Mini Study Field Notes/Journal

Date	Entry
9/9/2006	Mom died. Leaving for Houston tonight.
9/12/2006	Finally got some dial-up Internet access. I received an email back from Tracy Dietz asking questions about my IRB application and sent a response today, too. She asked for a copy of the informed consent document, which I thought I sent in the first application, but sent a copy again.
9/13/2006	Apparently I don't understand what the informed consent document is that Tracy Dietz wants, because she said I didn't send it again. I tried to email Dr. Blasi to get her advice on what I should be sending to IRB, but can't stay connected long enough to send the email.
9/17/2006	Back in town. Way behind on everything having to do with regular life. Emailed Dr. Blasi about IRB informed consent problems.
9/24/2006	Quit my job to catch up with school. I haven't done a single assignment for my Wednesday night class all semester. Behind in reading for Tuesday night and need to start doing background research for comprehensive exams.
9/25/2006	Dr. Blasi hasn't replied. Perhaps I should have asked her through WebCT email instead of regular campus mail.
9/29/2006	Dr. Blasi reminds there is no IRB approval letter for my study yet. Perhaps time to try a new approach.
10/1/2006	Read about Zoomerang online survey software and got an account. Got familiar with the interface to build a survey online. I think this will be a perfect tool for getting anonymous surveys online.
10/4/2006	Asked Dr. Hirumi to bump my comprehensive exams back two weeks. Needed more time to do research for mini-pilot and comps. With luck, I'll be able to double up on research between the two projects.
10/5/2006	Discovered the adult learning textbooks from last year might actually be helpful in the research behind Prensky. Bruning, Schraw, Norby, & Ronning planted some seeds about expertise related to Prensky's propositions. Should ask Dr. Hirumi what he thinks.
10/9/2006	I entered the questionnaire into Zoomerang and put the informed consent document on the page before the survey starts. Then I duplicated a large part of the informed consent to the first contact email and mixed it with some of the Tailored Design Method. I sent the Zoomerang output and initial contact to IRB for another try.
10/10/2006	Something I did changed IRB's opinion on my informed consent. Perhaps it was actually seeing the flow of clicking on Zoomerang to know informed consent must be viewed before the survey to make the difference. Barbara Ward is expected to approve the IRB application. Also started on the Powerpoint for the proposal presentation for class. Identified Ruth Clark as one of the most likely to be helpful during the research behind the validity of Marc Presnky's claims.
10/13/2006	Meet with Roy Marquez to brainstorm about Prensky's propositions. Roy found an article by Kalyuga, Chandler, and Sweller that appears to serve as a springboard for finding more relevant articles regarding expertise and instructional presentations. I identified "broadcast" and "interactive" as important key words for discussing Prensky. Roy and I discussed the revisions to Prensky to say 1) people gravitate towards interactivity, 2) Digital Natives choose interactivity over work, 3) Digital Immigrants choose familiarity over interactivity. We posited that interactivity leads to exchange of ideas and information, and stimulus with regards to creating interactivity involved the major senses. Discussed propositions by Don Tapscott to say the Internet forces natives to search for information, therefore it develops their thinking and investigation skills; kids learn things easier; that the n-gen doesn't have to memorize as much because they can type it in word and recover it later; even with a supposed short attention span, n-gens can still spend hours on the computer Posited that "discovery learning" allows students to click on their interests and therefore have the instant rewards Prensky identified; familiarity with regards to immigrants or experts leads to the equivalent of convenience and rituals surrounding those conveniences; comfort with text means learning game skills on a computer is too much effort if they're already skilled with text; experts/immigrants are used to broadcast forms of information and may or may not have a relationship to Pavlov studies of conditioning; developed a "hierarchy of interactivity," thought to be related to why young people might choose computers over reading a book.
10/17/2006	Had another brainstorm meeting with Roy Marquez. Developed a list of "attack" to tear apart and reassemble the following statements: Prove people gravitate towards maturity/expertise/learning/interactivity Why do novices (no expertise) work to be experts when experts do not work to be experts in two things Which is better for Prensky talk? Interactivity (exchange of information) or Desire for stimulus (senses) or effort? What is the truth in familiarity/expertise with regards to convenience or likelihood of use Immigrants purposed research is always related to their expertise(s)? Is expertise the reason Digital Immigrants don't become skilled with technology? Is "conditioning" relevant/correct? If dual encoding is a factor in the model (from 10/16), then TV should be more interactive than websites to utilize more senses? Keywords identified to discuss Prensky: active, broadcast, asynchronous, full sync, passive, engaged, interactive
10/18/2006	Pulled some ideas together regarding adult learning theory. Bruning, Schraw, Norby, & Ronning remarked that schemas are a source of predictions. I hypothesized that sub-schemas for "research" could be different for DIs and DNs based on their backgrounds of experience (or exposure). Metacognition was related to utilization of dual modalities. DNs know they can get dual encoding from electronics On-demand information means people don't have to remember as much anymore Noted that sensory registers are smaller in kids Good learners have good attention management as part of attention management theory Theory: DNs decode graphics easier, DIs decode text easier Theory: familiarity is directly related to expertise Noted to lookup Glaser and Chi (1988) "The Nature of Expertise" Added an element of power to the hierarchy of interactivity, though don't know if they're equivalent in terms of the ordering or presentation of the chart items Question: where do non-traditional learning environments fit in the hierarchy of interactivity (i.e. paintball, chess, golf)? Other things for interactivity hierarchy placement: TV, book , ITV, telephone, mobile phone, texting, IMs, chatroom, BB, Quake, lecture
10/20/2006	Found schema scripts in Bruning, Schraw, Norby, & Ronning. Received script book by Schank and Abelson. The script book is not what I expected and the diagrams inside are hard to read (as in understand). Only the first section of the book appears to be immediately helpful in what I'm working on.
10/22/2006	Added rewards and consequences to the hierarchy of intractivity. Found several resources that I added to my comprehensive exam regarding expertise.
10/24/2006	Presented the proposal presentation Powerpoint in class. Decided some aspects of my research may need to be reinvestigated regarding it possibly being a case study. Piloted my questionnaire. The participant showed the DI and DN names may not be completely appropriate for what Prensky discusses in his papers. Talked with Roy and Ben about doing peer review. Ben gave me a hard copy of his memo and a CD with the recording of his interview.
10/26/2006	Listened to Ben's interview and read his memo. He did a good job with the transcription, adding pauses in the text where appropriate. I noticed there were more pauses in his interview than in mine.
10/29/2006	Entered the transcript of my interview on my personal website. Before I published it, I realized IRB might disagree with me putting the contents on the Internet for the world to see, especially since my IRB document says all my research will be done anonymously. I didn't think there were any true identifying characteristics of my participant, especially if I replaced her name with Anonymous, but I opted to leave it unpublished just in case.
11/1/2006	Did all the final writeup of commentary about Ben's interview. Gave him some advice on how I might have handled parts of his interview differently. Would have been nice to read his reply to my reply instead of it just being submitted to the homework box.
11/4/2006	Submitted the response to Ben's comments about my memo to the WebCT homework box. It was interesting to note Ben thought some of my survey went wrong with in fact it went exactly the way I hoped in terms of information discovery. I'll have to note here to remind myself to tell him in class since I won't be sending him a copy of the Word document.
11/7/2006	Realized during class the title of my study says "students," but the listserv I used is not limited to students or even UCF. There is a good chance UCF IT professors answered the questionnaire as well as industry professionals who have never taken a formal academic instructional technology class also participated in the questionnaire. Dr. Hirumi has noted in the past at his monthly social meetings he encourages people all over the country to join the UCF IT listserv. As far as I know right now, it should only affect my project title.
11/10/2006	Started entering the Digital Propensity Index questionnaire on Zoomerang to prepare it as a possible route for validation. Called Zoomerang to ask how much it costs to purchase a survey audience if I didn't have one on my own. They have a 200 response guaranteed minimum and it costs $1350. Their 500 guaranteed responses from a random sample of general population is $2350. Not only was it too expensive, but they offer incentives for people to take surveys so I would have another thing to have to declare as possible reporting error if I published the results of any research using their population.
11/11/2006	Investigated Keller's ARCS model as a way of measuring Prensky's propositions. Discovered dissertations done at FSU under Dr. Keller that used surveys Keller developed and validated to measure instructional motivation with regards to ARCS. Keller has a manuals titled "Manual for Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS)" and "Manual for Course Interest Survey (CIS)". Was not able to locate them in the UCF library for interlibrary loan, on Google, or in EBSCO.
11/13/2006	Contacted Dr. Keller and Dr. Hirumi to get manuals on the Course Interest Survey and the Instructional Materials Motivational Survey for Keller's ARCS model. Keller didn't reply, but I met with Dr. Hirumi in person, who had a copy of the surveys, the reliability analysis results and some of the details on how to score the results of the survey. 2c thought they would be good surveys to use in my dissertation and that the documents he sent me would have enough details for what he expected to see in Chapter 3 of my proposal.
11/14/2006	Had class tonight. Dr. Blasi was serious about creating a physical poster for the presentation on the 28th. A Powerpoint uploaded to the homework box won't cut it.
11/16/2006	Bought a poster board at Walmart tonight. Got it home and it was too short. Won't be able to go find another one - going to shrink the text to get it to all fit on the board.
11/24/2006	Dr. Keller replied to my email. I just need to tell him where I'm going to school and who my advising professor is, then he'll send me the aforementioned ARCS documents.