Designing Our Survey

During Week 1 of our Shaping Our Future conference many issues and suggestions were raised which included preferences for research methodologies, degree of collaboration , focus of research, and so on.
This survey will help us to understand the best ways to move forward and when combined with demographic data will allow us to know more about each other (increasing transparency)
Add your questions in a likert scale format and feel free to add new categories.

Update May 24, 2008: Thanks for your input! We're still fine-tuning these questions. Some questions listed here were geared more toward gathering specific information about instructors' use of technology, rather than learning more about how we would like to work together in the future. I removed those questions + added a few process notes. Sylvia

May 27 I tried again (below) to craft a 4 part survey to participants. Sylvia can you or a volunteer?? finish turning this into a Moodle survey? Terry

COF2008 Conference Participant Evaluation

Part 1. E-Learning Content Questions

List top 3 Ed tech research questions/topics

___

What counts as evidence for you in making ed tech decisions __

(Others??? These need editing)

Part 2. Community

Interest in continuing this e-research network 1-5

Felt connected to the conference 1-5

Compare this conference community to what one would expect at a F2F conference

___

Part 3. Reaction to the conference

Value of Conference:

Content

1. Extremely relevant to a major concern 1-5

Usefulness: 1-5

Perceived value: 1-5

Amount of participation:

Posted to conference: yes/no

Read all the posts: yes/no

Edited the Wiki yes/n0

Number of real time presentations attended?

Estimate of amount time spent on items related to this conference in the last 3 weeks _

Part 4 Demographics

Canadian yes/no

Province _

Employer _

Profession:

Spend more than 50% of your time on e-learning research yes/no

Age

Highest Degree

END of May 25 edits their may be questions below that can easily? be moved up in relevant section Terry

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[edit]

Focus of research [edit]

• Question 1. Canadian E-Learning research should focus on:

1. basic research with strong theoretical stance, and tight scientific controls
   
2. mostly basic research with some testing in non-lab contexts
3. a 50/50 mix of theory and practical research
4. mostly applied research in real learning contexts
5. all practical research that has immediate use in learning contexts
   
6. Collaborating with researchers from other countries
7. Action research projects for practical research on what is being done in educational institutions (HE and K-12) throughout Canada and perhaps worldwide
8. Research and develop quality standards for online instruction
9. using a general method that allows for the emergence of theory to be tested in real world settings.
   

Research methodologies [edit]

Note May 24, 2008: These notes were added but questions need to be developed

• Phenomenological qualitative studies researching instructor use of technology in online environments
  
• Action research projects
• Participatory action research
• Grounded Theory method.
  
• Question

Degree of collaboration required [edit]

• Question 1. I would like to (and could) be involved in an interinstitutional research project for:

a. most of my working schedule

b. about 70% of my working schedule

c. about 50% of my working schedule

d. about 20% of my working schedule

e. I would not be able to participate

• Would the Canadian team be interested in collaborating with researchers from other countries?.
  
• Who would be interested in collaborating and contributing to the research studies?
• What time frame are we talking about here?
  

Best Practice [edit]

The paper on International e-learning strategies: Key findings relavant to the Canadian context (M. Charpentier, C. Lafrance, G. Paquette et al) is a comparison of international e-learning strategies. The SCoPE SOF2008 conference measures the level of importance e-learning has within Canada. Both objectives focus on measurement especially of the political will of our institutions. They do not provide sufficient analysis of the effectiveness of e-learning initiatives. Do you agree that we now must quickly get beyond this initial step and start leading by example through discussions on process and best practices?

• Demonstrate e-learning successes so others can see understand the importance
• Provide implementation "best practices" for start-ups
• Promote the notion of learning as a partnership between teacher and students and e-learning technology as an enabler making the interaction process easy but not a goal in and of itself
• Most importantly, demonstrate good instructional design of online content to insure the message carried by the learning object will not be lost

1. Strongly disagree
2. Disagree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Agree
5. Strongly agree

What is your preferred channel for providing input into a Pan-Canadian research agenda?
1. Initiative sponsored and all inputs managed by one particular institution.
2. Initiative sponsored and all inputs managed by Canadian government agency.
3. Initiative sponsored and all inputs managed by newly constituted collaborative group.
4. Inputs collected as conversations in open web-based forum without formal organization or management.

5. Other