Literature: CMDA-related 2

The second article I read was Herring, S. C. (In press). Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to researching online behavior. In Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning, S. A. Barab, R. Kling, and J. H. Gray (Eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

What I learned from this article were the different domains of CMDA and a reminder of how to plan for my area of research.

The five domains of CMDA are structure, meaning, interaction, social behavior and participation. In my research, I will definitely be measuring participation. I think that investigating reflection probably falls largely in the domain of "meaning".

The article was also a timely reminder of things to look out for when starting research: devising good research questions, operationalizing key concepts, selecting suitable data, analyzing data, and interpreting findings.

As a class, we were required to submit a human subjects form to conduct research. In it, I phrased my research questions as:

• Are there differences between teacher reflection in blogs/journals and threaded discussion forums in the Persistent Issues in History Network (PIHnet)?
  
• If so, what are the quantitative and qualitative differences? Why do these differences exist?

I think that the questions meet the four criteria of good research questions. While the first question begs for a Yes/No answer, I think that it is important to establish whether there are significant differences between the two communication tools first. Taken collectively, the questions are not trivial, they are answerable from available data, and are open-ended. They are also driven by hypotheses. One hypotheses is that there is no difference between reflection levels in blogs and discussion forums. Another hypotheses is that either blogs or discussion forums will promote certain levels of reflection better than the other. In any case, I would investigate why.

I also realize that I have to define and operationalize at least two concepts: blogs and reflection. Blogs will need to be defined carefully because there are several flavors and many uses of blogs in the blogosphere. Reflection will need to be precisely operationalized into different levels because that will be my coding scheme.

I am currently in the process of selecting a suitably sized data sample for this class. My aim is to use this sample as a pilot study to test my instruments, i.e. the coding scheme and possibly interviews and/or surveys. The pilot study will also help me practice data analysis and interpretation.