Article Summary: November 22

Funda

The study investigates, using a case-study approach, the recruiting process of teachers for 29 charter schools. Particularly, it investigates the impact of the technological skills and knowledge on the hiring process.
Questions

• I'd like to know more specific descriptions of technologies. What are they?
• Are teachers are so different in their technological skills?
• How they can actually evaluate the technological knowledge and skill of teachers?

Remzi

Using qualitative methods, interviews, observations, and discussions, this study investigates teachers' perceptions of the technology integration of Tablet PCs. It also investigates how teachers and schools respond to such technology integration policy.
Questions

• By Tablet PCs, which ones you mean?
• Why is your government particularly interested in Tablet PCs?
• Or, why are you particularly interested in Tablet PCs?

My Big Research Question

Big Research Question

How media developers of instructional materials such as e-learning websites and training handouts make judgments about visual designs of instructional materials.

Why It is Important to Investigate It

It is suggested by several scholars that existing principles of visual design, constructed primarily based on research findings of laboratory studies, do not provide enough information for designers to design in authentic and real settings. For the future purpose of improving visual design guidelines, I'd like to investigate how designers create visual designs of instructional materials in actual settings.

↓Added Part↓

Relevant Statements of Interest

Specifically, my study aims to describe the steps and routines of visual designing process engaged in by the media developers of instructional materials. Especially, it is aimed to understand how media developers decide visual design of instructional materials in accordance with constrains of time, money and other resources available to develop the materials. Additionally, this study seeks to describe the influence of stakeholders, including clients, indented learners and coworkers, on the decision making process of the visual design of instructional materials. What kind of relationships do the media developers have with other stakeholders? If the opinions and expectations of stakeholders conflict each other, how do the media developers negotiate and decide the visuals of instructional materials? Finally, if the media developers refer to certain guidelines of visual designs, how do they utilize the general guideline to fit a specific design needs?

Participant

So far, I've done 2 observations and 1 shadowing in a local instructional design company. The participants are adults who do visual design of instructional materials as their profession. The title of their profession is media developer. They are responsible for creating instructional media such as e-learning websites and training handouts.

What are Observed and Why?

During the two 1-hour observation sessions, interactions among the media developers during their media team meeting were observed. Observing interaction among them would inform magnitude and kinds of influence each stakeholder has and inform what kind of constrains media developers face when they are designing visuals of instructional materials. Additionally, during the 3-hour shadowing session, in addition to the group meeting, I observed how media developers actually design during solitary work period. The shadowing of medial developer’s solitary work will also inform how they do perform visual design in accordance with the external influences and constrains. I will do 1 more observation, 2 more shadowing, and 3 interviews next semester.

Reflection on Dossier 2nd on October 11

Theories Could be Used

As I realized the importance of theoretical framework last week, I concentrated more on learning authors and theories addressed in the presentations. I tried to identify theories that could be the foundation for my own study.

Content Analysis

Krippendorf, K. (2013) Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. According to Bryan, it "examines communication and keywords to identify concerns and topics."

Competencies

Parry, S. R. (1996). The Quest for Competence. Training Magazine, July, 1996, pp48-56.

Diffusion of Innovations

Rogers, Everett M. (1962). Diffusion of Innovations. Glencoe: Free Press.
Rogers, Everett M. (1983). Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press.

Design Judgment

I would ask Muruvvet to send me the slides!

Things Should be Talked

Also, here are notes on things I felt that the successful students prepared well.

History of the Field

I should be able to talk about old, newer and new studies in the field of my research interest. Ignoring certain 10 year period is not a good idea. In order to learn history and tread of the field, it would be good idea to look at some meta analysis studies.

Representative Studies

Although it is good to know about meta analysis studies, it is also important to be able to talk about specific representative empirical studies in my research area.

Contribution of the First Author Study

This is related to "Justification for the Research" which I discussed in the previous week, but it seems important to be able to talk about what is new and what is significant in my study in sophisticated ways. Especially I should be able to talk about the findings of other similar studies in order to be explicit about new findings in my study.

Details of the Study

Apparently, it is very important to be able to talk about the methods of the study. I would need to talk about both the validity and limitation of the study. The limitation should inform what kind of things the future study can do.

Reflection on Dossier 2nd on October 4

While I was observing the presentations, I was thinking what kind of preparations I would need in order to be successful with my second dossier review in 2014 fall. Here is a list of things I felt that the successful students prepared well.

Regarding Research

Theoretical Background

I strongly felt that it is very important to have theoretical background for one's research. As I still do not have a theory which would be the center of my research, I really need to find it as soon as possible. At latest, by the end of this year. Also, as both Dr. Leftwich and Dr. Cho suggested, the theory should be based on empirical studies rather than just on the ideas of certain author.

Justification for the Research

I noticed that almost all the question sessions had the "why important" questions, which is about the importance of the research question. As a person who hopes to be a professional scholar, I really need to be prepared to explain the theoretical and practical importance of my research.

Knowledge about the Authors

One of the biggest factors, I believe, to make the entire presentation strong or weak was the students' knowledge on the authors in their own research interests. I would naturally learn important figures in my research interest while looking for the theoretical background for my research.

Regarding Presentation

Structure of Explanation

Some students uses a lot of concrete examples while others explained in abstract ways. I felt strong need of balancing abstract explanations and concrete examples. Lacking either one of them seemed to affect the understanding of the presentation quite negatively.

Screen Design

As English is not my native language, I have some pronunciation issues. For this reason, some written texts on the PowerPoint slides would help the audience understand what I say. However, if the screen is filled with a lot of words, the audience would be less motivated to read them.

Eye Contact

Having good eye contact seemed to be an important factor of making the presentations both convincing and engaging. It is the worst idea to read from the screen. Of course, memorizing everything is not realistic, especially in such stressful setting. I felt it was helpful to create a note card, as Verily did, in order to look at the audience instead of the screen.

[Week 10] The Longest Way Round is the Shortest Way Home

As many of you know, our team has changed the topic of the Major Project from "play-based learning for 1st grade elementary school class" to "academic public speaking for graduate students in Education." It was a hard decision. We had already spent 2 months and a lot of efforts for the old topic. However, I strongly believe that we made a smart decision to change the topic.

There were several troubles with the previous topic:

• It is hard to access the content experts.
• It is hard to access the target audience.
• There is no agreed definition of play-based learning!

On the contrary, the new topic has various advantages:

• It is easier to access the content experts.
• It is easier to access the target audience.
• We have good ideas of what kind of academic public speaking skills are needed by Education graduate students.

Of course, it is bit stressful to realize the fact that we have only 2 months left to deal with the new topic. However, I do not think the 2 months we spent for the old topic was not a waste of time. Many things we have learned could be applied to the new topics. The 2 months were precious time for us to learn that the old topic was hard for us!

It is not my preference to stick to a plan just because we spent a lot of time on it. If we have already "wasted time," we should not waste our time even more! In order to repent nothing, let us do our best to be successful with the new topic! :)

[Week 9] New Generation of Web

I attended the workshop of "Edge: The Product Family" at Ballantine Hall Room 117 on Thursday, February 28th, at 1:00PM-3:00PM. This time, not a staff of IUB library but a guest from Adobe, Tim Plumer Jr., provided the workshop.

Don't worry even if you don't know what Edge is. You are not alone! Edge is a quite new product series of Adobe. That is why the company sent out somebody to tell us about the products. The good news is that most of the products are, for now, free!!! You can download them from here: http://html.adobe.com/edge/

I really began to love the Edge series. I especially love Edge Animation. I will explain why it is so attractive for me and would be attractive for many other people.

Before talking about the main point, let me talk little bit about my background. I know how to code. I created this website, http://mypage.iu.edu/~ktomita/, without using Adobe Dreamweaver. I can create websites just with a simple text editor such as Notepad. Oh, and I used Photoshop to change the size of the picture :)
I actually use HTML for this blog too!

However, if you ask me to create an animation, I need to use Adobe Flash to create a flash animation. Or I can use another software to create a gif animation. My point is, I don't know how to code flash.

For some reasons, I really don't love Adobe Flash. Actually, I don't like flash itself very much. It is ugly technology in some respects. Probably that's why Steve Jobs decided not to show flash in iPhone or iPad. Adobe and Apple were in a bad relationship because of his decision!

However, now Adobe began to shift from flash. The beginning of the new story is Edge. The technology is amazing. Edge Animation creates animation without flash. Only with HTML and Javascript!!! How did they do that!!!

I was about to update my knowledge of Adobe Flash by watching Linda.com videos as I'm not confident with the current version. Especially if the software is in English! Yet, I decided not to learn Adobe Flash anymore. It will be waste of time. I now decided to learn Adobe Edge Animation.

No one have to install flash player to play Edge animations. You do not feel stressed by the loading time! In the future, no one would use flash. It will disappear from any environment just like iPhone or iPad does not show it. Steve Jobs predicted the future? Or he might be the inventor of the future.

The series of story reminds me of my favorite quote from Alan Kay. "Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws!" (Kay, 1971).

I love the quote not just because his family name sounds like my first name :)

[Week 8] Layout Design

I attended the workshop of "Page Design & Layout Basics" at the IUB Library Information Commons (IC103) STEPS Classroom on Tuesday, February 19th, at 1:30PM-4:30PM. As an individual who likes to create websites such as http://dossier.hannnari.com, and as a individual who hopes to start a business of good looking learning materials, both electronic and paper-based, I was really excited about the workshop.

Here are things we need to consider in order to create a good looking and user-friendly layout and I would introduce examples from each category:

• Contrast: Black is the first place the reader looks.
• Repetition: Headers and footers should be consistent on all pages.
• Alignment: Misaligned elements look unprofessional and break up the flow
• Proximity: Putting several clusters on a page makes reading quicker and more navigable.
• Direction: Our eyes tend to follow lines.
• Proportion: Choose what is important and make it dominant.
• Restraint: Too many typefaces confuse the design.
• Detail: Tighter tracking works for larger type sizes.

Although it would not be easy to consider everything above, it is still good to be careful about the elements when we think about the layout design!

[Week 7] Decision on Tool Selection

I attended the workshop of "Illustrator CS6: The Basics" at the IUB Library Information Commons (IC103) STEPS Classroom on Tuesday, February 12th, at 1:30PM-4:30PM. Although I have used Photoshop for more than ten years, this was the first time for me to learn how to use Illustrator. While Photoshop could be purchased separately as a single product, Illustrator is always set with something else and the set of the products is really expensive. Anyway......

The workshop was really interesting. It was most interesting that while Photoshop draws pictures with dots, Illustrator draws pictures with path. Path consists of points and angles. While pictures created from dots have absolute sizes, pictures created from path, or points and angles, are flexible in terms of size. In other words, pictures drawn with Illustrator can be enlarged or shrunk without losing the quality.

Our group agreed that we hope to convey professional atmosphere throughout the lesson. Also, it was pointed out during the group meeting that one of the key components of professional atmosphere is the consistency of visual design. In order to keep the consistency of visual design, using the same pictures for different parts of the lessons might be one strategy. If so, it would be safer to draw pictures using Illustrator because we can freely change the size of the image according to the size of the space.

I had only one choice of tool, Photoshop, to draw a picture. However, now I have two choices, Photoshop and Illustrator. Drawing a picture from a scratch would be appropriate to be done with Illustrator more because of the reason above. Photoshop, of course, is better at modifying photos. If there is the availability and choices of tools, we can decide which tool would fit for certain purposes.

What I feel now is it would be smarter to acquire skills of how to use tools as much as possible as time allows. I'm still 24, although I would be 25 on March 4th!, and I would have plenty of opportunities to use the skills. Time to be used for the learning of the skills would be payed off easily for the rest of my life!

Now, I'd like to conclude this post with a favorite quote of this week: "Emotion drives attention, and attention drives learning" (Robert Sylwester, 1995).

[Week 6] Motivation and Visual Design

My research interest is the effects of perceived visual attractiveness of learning materials on learning motivation. So, motivation is a keyword of my research interest.

Because of the research interest, the section of "II. Text and Graphics" in Keller and Burkman (1993) attracted my attention most. However, the second paragraph of the section made me really depressed.

This section is based on the assumption that the careful use of text features such as type, graphics, page design, and language can help influence motivation to learn, although primary emphasis remains on teaching methods and the content to be taught. Since the research base regarding motivating learners via the courseware media (whether print, video, computer, or other means) is not adequate, we must draw upon the experience and opinions of expert practitioners for principles relating motivation to text and graphics. Such experts include writers, graphic designers, and designers of print instructional materials. (Keller & Burkman, 1993, p. 30)

Even the famous Keller depends on non-researchers!!!

What makes me even more depressed is the fact that there is no agreed way to measure motivation. My adviser suggested me to read an article because it measures motivation. The tool the study used to measure motivation was the Technology Acceptance Model. However, I'm not convinced the validity of the method.

Anyone knows about research on the relationship between motivation and visual design? Or on how to measure motivation?

There seem to be enough motivational strategies. I'd like to learn about research on motivation not practices!

[Week 5] Interview Questions

This week, we explained to Dr. G what we did in the previous semester for the final project of R521. As I predicted, she pointed out our lack of understanding of actual elementary school teachers. We did not interview any elementary school teachers although our target audience have been elementary school teachers!!!

For this reason, today, we discussed what kind of interview questions we are going to ask. Unfortunately, we were not able to get an agreed set of questions. The problem we faced was how to balance out two things.

• Understanding actual situations and thinkings of elementary school teachers.
• Getting data related to our project.

It would be obvious that we can firstly ask questions that would help understanding of actual situations of elementary school teachers and, later on, ask questions that would help getting data related to our project. In other words, we can start with general questions that would not bias or distort the answers of teachers, and then, we can ask specific questions related to our project.

However, what we faced was the problem of what are general questions and what are leading questions. The problem we faced was, in other words, what seemed to be general question for some members of our group were actually seemed to be leading questions for other members.

For example, I thought that questions we can ask are

1. What kind of teaching strategies you use?
2. What kind of teaching strategies you use to help 1st grade students to adapt to new environment?

However, I got opinions that the second question is too specific and could distort the honest opinions of teachers. I got alternative suggestions such as "What kind of problems you observe from 1st grade students?" Yet, to me, 1st grade students's necessity to adapt to new environment is more obvious than 1st grade students's facing problems.

It seems that what is general question and what is leading question is not obvious for everyone. Actually, what is leading question and what is general question would be different according to the context, too. With my tired brain, all what I can say now is that we need to be thoughtful about the purpose of the interview.

Oh, and last thing I'd like to say is.... Are you OK Dr. G??? I hear your cough in the screencast!!!

[Week 4] Infographic Storyboard

Purpose/Goal

Suggest ways to create comfortable environment for Asian Girls.

Type of Infographic

Make an argument / influence a behavior.

Title

"Suggestions on How to Bring Asian Girls Comfort"

Narrative Description of Content

Key Information

Keywords associated with comfort and discomfort for Asian girls.

Data

Keywords associated with comfort and discomfort retrieved from interviews with three Asian graduate students in the School of Education. Particularly, I asked two main questions during the interview:

1. How do you define comfort?
2. Please recall and describe in detail a specific recent incident in which you experienced comfort.

I, of course, got the consent agreement to use the data for this infographic assignment from the three girls I interviewed.

Imagery/Wireframe

Following the suggestion of a Lynda.com tutorial named Infographics: Planning and Wireframing, I created the Wireframe using Photoshop.

Narrative Description of Design and Sketches of the Functional Areas

Message Design

• Title will be written on the top in order to clearly inform what kind of information will be learned by this infographic.
• Comfort words will be listed middle-left half.
• Discomfort words will be listed middle-right half.
• Information on where these words came from will be written on the bottom part of the infograph.

Visual Design

• Because the infographic is geared toward girls, I would use colors that tend to be associated with girls for primary for such as the color of title.
• Because all the three girls associate comfort with privateness, the background of the left side of the infograph where comfort words will be listed will be drown a picture of room environment.
• The background of the right side of the infographic where discomfort words will be listed will be drown a picture of outside environment.
• Information on where these words came from is not the main point of the info graph, so the text size of this information will not be so big.

Representation & Organization

• Since the infographic does not describe something concrete, but it informs conceptual things, accuracy of the images would not be prioritized. Rather, it would be important to show simple and easy-to-understand images because infographic is not something should take time to learn.
• In order to assure quick understanding of the contents, the clarity of the representation should be high. For example, I would draw a picture of person who is smiling and being happy in the left comfort area while I would draw a picture of person who is in rush, one of discomfort word, in the right discomfort area.
• There would be no learner involvement. All they would do is to learn the information conveyed by the infographic.

Resources and Constraints

• I have some skills of creative software. I attended the workshop of "Photoshop CS6: The Basics," and have knowledge on latest Photoshop.
• Because the infographic conveys "Suggestions on How to Bring Asian Girls Comfort" based on the interviews just with three girls, I should be careful not to mislead the audience to feel that the information of the infographic would be applicable for everyone.

[Week 4] Representation for Our Project

In the previous semester, for the course project of R521, I, Megan, Scott, and Remzi created a workshop module for elementary school teachers of grade 1-4 to integrate comedy and humor strategies for their classrooms. In this semester, we invited Peter as the fifth member of our project and had a meeting on the course project of R541.

During the meeting, we agreed that we would continue to focus on

• classroom comedy strategies for elementary school teachers.
• classroom comedy's function for enhancing students' engagement.

Particularly, we analyzed that classroom comedy has the function of enhancing students' engagement because it brings

• better teacher-student relationships.
• better learning performance as a result of reduced anxiety and stress of students.

Now, for the discussion of "decisions related to representation for your project,"I'd like to follow the frame work of Dr. G's Lecture on Imagery and Representation.

Intentional Design Decisions: Accuracy, Clarity and Learner Involvement

Since we will not convey information that has a significant influence on human life like Coast Guard team (see Kipp's detailed and excellent description), accuracy of the images would not be prioritized in our project. Rather, because we are going to convey hands-on training on classroom comedy strategies, it would be important for us to show simple and easy-to-understand images. In other words, in order to decrease the complexity, the accuracy of representation in our project should not be so high. On the other hand, in order to assure learners' quick understanding of our contents, clarity of the representation should be high. Namely, representation should be figurative rather than abstract. What should be even higher is learner involvement. After learners quickly understand ideas of how they can create comedies in their classrooms, they are asked to demonstrate the understanding of the comedy strategies by actually creating classroom comedy activity plan. Again, simple, clear and easy-to-consume representation is important in our project.

Complexity of content and context, Learner Expertise, and Goals of the Environment

Although there are several things to consider such as the subject matters the classroom is going to deal with, the complexity of content and context is not so high. We will convey simple and easy-to-understand Hook-­Line-Sinker method. Additionally, while all the learners, new teachers and teachers who have desire to enhance students' engagement and/or teacher-student relationships, are expected to have knowledge on creating classroom activity plans, our research so far tells us that it is rare for teachers to received training on classroom comedy. Accordingly, learner expertise on our content is not expected to be high. Goals of the environment is clearly elementary school classroom. Regarding these things, again, our representations would not be necessarily to and should not be complex and abstract.

Resources and Constraints

Lucky enough, one of our member, Megan is very talented illustrator. Also, I, myself, have some skills of creative software and, in order to update my knowledge, attended the workshop of "Photoshop CS6: The Basics" at the IUB Library held at 9am-12pm on Saturday January, 19th. Additionally, everyone except for me has involved in or has connection with elementary school education in some ways:

• Megan's mam was an elementary school teacher and currently teaches undergraduate courses for those who intend to be elementary school teachers.
• Scott volunteers at an elementary school in summers.
• Remzi was an elementary school teacher in Turkey.
• Peter taught elementary school children classic music.

So, we would not need to be worried so much about resources and constraints!!!

[Week 3] Two Infographic Topics

• Percentage of people who has the preference of colors.
• Percentage of people who has the preference of visual design of learning materials.

The first one is related to my personal curiosity. The second one is related to my research interest. Either way, I would need to collect the data by myself. I would be motivated to study on the second topic more as the data I collect could be used for future studies. However, friends seem to like the first one more!

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In order to make the second infographic more complex, I might be going to ask additional question of "What kind of visual design principle of learning materials you have?"

The answers could be such as

• text size
• color or black & white
• lots of picture or text-densed

I might be going to distribute a questionnaire of

1. Do you have the preference of visual design of learning materials?
   1. Strongly Disagree ............. 5. Strongly Agree
2. What kind of visual design principle of learning materials you have?
   Open-ended Question

For the second question, if I have a valid framework such as Dimensions of Color, Readability, Graphic.... it would be really helpful. Yet, as I do not have any articles talking about such dimensions of visual preferences, it would be safe to make the second question open-ended. Or do you know some articles on this topic?

[Week 2] Infographic Principles

NOTICE: All the principles I made are do-not principles. So all the example infographics are bad examples!

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Principle 1: Inforgraphic should not make an argument without enough justification in order not to mislead audience

I do not like this infographic not only because it says that "pink is bad" but also because it says so without any good reasons. Do the quotes "77% of women who wrote a gender-neutral essays, said they would donate to ovarian cancer research" and "44% of women who wrote an essay about gender said they would donate to ovarian cancer research" support the claim of "The color pink is bad for fighting breast cancer"? NO WAY!!! The two quotes at the left side do not make sense even more.


IMG retrieved from http://onetooneglobal.com/blog/2011/07/05/think-pink/

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Principle 2: Infographic should not use too small texts in order to ensure readability

You can see a larger version of the image below by clicking the image or the URL below. What you will find is that it is hard to read the texts even if the image is enlarged!!! The quality of the content does not matter if none can read the texts and make sense of the infographic.


IMG retrieved from http://dadofdivas-reviews.blogspot.com/2010/08/pepto-bismol-giveaway.html

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Principle 3: Infographic should not be too long or wide in order to fit a screen and paper

The following two infographics do consist of readable size of texts. However, since they are too long/wide, they shrink when we see them in a window or on a paper. Accordingly, it is hard to see what are written and described on them.


IMG retrieved from http://www.onlinenursingprograms.com/code-pink/


IMG retrieved from http://voltagecreative.com/editorials/graphic-history-color-pink/

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Non-Example

I do not say the following is a perfect infographic. Yet, it does not seem to make an argument without enough justification, it generally consists of readable size of texts, and it's not too long or wide and fit a screen or a paper!


IMG retrieved from http://www.samsill.com/infographic-what-cause-is-important-to-you