Artifact 5: Administrator and Faculty Perception of Needs: A Case Study of Course Redesign to Online

The pursuit of a thesis is an arduous journey. In an effort to prepare students and guide them through the process, Athabasca University provides two consecutive courses on research methods, followed by MDDE703, a course on writing a research proposal. The student is expected to have selected a thesis topic or area prior to starting the research-specific courses. 

When I started MDDE 703, I was still not sure what I wanted to investigate. I had no time to waste and needed to figure it out very quickly, as the first assignment was a literature review to identity current literature related to my question and was due in the fifth week of the course. While I was not sure what my thesis would be, I did know it would somehow align with my goal of improving the instructional design and facilitation. (1.1, 1.2)

As I learned about the research process, I realised my goal too broad for a thesis and I would have to narrow my research considerably. I had some thoughts of what I wanted to investigate but had a long way to go to distill my ideas down to a manageable research question. I realised I could tap into my colleagues and benefit from their teaching experience. I jotted down some questions to ask that could identify any issues related to recent changes and set about interviewing my coworkers, as well as met with the manager of the teaching and learning department.(1.3) I wanted to get a sense if they felt there were any areas that I should investigate or seek to improve related to distance education from a polytechnic perspective.(5.9) One co-worker mentioned that at the request of the institution she was going to transition her course to an online platform, but she had no clue how to do it, of what best practices she should be aware, or how to align pedagogy to distance delivery; she concluded with saying she did not feel supported by leadership. That planted the seed and I started my literature review looking for information about redesigning a face-to-force course to online.(1.1)

After reading many articles and considering a variety of ideas, I determined that the number of students enrolling in online education was on the rise, thus necessitating the shift in transitioning more traditional face-to-face courses.(1.10) Knowing this helped me to firm up my research purpose and whittle down my thesis questions. I was finally able to make the decision that my thesis would investigate the alignment between polytechnic instructors’ and management’s perceptions of what an instructor needs to transition a face-to-face course to online delivery.(5.1, 6.1)

In order to move forward in developing a thesis question, I had to gain an understanding as to where we are in distance education by investigating and determining any gaps or problems. One of the steps I took toward this was to review current educational research and perform a comprehensive literature review, which is a major component in a research proposal.(1.1) I used the data from my literature review to inform me of where we were currently at in educational research related to my topic. This review was crucial in assisting me to develop a problem statement and ultimately to help me create thesis questions.(1.2)

I used the problem statement to fashion a research question, although I did not do this very well. The feedback from my instructor, which appears in the artifact, is “this research question doesn’t reflect the purpose of the study” (Derksen, 2018, p. 7). I also developed nine sub-questions I wanted to answer (by the way nine is too many) to support and direct the participant interview questions, as well as keep the focus of my study narrow.(1.3)

I began exploring current literature by identifying key words related to thesis topic: such as administrators’ and faculty’s perceptions, support for online delivery, and facilitating online education. The early searches were general but helpful in locating some preliminary articles for me to review and thus help me identify more search terms.(1.4) 

As much as I tried to keep my search limited to articles published within five years, there were some older articles that offered key information, which I felt was too impactful or meaningful to ignore or leave out. 

The next step was to conduct a search for literature using search phrases such as ‘administrators’ perceptions of supports needed for online education’ and ‘faculty perceptions of teaching online’. Next I expanded my quest for information by using the advanced search feature and terms such as: faculty, administrators, supports, barriers, online education, distance education, e-learning, perceptions, attitudes, etc. As I identified articles, I noted the key words used in the articles and performed more searches using these keywords in various combinations. Using this method, I found there was an abundance of literature available to review. I also accessed the thesis and doctoral database in search of current research (Derksen, 2018. p. 15).(1.4) 

I had copious amounts of information, articles, references, and websites to review. I am very comfortable with Excel; so I used a rudimentary spreadsheet to track the relevant points and help me keep the different pieces of data straight. The Mount Saint Vincent University or The Mount as they are known by, has published guiding questions on how to critically evaluate journals (“Critical evaluation,” n.d.), which I used. Although this was time consuming, I found I was better able to evaluate journal articles and information more critically when I used the following parameters (5.3):

• Authority – do they know of what they speak?
• Objectivity – determine any bias, if it is a white paper, etc.
• Quality – overall presentation, research methods, literacy.
• Coverage and Corroboration – does this build on previous work and does it corroborate the work of others?
• Currency - how recent was the information published?
• Relevance – is it relevant to my study (“Critical evaluation,” n.d.). 

I read the articles, evaluated the information, contemplated how useful what the authors' conclusions were to my research, and determined if the data aligned with my topic.(5.4) “I scrutinized the articles for themes and synthesized the information” (Derksen, 2018, p. 15) by comparing and contrasting ideas or arguments between articles, pulling out salient points, seeking connections in the data, and combining them with information from other articles.(1.5, 5.6)

There were a number of areas with which I struggled beyond developing a research question and synthesizing data I amassed during my literature review. I also struggled with understanding concepts and how to consider different frameworks, as well as my writing skills and formatting the proposal itself. 

Concepts and Considerations

There is a nebulous area that, even after multiple courses and many papers, I still do not fully comprehend and continue to struggle with. These are philosophical beliefs, ontology assumptions, epistemology, and the difference between theoretical vs conceptual frameworks. I find that I temporarily can convince myself that I get it, but later I realise that I actually did not understand the concepts. This confusion has caused me to wonder if I lack the foundational knowledge because I did not do a statistics course when completing my bachelor’s degree. Each time I must tackle an assignment that asks for the consideration of these, I have to read, review, and refresh my knowledge. 

Nonetheless, I did include a section on the theoretical framework in my artifact: a frame of reference to link me, the researcher, to the knowledge and isolate key factors for me to examine during my research. I considered Social Constructivism and Expectancy Theory but could not gain any traction. I was able to propose Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, also known as the Theory of Human Motivation, as a theoretical framework that I would consider in my research. Maslow claimed that basic needs must be met to move on toward self-actualization; I hypothesize this is related to motivation and that, if no one meets the instructor’s basic needs, they will not be able to move forward.(5.2)

The Proposal

This artifact is a 78-page research proposal. It contains three chapters: an introduction, a literature review, and a chapter describing the research methodology, references, and appendix. I was very methodical about adhering to the proper format and followed the outline provided by Creswell (2014) for a mixed-methods research approach. By adhering to this outline, I could be sure my proposal contained all of the pertinent information and components, that I had considered all factors, and that the document was consistent and easy to follow.(4.1) As with most instructions, there is often a bit of room for ambiguity; for example, I was not clear on where to locate my sources that I referenced in the literature review chapter. My instructor indicated that it is “good to have this. In your proposal it will be located at the end of the last chapter, before the Appendices” (Blodgett-Griffin, as cited in Derksen, 2018).

Although, I have had instructors comment that I am a good academic writer (which I am not sure was always meant to be a compliment), I consistently struggle with passive voice. I am embarrassed at some of the errors and sloppy work that this artifact contains; I recall that at this point in my journey I was almost ready to throw in the towel. While I am not proud of the proposal itself, I am proud of the work and effort I put into creating this first draft. I appreciate that I still have a lot of work cut out for me before I would be ready to submit it to anyone, should I wish to complete the research.

Even though I was only taking one course, I found the workload in MDDE 703 was barely manageable and although I took steps to stay on top of my commitments such as prioritizing tasks and setting aside specific times during the week to work on my assignments and review literature, I still felt overwhelmed. Since project managers had worked for me in the past, I created a timeline in Excel to keep me on track: I populated the due dates and listed each incremental task along the timeline. On top of the course, I was also working full time and held a variety of volunteer positions. I created personal wellness goals to help me manage the stress of my busy schedule.(6.5)

In spite of my efforts to stay on track, I struggled to stay motivated and meet my deadlines. My instructor was very understanding and offered to extend the assignment deadlines, which I took advantage of. I was not able to attend all of the weekly class meetings, but I found if I was not able to carve out the time to attend when it was happening then it was difficult to find the time to listen to the recording later. 

I submitted my assignment and received a communication from my instructor in which she mentioned how pleased she was to see how much work I had put into it. Nevertheless, I was anxious to get the rest of my feedback. When I did receive it, I was buoyed up by my instructor’s comments on my proposal: “you have a good study planned here, Lee. I made a lot of notes that will help you refine what you have. The proposal development process will involve a few rounds of edits, and so will development of your final report. There will be edits after each defense, too Great job so far!” But I was dismayed at the seemingly insurmountable amount of work ahead of me. I became disillusioned and lost motivation.(1.1)

With my desire, effort, and motivation stalled, I felt frozen as to what to do next! Ultimately this resulted in inaction. I did not move forward with the expected next steps. I did not know how to go about finding a case to study for my research. In January 2020, I took steps to move to the e-portfolio and abandon the thesis.

Ironically, a couple of months after I made this decision, COVID-19 forced pretty much every polytechnic institute to transition their courses online. I can now see that, had I been ready to do the research, this would have been the perfect time to move forward!