Blog#6 Research and expertise
Prompt: How has your research and/or design process so far changed your understanding (e.g., of your target audience, your technology, your content, the design process, etc.)? What caused this change, and what significance does it have?
This week, I have finally submitted MILESTONE #1: Intro + Analysis [Google Docs] [PDF] to my committee members. I wish I had the time to celebrate this achievement, but I was actually way past all the flexible deadlines I had set myself. The assignment was initially due on October 4th, which means it took me almost two more months to finish it. I am not sure exactly why this has happened, but probably the less flexible deadlines for the other courses I am taking got in the way of my thesis work.
Still, I am happy that things have progressed and I feel more focused in my thesis than at any other point of the semester. Today, Nicole Pallares, one of my peers and committee members has sent me her feedback on my fist milestone. Here is the complete version, including all her comments, suggestions and concerns. It was great to see that she has invested so much time and energy into carefully reading my entire piece. I’m very glad with the high-talented people that are part of my committee.
Nicole has many times called my attention to the lack of research and citation throughout this M#1. This is not the first time that this happens, actually. I remember that the same exact thing went on when I was taking Andrew Gardner’s Educational Design for Media Environments course in the Fall 2014 semester, my first one in DMDL. Here is the link to the presentation that Jie Ding, Brad and I worked at the time, where we showed Andrew calling our attention to the absence of citations.
It seems that I’m always taking a design path that is at least a little weird: I make descriptions (target audience, problem statement) based on facts that I’m pretty sure are right, but I only look for research to back them up afterwards. It is funny, because it feels like if I were to investigate my target audience exhaustively before starting to write things down, I wouldn’t have delivered M#1. But now that I have written many assumptions, there are many facts that I need to check and back up.
Anyways, a few weeks ago Nissa and I were discussing how we could become experts in the field we are researching. For me, it felt like a true language learning and technology specialist would be completely aware of everything that is currently being done/released. I would probably have tested many different software and have a solid opinion about them. I would also need to be constantly learning languages. Finally, it would be nice to know where most of the research in the field happens.
As I realized how far I was from becoming a subject expert, I decided to do something simple, which hopefully will be helpful: creating a list of peer reviewed journals that I would like to follow from now on. My hope is that, by connecting with what is being published in different places in the world, I will have a better understanding of what the current field challenges are, what has already been accomplished, and which are the most common and well-accepted approaches. Well, here is that list:
Journals:
Language Learning in Higher Education
Language learning & technology
Innovation in language learning and teaching
Journal of Language Teaching and Learning
Language learning and development
Computer assisted language learning
Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated Learning
Journal of Teaching and Learning Language and Literature
International Journal of Research Studies in Language Learning