Finally settled on a new dissertation topic, give or take some emphasis here and there. A working title is: How effectively does e-Learning cater to the learning needs of the kinesthetic (language) learner?

Questions to be explored en route *might* include:

- How e-learning can constrain the learner, tying him to his desk, and why this can be a bad thing - not the least in the light of existing theory on use of space in classroom management and physical tasks to aid learning

 - How learning in the real world can take place and be supported by the online classroom (this idea inspired by ULOE course assignment, for which we had to learn something new, preferably a motor skill, and discuss this and report on the process of learning)

Obstacles:

 - selection of learning style questionnaire is vital; many are poorly designed surveys, with great ambiguity. Could design own questionnaire on learning styles.

Key questions:

 - to what extent does e-Learning benefit from a ‘real-world centred approach’ regardless of learning style

 - Is balance of course design essential - too much of one thing (in e-learning, verbal / social content is prevalent) is tedious?

Method:

Potential recommendation, depending on findings (grounded theory) that further research be conducted to compare learning experiences of Kinesthetic Learners learning in routine e-learning and those learning through Total Physical Response-like e-Learning.

Beware potential flaws in mis-diagnosing learning styles. The best way might be to pose a problem, then have them reflect on how they resolved it...

Good to see from other blogs that I am not alone in struggling with the stats. Reassuring. I have found my reacquaintance with maths and hateful numbers quite demotivating, though, however clear the rationale for its study. As usual, there is no quiet retreat for the part-time student to get to grips with these things; work, family and temptation must be contended with by a systematic and determined effort.

I posted a comment to Christine that I think that once a definite need to use such a quantitative approach materialises in a piece of research, it will seem less abstract. The task on the course is important but (necessarily) still quite arbitrary. If, just for example, I wanted to measure the participation in various types of online course of people of the 4 different blood types (!!), then I might be able to use SPSS to describe various relationships.

One question is: what kind of merit would such a study have? There are so many variables.

I have been noticing common themes in the work of Mary Parker Follett (Schilling M 2000, Decades ahead of her time: advancing stakeholder theory through the ideas of Mary Parker Follett, Journal of Management History) and in collaborative learning / knowledge.

Both decentralise authority / power / decision-making away from a few key stakeholders. On a personal level, I like the levelling out, the sort of egalitarianism of all this. For learning, it provides opportunities for increased social learning in e-Learning, and can potentialy be used effectively in role-play.

This overlaps with the Online Language Learning course. The idea of designing a role-play that utilises a competitive wiki still appeals. It might be a good way of facilitating language learning. It might need to be complemented with synchronous meetings.

I was previously thinking of comparing Japanese learners' participation in such an exercise / project with a face-to-face role-play along similar lines. This faltered because there are just so many variables that it seems impossible to draw any conclusions whatsoever, no matter what the outcome.

Instead, there is now the idea of comparing an online collaborative role-play - like the Loch Ness exercise in OLL course (we have to work together to organise a trip there) - with an online collaborative / competitive one. Thus the research is purely exploratory, and there isn't so much pressure to come up with explanatory data. It might show, if used with several groups, some pattern of participation. Are learners more involved when in competition - particularly if set up as a kind of points-acquiring game?

Data can reasonably simply be drawn from observing the history of changes in the wiki and how many entries are made.

Very important: set-up of the exercise needs to be extremely clear to ensure learners understand the (possibly) motivating factors.

Maybe...

Worked through 'walkthrough'. Not so bad. In fact, interesting.

I have been dreading this and procrastinating, but so far not too many ghosts or demons of numerical malice.

Some problems coming to mind re. potential dissertation topic: it would be necessary to compare 2 sets of learning, 1 in an online role-play and 1 in a face-to-face role-play. This presents some difficulty, not insurmountable, in being able to observe both sets of learners. But... much more importantly, there are simply too many variables in this project, as it stands at present: let's say that the online participants are more active than the F2F learners. This could tell you about:

• their personality
• the strength of the teacher
• the time they take their lesson
• etc etc etc

So... the project will not be explanatory. If it still runs, it needs to be exploratory, and would simply measure participation in the online role-play.

Bigger problem still: when I taught in Japan, despite the reputation of Japanese learners for being afraid of making mistakes, I had few significant problems in getting learners involved in F2F role-plays. This came down to skill of teacher and sensitivity too.

The dissertation could be significantly scaled down so that it focuses only on wiki role-play (my idea from the OLL course). A new question would be required, and very probably the (ill-conceived) Japanese culture idea should be scrapped.

Carrying out a Masters dissertation research project is basically a learning exercise, preparing one to go on with research in the future (Hamish - discussions board).

Don't necessarily plan to conduct any further research in the future. Is doing the dissertation worthwhile for me? Perhaps not.

Big quesion still lingering: do I need to measure learning or learner participation? In an ideal world, the former. But there are probably too many variables to do this. Therefore we have to assume that, based on the literature/theory, increased participation leads to increased learning - as long as that participation is ACTIVE. And from there, we measure participation.

I'm thinking at present that the best research method to do this will be a combination of direct observation and structured interviews (perhaps an attitude scale). Direct observation seems like the most logical method of gauging the extent of leaner participation, via blog, wiki and synchronous communication. Interviews appear a useful way of ascertaining a valuable insight into learners' own experiences, which could supplement data gathered in direct observation - and after all this is very much concerned with their own experience. ...or an unnecessary extra??