Total to date: 157 hrs (and this does not include the first month of the course)

You know that sinking feeling when you discover you have lost your wallet? I felt that way when I discovered that Assignment 1 was not in the dropbox.  OMG!  To have something done but not submitted is such a waste! I will have to be more organized. It looks like Emily and Diane will accept it – I hope so. Meanwhile, I have gained some empathy for my own students. 

It was very interesting to read 3 other people’s proposals.  We are all so different and yet so alike. It took a long time to go over each person’s proposal so I kept it to quality, not quantity.  Knowing how long it takes makes me very appreciative of the people who took the  time to read mine.  Their comments were most helpful.

Having to be very specific in the proposal helped me hammer out some details. It may turn out that the data I want may not be available. I just found out that BCeSIS does a giant flush of their student data every summer in order to make room for the new data in Sept.  Still, I think there must be archives? I can’t find out over the summer because everyone is off on holidays. I will have to wait til late Aug to find out.

This course has been the most demanding so far. I am glad we did it, though, so that we are going in to the final project with our eyes open.

It is sad to say goodbye to Paul, Jim, A-L and Ken, but that’s life, n’est pas? I am very much looking forward to residence at RRU. It will be super to see everyone and the campus itself is so amazing. I am going to have to set some boundaries this year. I will give 100% during reasonable hours, but I cannot do group work until 3am for days on end. It just can’t happen. I was a blithering idiot by the end of rez last year. It will be better this year because I will see it coming and take steps to organize.

The instructors, cohort and my family have my thanks, appreciation and respect.

Total to 2:15 pm Sunday June 29: 136 hrs

Thank you, Ken, for trying to inject some fun back into this cohort. I am trying too, but he is the master!

Stitching together the 4 pieces of writing into one proposal was difficult, but I understand why we did each piece separately at first. It is up and posted for the world to see, for better or worse. I will want to shorten it before I hand it in on the 4th of July. There’s irony there – the 4th is Independence Day in the States. Does this mean that with the completion of this course, we are ready to take off and fly solo (with guidance from the ground, of course!)?

There is so much more to do before this major project is ready. It is daunting, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  I am now many hundreds of steps into the journey, but most of it is still ahead of me. The good news is I still like my topic and I am getting sucked further and further into its subtleties.

Reading the Palys chapter where he describes the work done by one of his students on single mothers in higher education resonated with me. I know he was using it as an example of a good paper, but the content of the paper was interesting too. I am a single mother, holding down a full time teaching job and doing a Masters.  I can really relate! What was I thinking? Luckily, my two munchkins are wonderful kids who support me in this. Similarily, my significant other also supports me. Otherwise this would not be doable. The price would have been too high.

I liked the idea out of Palys that the value of writing is not in the writing, it is in the re-writing. It is amazing to me when I go back to something that I thought was good and just in the space of 24 hours, I can pick out ways to improve it that weren’t apparent to me before. And the class is extrordinary at this too. Meghan especially!

Wed June 18 – 4 hrs

Thurs June 19 – 2 hrs

Fri June 20 – 10 hrs

Sun Jun 22 – 9.5 hrs

Total to date: 111 hrs

Where is the joy? Ken has noticed it too.  This cohort had descended into a pit of seriousity and non-fun-ness. Certainly Diane and Emily have been nothing but positive and encouraging. It must be something else. I can relate to the Koo article on agony! I liked her birth metaphor – I have always enjoyed metaphors.

What we are doing must have a lot to do with it. The import of our major project ishitting home (that typo. ”ishitting”  happened accidently, but I am leaving it there on purpose – just for the fun of it). I know I have been less engaged in this course than is usual for me.  Poor Neil – trying to interact in a pairs discussion when your partner is not readily available must have been a trial for him.  In the end, I think we did fine, but we didn’t exactly chat up a storm. His comments were very valuable to me.  I hope mine were for him – he has a really fine mind and it shows in his writing.

The lit review was tremendously time consuming and intimidating for me. How to pick out what’s important, how to summarize and not plagiarize, how to keep organized, how far down each path to go, and so on.  It was interesting, though, and thought provoking.

The methodology section was surprisingly easy to write. I hope my lack of quotes from references will be acceptable. I can see when a person is designing a study, there would be lots to quote. But I am writing a unit and informing its design based on the findings of the lit review. The lit review IS my methodology, sort of. So without repeating my lit review, there wasn’t much to quote.

The constructivist and collaborative way of learning in this course is frustrating, dangerous and compelling. I find that I lack the courgage to say what I think without adding the caveat that I could be wrong. I truly do not want to steer someone down a path and end up making a mistake that they have to pay for.  I see the steering as the instructor’s job, not mine. However, the group has helped me a lot in terms of limiting my creation to a unit, not a course, and in helping me to change my opinion about the necessity of an ethics review. And without the group discourse, I would not be nearly as engaged as I am. But jeepers, it’s hard to keep up will all the postings.  Think of what Diane and Emily are doing! Yikes!

On to the last stage of this course.  I am not feeling confident that I have nailed it, but I keep reminding myself that it is the journey that’s important, not the destination. At least, not at this point.

Fri June 13 – 8 hrs

Sat June 14 – 2 hrs so far (it’s 12:30 pm)

Total: 83.5 hrs

I think that as people in our course are reading all these amazing theses and doctoral dissertations, they are thinking in the same terms for their projects. Multiple questions, multiple measurement tools (survey, interview and focus group, for example), longtitudinal studies…they need to re-read the info from Judith about the length and depth of these projects.  I guess I should be brave and point this out to everyone, but I don’t want to look like a know-it-all. Plus, I could be wrong and I would not want to steer people in the wrong direction.  For me, though, I am going to stick to my plan and see if it is enough to satisfy the requirements of the 691 paper.

Meanwhile, I am learning lots about methodology, lit reviews, ethics and the way research papers “sound” when reading them. This is all good.  I may not be using this info to conduct my own scientific study, but it helps me to better understand and judge the value of the studies that I am reading.

Spent all of yesterday reading, taking notes on and chasing down references from the O’Neil thesis from the MADL program on online course design and delivery. It was time consuming, but definitely worthwhile.  She did a great job of taking a ton of literature and condensing it down into 60-ish pages.  Now I will have to condense it and my own finds even more to fit with my 15 to 20 pages. Talk about quality over quantity!

I am off to do more Unit 4 readings now, after having posted a few comments in the DF. Everyone is so serious now – not much cheer in the postings.  I am trying to do my best there to lighten the mood – I hope no-one is offended.

Sat June 07/08 – 8 hrs

Sun June 08/08 – 16 hrs Total: 68.5

I’ve been a little busy doing the lit review.  My brain is full. Note the time (4:18 am) – the birds are starting to sing…

I got the lit review into the dropbox – 4 hrs late. Hope Diane and Emily don’t mind. I had a really hard time deciding what to put in, what to summarize, how much to summarize… Oh well, it’s a start.  Lots is still missing, although I like what I have so far. It is a nice mix of what has been written, what’s out there from the MOE and what I can glean for myself. Got a reply from PEI – no online PE.  The internet is so cool.

Bed. It has a nice ring to it. Have to be at work in less than 4 hours. I got a real laugh out of the Florida online teachers.  Class sizes of 30 to 60 and working from home? Nice!

Missed working on the Masters yesterday due to family stuff.  No research done today – just had time to read everyone’s posts in the DFs and respond to some. Everyone seems so far along and I am just stumbling.

Neil asked some great questions around the development of the course.  Online and f2f PE are so different, it will be hard to compare them. Maybe it can be done in the future, but first we need a quality online PE course with which to run comparisons!

I suggested that I might compare completion rates (without worrying about actual marks) but there is a problem.  Students in f2f are expected to complete the course within 5 months (one semester) or they fail.  Our online courses do not have completion dates.  One of my students just completed a course today after spending 2 years in the course!  So at what point do you cut off the students and say they have not “completed”? A tricky exercise in semantics.

Plus if I compare the kids from this coming fall semester, lots of our kids will not have completed the course by Feb because many of them treat it like a full-year course.  Maybe I should compare the stats from this year – Feb 08 to June 08 for f2f and what? Feb 08 to Feb 09 (one calendar year) for online?  How do I justify that arbitrary length of time? Arg, my brain hurts. Maybe I could investigate 2 timelines.  Eg.  92% of the f2f kids completed their course from Feb 08 to June 08, whereas 70% of the online students completed their PE course over the same time period. However, at the end of one calendar year (Feb 08 to Feb 09) the percent of online students completing their course rose to 88% (I just made up the figures for the sake of the example).

If I am going to do it that way,  I need access to the numbers in July before the data is gone from the high schools.

Something to think about!

Late last night – I seem to do my best work then – I found the mother-lode article.  It is by a National Association for PE in the States and it is an article on online PE courses – how common they are, strengths, weaknesses, recommendations – it’s for the States, but it was written in 2007!  What a great find.  I feel like a prospector who has just struck gold. I will use it as a backbone for my work. Some of it doesn’t apply to Canada or my situation at @KOOL, but lots does.  I still have to track down each of their References and see what I can use from it.  

One important point is that they were unable to find any empirical studies that compare achievement in PE courses (f2f vs online) and call for research to be done.  I am not in a position to conduct this research because I do not yet have a useable PE10 course to offer for the purposes of comparison.

Now if I can find a comparable article written by a Canadian source, I would be on Cloud 8 (close to Cloud 9 – which I will achieve when I hand in my final paper!).

I am going to keep track of my hours spent on the Masters program, starting Fri May 30th – 10 hours. Sat. May 31 – 11 hours.  Total to date: 21 hours

OK, this is my second try.  The first entry was lost.  I don’t have time for this!

I had trouble getting started on the lit review.  The enormity of the task was overwhelming. As usual, though, the hardest part was getting started. At work, I have a quote over my desk “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. Take that advice!

I also had trouble starting this journal.  What to write? When to find time to write? How to prevent the entry from disappearing when I hit Save?

I was up til 2 am last night looking for that article on the online PE classes in Florida. I am glad I did because I finally found it. Although it is not scholarly, it is a good jumping off point.  It discusses the commonly held criticisms of online PE, and gives the course provider’s answers.

I am concerned that Neil and I have not collaborated much, although I guess some is better than none.  I sent him an email today, offering to engage more.  We shall see what happens.  Pairs is harder than a “group grope” because in a group, you can always find someone to interact with.  If you are in partners and your partner is “away”, with whom do you interact? First I was unavailable and now it seems that Neil is unavailable.  Even in an asynchronous discussion, it is not always easy to find mutually acceptable times!

It will all work out.  Breathe, Sue, breathe.  And go for a bike ride to air out your brain.

I will copy this before I hit Publish this time, just in case! 

1) course completion rates

- DL vs regular

-provincial DL rates vs our own school

-reasons?

-how to improve?

2) DL course for CSPS

-feasibility?

-actally produce a unit?

3) working conditions for high school DL teachers

-BCTF report

4) nKOOL students (those who go to a regular high school but take one or two courses from us)

-completion rates

-motivation

-their evaluation of their experience

5) update of L. Toews’ work on synch vs asynch

6) online PE 10

-develop course as an artifact

Interesting References

DL Models

Comrie, D. (2006). The impact of high school students of the use of different distributed learning models for the delivery of their courses. This is MADL (Master of Arts in Distributed Learning) program thesis. The MADL program is the program from which our MALAT program sprung. Mr. Comrie’s thesis is available from the RRU library, at:

http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/pqdweb?sid=1&vinst=PROD&fmt=6&startpage=-1&clientid=4565&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=1251867211&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1210463348&clientId=4565

 Toews, L. (2005). The impact of synchronous courses on student success in an online high school. MADL thesis, saved on my hard drive (not published)

Periodic table of web sites, tools, etc.  Very cool.  Posted by Danica Fidler 518C

http://wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2007-06-23–periodic-table-of-the-internet.html

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/357/4/328

What are some possible explanations?

1) the cat is causing the people to die (I sure hope not!)

2) the cat is picking up behavior from the nursing staff who are experienced with predicting death and may be giving off overt cues

3) the cat is picking up cues from the visiting family

4) the dying person is often the centre of attention – maybe the cat is merely curious or enjoys being at the centre of the attention

5) one news report speculated that heating pads are placed on the dying and the cat is only enjoying the extra warmth.  The original article does not discuss if heating pads are used this way

6) the cat really does sense that the person is going to die, and is drawn to either the person or the event in some way. Remind me not let that cat curl up on my bed!

Please indulge me as I use Oscar to stretch my mind in the area of designing research.

This sounds a lot like an urban myth and I would dismiss it except that the report was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  So it might be a reliable source. What do I believe?

I believe that the staff at the hospice believe that Oscar can predict impending death.  It has happened often enough that the staff have noticed a connection. Or at least they have created a connection in their minds.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  Or maybe by expecting it, they are influencing the cat’s behavior.  Or maybe it is simply a case of formulating a notion (which may or may not be true) and then when events prove it, they notice it.  When events disprove it, they don’t even notice it.  They might be applying a filter to how they see events.  It is like when a guy thinks that all women drivers are bad.  He only notices it when a woman makes a driving mistake.  If it is a man who makes a mistake, or a woman who is driving well, he/she does not even notice.  In this way, his opinion is strengthened and “proven”, even though the data are flawed.

How would I research this one?

First I would have to decide if the cat’s behavior is correlated to impending deaths.  I would need to follow the cat and see what he does on a regular basis.  I would need to follow the cat in a manner that did not influence him or impede him in any way.  A kitty cam?  I would have to observe every time he curls up on a person’s bed.  I would have to decide what “curl up” means.  How long would the cat have to lie there for it to count?  I would have to see how often the curling up behavior actually was accompanied by a death.  What if the cat curls up but the resident, inconveniently, doesn’t die?  Or doesn’t die within a few hours?  How long is a few hours?  What percentage of people die without the cat curling up on their bed?

I suspect the study would end there with no correlation between the cat’s behavior and deaths.  But what if I found one?  What then?  How could I design a study to figure out why there is a correlation?

I would have to identify the variables and try to control them. 

What if the cat is picking up cues from the nurses?  I would have to allow the cat access to patients without the nurses around.  This would be difficult and unethical because the nurses need to be there for patient care.  The RRU ethics board would never approve it!  So maybe we have to leave the nurses in the equation and accept it as a flaw in the study.  There could be steps we could take to minimize the presence of the nurses while the cat is doing “rounds”.

Are heating pads placed on the dying?  Only the dying or anyone who is sick?  Is the cat lying on or near the heat?  Another ethical problem – we can’t deny heat to the dying.  How about a heating pad for every patient in the hospice?

Does the cat accurately predict deaths in cases where there is no family attending?  If not, it may indicate that the cat is indeed picking up cues from the other people in the room or that he enjoys being in the middle of the attention.

Finally, if I can control all the variables and I find the cat able to predict death with accuracy, how does he do it?  Do cats have an ability to sense something humans cannot?  How could I measure it?  Are there certain electromagnetic signals that we could detect?  Changes in brain activity?  One thing is for sure, I would not have a lot of elderly people lining up to be subjects in this study!

Most of these measures are quantitative.  Qualitative would be pretty hard.  The cat can’t talk and the people who are dying are not going to want to be interviewed.  Not a lot of help there.  I could make anecdotal notes as to how things seemed at the time, remembering that such notes would be filtered through my biases and beliefs.

Lastly, in order for the results of a study to be considered accurate, the results need to be replicable.  That would not be possible in this case because I only know of one Oscar and he only works in one hospice.  To take Oscar to another hospice would certainly disrupt his routine and be hard on him.  Again, there are ethics issues.

Please don’t think that I am seriously suggesting that a study be done.  This was a brain exercise only.  It reminds me of Dr. Muirhead’s  comment on gravity… “it fell because the earth gods made it fall”.  An impossible statement to prove, and equally impossible to shake the convictions of those people who believe it.

So I hope Oscar keeps up the good work.  If the cat helps at the hospice, I’m all for it.  But that is one cat scan that I would rather not have.  Just in case.  J