihood of having empty cells and hence the reason to making it a 5 point scale. Also, we used 'fence sitting' to ensure a response and minimize the middle point as there is a tendency to use the middle point more in a 5 point scale.

(ii) Now we have a low response rate in the email questionnaire. Doug was saying that this is always true in comparison with a paper questionnaire but got to check this out. The problem with comparing with known data is that most people knew the list they were sending too - that the questionnaire had direct relevance to them - there was some uncertainty about relevance regarding my list. Anyway, found some literature that says the average response for email questionnaires is in the 20s to the 30s %. So, we'll see.

(iii) It might be also useful to compare level of courses with responses that I received for the ATI to check if there is any difference in the way the courses are delivered

(iv) I also have to consider what I would have done differently if I had to do it all over again (simple send it during the course term!!!)

(v) I'll also have to compare the distribution of the responses to the list I have to see if the absent responses were random - and how the distribution is towards discipline.

(vi) Persons might have seen the stuff on simplex algorithm, graphical solution etc. and thought that is what I meant by coverage and may have said they didn't cover the solution - not sure if that will influence the outcome.

Seminar with Mike Prosser
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: The Return of The King (James Galway - The Lord of the Rings)
Topic: Seminars
So, last week for my birthday I had the opportunity of going to the talk by Mike Prosser. John told me to stick around and he would have given me and introduction to him, so I did, unfortunately, John was called away for a couple of minutes (and since they were going for lunch soon after), I made myself known to him and told him about my research into looking at disciplines using the Intentions and Beliefs Approaches to Teaching - I think he was a bit flustered since at first I don't think he caught on what I was saying (or I probably didn't explain it too well) - well, he kept repeating there were many avenues to explore with the ATI (his he meant) as yet. He did say he looked forward to seeing me in some future conference.

Well, he presented two sessions: the first was on the understanding and improving student learning experiences which I was not too keen on - but the point of that according to him (and since he was working with Higher Education Academy (HEA)- the point of them too)was to enhance their theoretical and or conceptual understanding of teaching and learning, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. They did some work using the survey research students experience questionnaire which I think may be similar to the CEQ but instead geared for research students. He indicated that paper will soon be coming out in the Instruction Science Journal.

He also explained that in their recent research they found that courses that were teacher focussed tended to have teacher-type activities or student-activities where the teacher imposed their ideas into the student's activity. Whilst on student-focussed courses there was student activities.

He also did work on student learning in disciplines. I did ask if they were doing any work in the comparison of students across disciplines. But indicated that there was no work on that presently. However, his research has concentrated on first year classes unlike mine which is a mixture of classes - so not sure if that could influence the data. Also, he was looking at biochemistry - so my question to him was whether health students and biology students approach learning to biochemistry differently (it seems to be work parallel to my linear programming so was checking that hypothesis out).

He did share with us some anecdotes about his house in Australia being broken in and his wife still being back there (and that perhaps may the reason for his frazzled appearance) and also the whole moving experience to the UK (and of course the laments of everyone moving here - how expensive it is if you have a different currency to the pound!)