So, I've been revamping some of my backup plans. Here they are.
Action research is about my personal practice in my own classroom. I'm interested in changing up the production side of the class to incorporate more (smaller) documentary projects that make an attempt to tie into the critical studies portion a bit better. For example, when talking about media literacy principles relating to access, analysis, evaluation, and creation, I want them to make a media-biography that explores their own personal relationship with media. I'm interested in them exploring principles of identity in a doc project, and sense of place, and all those wonderful things that we talk about on Mondays that don't always seem to manifest themselves in their actual documentary projects. I'm interested in evaluating success in the project based on the SOTC principles we've been talking about from Multiliteracies.
If possible (obviously I will do this anyway, but I don't know if it would be possible for my thesis), I would then track how (if?) implementing these changes in TMA 458 affects Hands on a Camera instruction at all, because it's in Hands on a Camera that I find an even bigger disconnect between lessons about media literacy principles and lessons about documentary (though clearly the very process of creating a documentary is a media literacy experience, I think that the two could be even more significantly connected).
I also want to experiment with incorporating more peer to peer learning experiences, and seeing if that changes the experience as well, but it might be too many changes to implement in one semester.
Here's where I'm running into some challenges: I think that all these changes are good, and will provide me a lot to think about, but what is my concrete research question? I started with, "What is the experience of a TMA 458 student when media literacy principles and documentary storytelling are more integrated in this course?", but is that too vague?
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2 comments:
I appreciate that you are wondering about the research question. I also am pleased that you have a clear sense of your analytical lens (SOTC). I wonder what it is you want to study. Do you want to study your instruction or the products created by the students (their documentaries). If the focus is your instruction (which is where I would push you given that SOTC is an instructional framework), then your question must be about your instruction. Would it be possible to describe your current instruction relative to SOTC and your new instruction relative to SOTC and discuss the changes. I'm not sure I am making myself clear here, so I am looking forward to discussing this in class tonight. At any rate, good thinking. :-)
I'm interested in your experience as a mentor to the students teachers. Is there a way to ensure your teachers are using SOTC? You have a cool perspective of being about to watch yourself teach by instructing BYU students to teach as you do.
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