Arshad Ahmad (arshad@mercato.concordia.ca)
Fri, 11 Dec 1998 18:10:35 -0500
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 18:10:35 -0500 Subject: [ifets] Ideas for experimental design From: arshad@mercato.concordia.ca (Arshad Ahmad)
Please bear with me as I provide a bit of context before getting to the
point.
As a project manager at our Center for Instructional Technology, I am
responsible for designing a number of web based courses for a distance ed
program that will be launched by our Faculty in the fall of 99.
Like many other faculties worldwide, our administrators have made
technology based instruction, a strategic priority. And, like many others
in my shoes, I have some instructional design ideas about what would make
student learning worthwhile in the distance ed mode.
A lot of collaboration with instructors who have content expertise and our
systems staff offering technical knowhow is being planned. And then there
are the software vendors, each proclaiming their bells and whistles to be
louder than their competitors.
As a Phd candidate in Educational Technology, also like many others in my
shoes, I began with grandiose ideas about heroic contributions to my
field.
Initially, I thought of inquiry along qualitative research traditions. And
spent a lot of time devising various proposals. And once again, like many
of my peers, I have come to the conclusion that my proposal and
dissertation should come down to earth and focus, focus, focus. One
pragmatic supervisor has offered the typical insight that it is better to
get the job done rather than "do time" at the institution!
Well, I wonder if practical time spent in designing web-based courses can
be married to experimental design that serves to further my dissertation.
Surely there are worthwhile questions to be asked in these unchartered
waters?
My very broad reading of the literature on distance ed or ed tech in
general continues to come up with a bottom line that translates to "no
significant effect".
Allow me to ask this forum for your burning question on course design
and/or diffusion of technology. What kinds of questions can be
articulated? What would you test for?
I am willing to spend the next couple of years answering the relevant
question that I cannot seem to come with myself. Yet.
Arshad Ahmad
Concordia University
Montreal, Canada
H3G 1M8
email: arshad@vax2.concordia.ca
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