Back to the interview data. I’ve come to realise that my biggest mistake in designing and conducting the interviews was that I was fishing for clues rather than fishing for answers. My guiding question was the classic “What is going on here?” and I asked students, teachers, and ICT Coordinators a variety of questions about exactly that: What was going on in terms of ICTs and Languages education, and why. The problem was that not much was going on, and they couldn’t tell me why! So I kept fishing for clues, getting broader and broader because of what they didn’t say rather than fishing for answers, narrowing in on what they did say. For example, in the focus group interview with Seaview SHS students, I established early on that they did quite a bit of work in the computer-lab playing with vocabulary-drill learning objects as a reward or as something supplementary to their “real” learning programme. They also did quite a bit of desktop publishing, producing “good copies” (their words) of final projects such as picture books or menus. And that’s about it. But later on, I kept asking about what they didn’t do (opinions on m-learning, ideal Languages classroom, gaming, etc), keeping questions and hence answers at the very literal level, rather than asking them experiential questions about what they did do. Although I was asking “why,” and prompting with “tell me more” or “can you explain…” their responses were only clues as to the whole picture because they couldn’t tell me more, and they couldn’t explain. They were reluctant learners, and reluctant interviewees. The interviews felt like getting blood from a stone, and left me with lots of clues, but few answers.

In hindsight, I needed to give them more opportunity to be descriptive, and more examples of how to be descriptive. I was a novice interviewer, and I forgot that my participants were, for the most part, novice interviewees. The ones who had experience in being interviewed gave the best data, as did those who were passionate about the topic. Some of the teachers had been involved in other research projects and some of the students had as well, and this was very apparent in their interviews. But others? Well, to say that they “represented the broad range of learners at the school” would be right! Novice interviewees, teenagers, apathetic towards Languages and disengaged with schooling as a whole were much more likely to give clues and leave me fishing (or to be more honest, floundering) for answers than I ever expected.

So, I think there’s a lot to be said for semi-structured interviews in qualitative work, but that it’s most important not to forget the ‘semi’ of the semi-structure. I followed my question protocol far too closely, missing many opportunities for potential answers, and I ended up with mainly clues. Because it has taken so long to transcribe and analyse data, I am unable to go back to participants and ask for more information, and I have to rely on triangulation with other data. I have ended up with more questions for future research than recommendations for current practice. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is frustrating knowing it could have been so much better. Then again, that’s what an apprenticeship is all about. That is what scholarship is all about. And I am still learning. Still fishing. Still floundering. And still working towards hauling in the big catch that is the thesis.

The hype cycle is attributed to Gartner Technologies who now annually produce a hype cycle of trends in technology, social media, and so on. It’s been used in a variety of ways and the book Mastering the hype cycle: How to choose the right innovation at the right time by J. Fenn and M. Raskino is well worth a read. From the book:

As she wrote research reports about specific technologies, Jackie [a Gartner employee] realised that there was a common pattern that most, if not all, of them shared. Again and again, she saw a rapid initial rush of enthusiasm for a technology’s potential followed over time by a deeper understanding of what the technology could really achieve. She drew a graph showing the ups and downs of this recurring cycle, gave each stage a catchy name (“Peak of Inflated Expectations,” “Trough of Disillusionment,” and so on), and populated it with example technologies. In the two-page research report showing this graph, she added some advice for clients about how to make decisions at each stage, depending on how much risk they wanted to take. Her report appeared in January 1995, with the title “When to Leap on the Hype Cycle” (p. xiii).

(Fenn, 1995, p. 1).

The Gartner authors recognise and acknowledge that the hype cycle is nothing particularly new: many of the underlying phenomena reflected in the hype cycle have been observed, analyzed, applied and rediscovered over many years by many different researchers, academics, and practitioners (Fenn & Raskino, 2008, p. xiv). They recognise the work of Nikolai Kondratiev on economic prosperity and depression; Joseph Schumpeter’s cycles of “creative destruction;” Everett Rodgers’ analysis of how ideas spread (his famous categorisation of populations into “innovators,” “early adopters,” “early majority,” “late majority,” and “laggards”); and Geoffrey Moore’s identification of a “chasm” between early adoption and mainstream adoption of many technologies and new ideas.

The hype cycle’s particular contribution is in highlighting the challenge of adopting an innovation during the early stages of the innovation’s life cycle. The hype cycle is also, we believe the only model of its type that has moved beyond an abstract concept and been used in earnest as a working management decision tool, tracking thousands of innovations over more than a decade. It’s a simple and highly visual way to represent the cycle of overenthusiasm, dashed expectations, and eventual maturity. But it’s more than descriptive – it’s also predictive… (Fenn & Raskino, 2008, p. xv)

The hype cycle for emerging technologies in 2008, when I conducted my fieldwork, looked like this:

Image: Philippe Martin

Of course, this has had me thinking of parallels in educational technologies and language learning. It’s easy to think of examples of new technologies that have gone through a hype cycle in the Languages context such as the “language lab” (especially in the tertiary context) and “learning objects” (for K-12). It’s also easy to apply the above hype cycle of emerging technologies to education more broadly (indeed, this has been done by many as a quick Flickr search reveals) and to Languages as well (I haven’t been able to find any specific models, and would love some references). The vertical axis on the chart is quite interesting – it represents “visibility”. In doing so, the hype cycle isn’t necessarily about use of technologies (in this case), but rather awareness or perception of. In other words, what people are talking about and think are going to be “the next big thing”. The hype. Rather fitting for my research, given the phenomenological slant, right?

Fenn and Raskino give a few overly examples in their book, such as Amazon’s stock prices, changing stock prices in China, and the frequency of the term “business model” in articles archived by Factiva. Each follow the cycle quite closely.

(Fenn & Raskino, 1998, p. 11).

This lead me to try a similar exercise with the term “computer assisted language learning” and Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com). Now this type of search may be problematic in that Google Scholar does not reference all of the CALL journals and only has records of publications available digitally (perhaps a library catalogue search is the next step!) but it does incorporate a very wide range of journal databases and when we’re considering visibility (accessible, easy to find articles) then Google Scholar is probably not a bad tool. The resulting chart looked like this:

The chart begins at 1970 because no results were returned via Google Scholar for articles or books before then. I know they exist, but they are not visible via the search engine. A search on terms such as “language learning” and “technology” together may prove more fruitful, but those terms are also too generic to be very useful: a word like “technology” brings up everything from institutions that teach Languages (e.g. MIT) to retail brochures. To put “language learning and technology” as an exact phrase is also too restrictive as authors may have used more specialised terminology such as “language learning and ICTs” or written it in a different way such as “technology and language learning.” Hence although use of the term “CALL” is quite hotly debated (some say that it should be “Technology Enhanced Language Learning” or just “Language Learning”), I found it a very useful indeed for conducting this search because it is a unique identifier. The term CALL may well be out-dated but I agree with Levy and Hubbard (2005) in that its purpose is to identify the field and not necessarily to define it. The term increases the searchability and findability of the field as a concept.

At first glance, the line graph appears to fit the cycle somewhat and the dip around 2000 (a “trough of disillusionment”?) is reflected in the literature with authors questioning CALL’s identity as a discipline and the need for a more explicit research agenda (Chapelle, 1997; Davies, 2001). However, this in turn sparked many more articles on the issue of CALL’s identity, and retrospective pieces that have done much to define and (re)imagine CALL as a field (e.g. Levy & Hubbard, 2005; Salaberry, 2001), accounting for much of the upward trend. Perhaps the graph charts visibility of the term “CALL” rather than visibility of the use of technology for learning and teaching Languages, but to my mind the two are very much related and so it serves both purposes. But the hype cycle is certainly not pronounced (there’s no real “peak of inflated expectations”), and I fear that I’m making the data fit the model rather than using a more grounded approach.

What the above chart shows to me, really, is that the field of CALL and the associated (talking of and visibility of) use of technology is still emerging. 800 ‘hits’ from Google Scholar for articles published in 2009 is tiny, relatively speaking. The field may be growing in momentum and visibility but it is nowhere near the “plateau of productivity.” Indeed, not one teacher or student I interviewed during my field work actually referred to “CALL”, no documents from the schools reference it, and in our second interview, I had to define the terminology in my questions. The same went for my questions about “emerging technologies,” many of which I thought were mainstream but, as it turned out, were not at all visible to my teacher and student participants. So one interpretation is that the field of CALL is still at the beginning of the hype cycle and we are only now seeing the “peak of of inflated expectations.” The hype has barely begun, especially in K-12.

This begs the question, how long does a technology need to be emerging before it is no longer defined as such? How long does a field need to be emerging before it is no longer defined as such? Will the field of CALL ever emerge from perpetual beta? Will I get to see the (K-12) plateau of productivity?

My research project is only one contribution towards the field, emerging or not. Hopefully it doesn’t fall into the “trough of disillusionment” but rather is an attempt to build up that “slope of enlightenment.” In any case, it is a chance to explore the hype and increase visibility and thought about language learning and technology, at least for my participants. It would be interesting to apply the hype cycle to other aspects of CALL, and to chart emerging technologies for Languages education against it, as in Martin’s chart above. It would also be interesting to compare CALL-visibility in the tertiary context to that of K-12. Is anyone up for the challenge?

References:

Chapelle, C. (1997). CALL in the year 2000: Still in search of research paradigms? Language Learning & Technology, 1(1), 19-43.

Davies, G. (2001). New technologies and languagelLearning: A suitable subject for research? In A. Chambers & G. Davies (Eds.) ICT and language learning: a European perspective (pp. 13-27). Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers.

Fenn, J. (1995). When to leap on the hype cycle. Gartner Group, http://www.gartner.com

Fenn, J., & Raskino, M. (2008). Mastering the hype cycle: how to choose the right innovation at the right time. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

Levy, M., & Hubbard, P. (2005). Why call CALL “CALL”? Computer Assisted Language Learning, 18(3), 143-149.

Salaberry, M. R. (2001). The use of technology for second language learning and teaching: A retrospective. The Modern Language Journal, 85, 39-56.

Sounding promising indeed!

Many of the apps demonstrated by the team facilitate collaboration over “content” (their words), that is, the ability to annotate, mark-up and otherwise share ideas related to the content. For example, one app gave the ability for students to highlight text and insert sticky notes for a “power user” (the teacher) to read. We were told that this would be a great diagnostic tool for the teacher to know where their students were up to in their reading and what problems they were having.

Great. Lots of opportunity for feedback, analytic-reflective teaching, and formative assessment. On the other hand…

A lot of the practical applications presented during the seminar place the onus and responsibility for learning on the teacher rather than on the student or on student groups. I’m sure this wasn’t intentional, but as I saw more and more examples, I felt more and more uncomfortable. As a teacher, I don’t want to be responsible for knowing where my students are up to in their reading or reading their annotations on their work-in-progress all of the time. I have far too many students to follow with that kind of detail. I’d much prefer for them to go through self-assist strategies of researching, asking a peer, asking a member of their PLN, etc before coming to me. As a teacher, I don’t want to be responsible for uploading and managing course “content” (which, by the way, I think we should think of as “learning materials” or “resource”). I want the students to be produsers. As a teacher, I do want to be responsible for providing opportunities for my students to learn, but I want them to be responsible as well. And accountable. And I have to respect their right to fail.

But the idea of access to ongoing, point-of-need feedback and facilitating/mentoring got me thinking. There’s a lot of talk about mobile learning and “anytime anywhere” access – access not only to physical resources (books, videos, podcasts, etc.) but also people resources (teachers, tutors, critical friends, PLN communities). So does anytime anywhere learning lend to expectations of anytime anywhere access to teachers/tutors? To formal learning? A lot of tertiary educators talk about the struggle of email and being contactable 24/7. Well, what about apps like the ones demonstrated yesterday where the teacher/tutor/facilitator is the “hub” of learning, and all roads for feedback lead back to them? Certainly, it is normal to take home with you as a teacher (“pull”) but what about when work comes to you at home (“push”)? Ding! You have new mail! Ding! You have a new blog post delivered via RSS! Ding! There’s an annotation in this .epub where a student needs help. Ding! It’s now midnight and you’re still trawling forum posts and you haven’t uploaded that lecture-cast yet…

Some educators set office hours and stick to that rule, and I admire those who do. But I’m still interested in the expectations for and of anytime anywhere learning. Are there expectations of anytime anywhere teaching? In the tertiary context? In K-12? And what does this mean for how we envisage ourselves, our jobs, and our careers?

I’m hooked. Unfortunately it’s beyond my means to buy one myself and so I’ve been living vicariously through first a lovely professor at uni, then my parents (I have visitation rights), and now a friend’s as I babysit her children. I’m currently updating this blog from it, and although I’m a bit frustrated that I can’t easily flick between apps and put in Flickr pics etc, I know it’s because I haven’t set up the back end of my blog to make that easy rather than a limitation of the iPad itself (athough multi-tasking in iOS 4 will be nice!). And sure, typing isn’t the easiest and the iPad’s corrective spelling can be annoying, but wow. I’m impressed!! I struggle to write extended text on my iPhone whereas this is a joy in comparison. I can see the iPad as being a practical tool in field work, especially observational work because it’s not as obtrusive as using a laptop and much easier to use than an iPhone.

Here’s hoping another team of students take up my iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad project next semester: I’m looking forward to trying out Jot It Down on this “magic and revolutionary device”!!

The dilemma I’ve been having is how to go about hyperlinking to sources and yet still follow APA style, or at least the intent of APA style. I have a variety of different sources to cite in both primary (archived research data; my blog posts) and secondary (literature; websites; videos; blog posts) form and I’d rather cite-as-I-write rather than work it out later. Hence my dilemma!

• Should I include links in sentences? To source data? To secondary data? To external websites?
• Should I hyperlink in-text citations? To the end-text reference? To the original source? What about offline sources?
• Should I link to “anchors” within the text itself? When?
• Should I warn the reader/viewer that a link may take them to an external site? Should this be done by colour-coding, i.e. blue links for internal and purple for external? Orange for source (research) data? Or in some other way?
• Should I embed materials from external sites? How to caption them?
• When to hyperlink, and when not to? Just because it’s possible to hyperlink doesn’t mean that I should.
• Should I warn the reader/viewer that a link may ask them to download something, and if so, how big the file is?

These questions aren’t covered in the APA Style Guide, and I’ve asked the APA Twitter Team, but they haven’t been able to answer my questions either. It’s either new territory, or print conventions aren’t meant to apply to hypermedia situations. I think it’s more of the latter.

So where to look for guidance? in education (yes, the lowercase title is intentional) is a relatively new online, open-source, peer-reviewed journal on topics of connectivism in education. Considering the theoretical perspective and online nature of this journal, you’d expect the authors to exploit hypertext to their advantage. Unfortunately not. The articles, for the most part, conform to print APA Style standards and hyperlinks occur rarely (often only to external websites). Is it more than a little ironic that articles such as Digital Scholarship Considered: How New Technologies Could Transform Academic Work are written in a traditional style using print standards? I tend to think so.

It’s a similar situation for other prominent online journals in my field such as a href=”http://llt.msu.edu/default.html”>Language Learning & Technology (articles are in .pdf form); CALICO Journal (articles are in .html or .pdf with colour screenshots but no links); ReCALL Journal (published by Cambridge University Press in .pdf form); Computer Assisted Language Learning (published by Taylor & Francis in .pdf form); and CALL EJ Online (in .html form but no hyperlinks or hypertext – author submissions are to be made in .rtf form).

I’ve put the call out to my Twitter network to find other examples of (preferably education) journals that do use hypertext and have a style guide for authors: This will be useful indeed to inform development of my own style guide for my dissertation. In the meantime, I am going to work with Wikipedia’s Manual of Style, and adapt it to APA Style rather than footnote-endnote (or should that be APA Style adapted to Wikipedia style?).

Wikipedia:Manual of Style – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

As Wikipedia suggests, I will use “common sense in applying it”: It’s just that working out what “common sense” entails in terms of consistency is the tricky bit! For now, I will keep experimenting and playing with style, especially in my blog posts. It may be inconsistent process writing but hopefully my product writing will build on these experiences and be better for it.

I expected”research,” “ethnography,”, “data,” “qualitative,” “researcher,” “researchers,” and “ethnographic” to appear in big, bold font. But what’s interesting is looking at the smaller words, the ones that I’ve circled in black. The fact that “may” appears at all is problematic – it signifies that I am using passive language instead of active language or past-tense. As this is a report, I should be reporting on what did occur rather than what I ‘May” have intended, or intend to do (as you would in a proposal). That “experience,” “constructivism,” “perspective,” and “life” are also teeny-tiny imply that I have not drawn enough attention to them in my text. Considering that this beginning section is all about theoretical framework, epistemology, ontology, and so on, these words should be much bigger than they are.

I intend on Wordle-ing frequently as I continue to write. I’ve found it to be a great tool for both data analysis (i.e. my research data) and for writing analysis (i.e. my reporting) because it forces me to look at the source text in a different way and brings things to the fore (literally) that I may not have thought to look at.

Plus it’s pretty :)

I have named a more extreme version of this problem [inefficient writing] “the Penelope Syndrome.” Penelope, you probably remember, spent the days of Odysseus’s absence weaving and the nights unweaving in order to hold off the suitors who were harassing her. For a multitude of other reasons, some dissertation writers act like Penelope: they write a few decent paragraphs, and then a day or a week later they decide that what they have written is not any good at all, and they toss it. They do this over, and over, and over again, so that the stack of completed pages remains exactly the same height over time. If you’re doing this, you may be overly perfectionistic, or maybe you have a screwy idea of how one writes or, on some deeper level, you may be very conflicted over finishing your degree. If you recognize yourself as a Penelope type, try forcing yourself to move forward (Bolker, 1998, pp. 71-72).

I don’t consider myself to be a “Penelope type,” even though it is my name (!), rather my problem seems to be actually writing anything at all. I’ve never had this much difficulty sitting down and writing before! I seem to be doing all of the “right things:” going to writers groups; setting up a regular schedule; making deadlines; eating properly and yet… it’s still not happening. Although, I do get extremely distracted (side-tracked) by information online. My filters, RSS feeds, and email work a little too well: everything I receive through my PLN is very interesting to me and hence very distracting. And so I’ve made the commitment to follow Bolker’s other excellent advice and write first. I usually begin my day by checking email – this has to stop. I need to write first. If I don’t write first, then I need to exercise first (another big hole in my life right now). I think by tackling the writing and exercise I will be more productive, happier, and get the damn thing done!

But oh, to be a “Penelope type”. At least I’d have some writing done!

In beginning my “research journey” (oh how I hate that term but here I am using it again), I had no idea how important my PLN would become or what an influence it would have on my work at all stages of the “journey”. At the time I considered my PLN to be quite peripheral to my work or “core business” (being research) and perhaps I thought it unnecessary to mention. After all, you wouldn’t necessarily describe your intended use of a pen, email or telephone in a research proposal. But over time it has become much more central, especially this writing (and thinking) stage, and I realise just how much it has shaped my readings, understandings, and subsequent analyses of “What is going on here”: my central research question.

A personal learning network is part of a personal learning environment (PLE). The two terms are often used interchangeably, but I distinguish between the two because I feel that the PLE encompasses everything I use in learning and researching (the total environment), whereas the PLN is the networked component, with an emphasis on connections, particularly ones to do with people. So in my PLE I include learning from books, journal articles and other scholarly works; lectures; conferences; fieldwork; and data analysis (just to start! There’s far more than this in my PLE!) whereas my PLN is largely based on Social Network Systems (SNS’s) such as Twitter, Facebook and Skype; chats with peers, friends, and my supervisors (technology-mediated or not); and the chance meetings and conversations at conferences that occur outside of formal sessions. It’s about conversations.  I count RSS feeds (to blog posts, magazines, articles, podcasts, etc.) as part of my PLN as well because although the way I read them is part of my learning environment (i.e. computer-mediated), the content is networked (through use of hyperlinks, track-backs, and RSS) and written for a networked audience. The information I access through RSS is designed to be a conversation (even if I don’t engage in it conversing back), and it is informal literature even though it is, in a sense, peer-reviewed. Essentially, though, when I think “PLN,” I think of the not-quite-synchronous-but-potentially-not-asynchronous conversations I have with people through SNS’s.

Follow this link to see different ways people have envisaged their PLN.

Or view this great presentation by the same author, Joyce Seitzinger:

Engaging with the not-quite-synchronous form of communication enabled through many SNS’s has been termed as communicating in the “nearly now.” Using Short Message Service (SMS) on mobile phones is a good example of this form of communication: The SMS may  be sent “now” and there’s a chance someone will respond immediately, but there is usually a lag. It is not as sychronous as a telephone conversation, but it is not as asychronous as email or letter writing either.

As a teenager, I was heavily involved in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and ran one of the Australian-based largest chat channels. IRC was a big part of my PLN because it allowed me to network with other high school students at other schools who were studying the same TEE subjects.  Nowadays, I mainly use Twitter and Facebook as SNS’s-of-choice. Twitter is my “professional” SNS, Facebook is my “social” SNS. I have made an active effort to follow colleagues and leaders in educational technologies/languages on Twitter, keeping it as “professional space,” and I’ve tried to keep Facebook as “social space.” Although the two virtual spaces do overlap from time to time, I see this akin to what occurs in physical space: You may run into colleagues and frolleagues at the pub (social space) but you wouldn’t necessarily go there for a seminar or for work (professional space). Then again, that pub may have a function room for hire, and so sometimes it might be appropriate for social space to become professional space (like joining a common professional-interest group on Facebook).

It is through these spaces (or networks) that a lot of my learning occurs, and through which my learning is filtered. This is both professional learning and social learning: Professional learning being that which I associate with “work” or “research;” and social learning being that I associate with friends, family, and hobbies. For example, I recently learned that Voki have started up an educational version (professional learning) and that one of my good friends is pregnant (social learning) through the use of SNS’s. In both cases I may have learned this news through other means or media, but it would have been very asynchronous and a lot further down the track! But the major benefit of SNS’s and my PLN are the conversations. The links and suggestions are important, but the conversations moreso. For me, it’s all about the Aha! moments, those highly motivational and important moments of inspiration that come during research work. People in my social PLN may not care about those moments, but I like to think that the people in my professional PLN do. It’s like having access to a 24-hour staffroom of people who share similar (work) passions and interests as yourself, and provide useful (critical) feedback and encouragement. Even if this is only my perception of my PLN rather than the actuality, that perception is important. An imagined community is better than no community at all.

Computers won’t ever have Aha! moments; only people are capable of experiencing that joy.  However, computers will support your access to previous work, consultation with peers and mentors, rapid generation and exploration of proposed solutions, and dissemination within the field.  They can help make more people more creative more of the time (Shneiderman,  2002, p. 17).

I do feel that my PLN helps me be more creative in terms of thinking and producing. I often send out questions regarding everything from opinion-seeking (“do you think language teachers should….”), to practice-seeking (“do you give homework to students?”), to website design/coding questions (“How do I….”), to asking for advice on thesis writing itself (“When using APA style…”). It really is a network of support, and a very effective one (yes, I do get @replies!). One constraint, though, is that it can be a bit of an echo chamber in that I follow like-minded people who in turn follow similar things as myself. Although this is useful in getting timely access to information-of-interest (filtering the internet) it also means that I may miss out on contrary and alternate views and information sources. And so it’s important to recognise that a PLN is not a PLE – it is only one component, and complements and extends other sources of information. Those other sources of information are also very, very important.

My research would not be the same without my (online) PLN. The conclusions I am coming to, the recommendations I will make, and the style in which I write have been and will be influenced by the connections I have in my PLN and throughout my PLE. It is a constant source of support, information, and motivation and forces me to reflect on and extend my learning in ways I would not when working in isolation. I do worry about how I will “disconnect” from my PLN when the time comes to submit but it is far more likely that my PLN will evolve to suit my new professional learning context, whatever that may be!

References: