The following is a reflection on Week 7 of the Educational Research Design module using Gibbs Reflective Cycle.

Description

Today was an informative session hearing from past students on their journey through their research in Year 1 and Year 2.  Frances Boylan also discussed the different ethical issues that need to be taken into consideration.  Here is a link to the ethical research guidelines for DIT.

Feelings

All three students who chatted to us gave valuable information and it was nice to hear from past students who have been through the process.  The talk with Frances also clarified the whole ethical process.

 Analysis

Here are some points I have taken away from the discussions

• Don’t gather unnecessary or too much data – it all comes back to the research question. One of the students mentioned the large amount of data they had gathered which ended up to be irrelevant.  As a result, it was not used but contributed to many unnecessary hours of collection, transcription and analysis.
• Half your idea/project and half it again – be realistic
• Refer to the style guide of the journal you are considering to publish on
• Don’t put too many questions on the questionnaire
• Put a plan in place and ensure that it links back to your ePortfolio
• Recycle and reuse – any information that you had included in your journal but have omitted should be put into your ePortfolio. Include drafts as evidence.
• When selecting a journal look for ones that contain similar research and for journals that have calls for papers in your subject area
• Pilot questionnaires to foresee any problematic questions
• Perceptions don’t have to be proven
• One student found the following video useful on the area of ontology and epistemology

With regard to the ethical process in DIT time will be a significant issue for me.  It appears that approval may not happen until January.  However, for my own project I need to get started before then as my resource planning and design is dependent on the feedback from the students.

Conclusion

Having a systematic plan in place for the project and keeping it realistic is important.  Always refer back to the research question and all questions in questionnaires/interviews are their for the purpose of collecting data to answer the research question.  Therefore, my data collection is as such happening even before the artefact is started.

Action Plan

To do more reading and consider the steps I need to take to gain approval from my own practice.