As learners and teachers, we are well aware of the traditional protocols of a face-to-face classroom. You know, at the appointed hour students face forward and the instructor presents new information and monitors learners as they engage in learning activities. However, in a distributed Web-based landscape, the productive patterns and protocols of learning and teaching are a bit different. So, let's begin our journey together by envisioning a working model for teaching and learning in ITEDU 699.

Roles. As a distance learner, you have (consciously or by default) agreed to assume many of the responsibilities often ascribed to the instructor or the educational institution. Quite literally, you are taking on the role of a self-directed learner or as a participant in your own education (Grow, 1991). A self-directed learner assumes much of the responsibility for:

• establishing and maintaining the communicative infrastructure;

• setting your own learning goals;

• identifying and securing resources;

• planning and coordinating learning activities;

• initiating requests for assistance; and

• monitoring your own progress.

As instructor, I will help shape your educational experience by offering weekly teaching and learning plans, new information, learning activities, and regular feedback on your progress. I see myself as a facilitator and will help you examine your own assumptions and think critically about your proposals. I honor risk-taking as it supports the development of deep understandings about teaching, learning, and research. I expect you to be assertive in pursuit of learning goals. To this end, I encourage you to practice self-reflection, ask many questions, and seek multiple sources of evidence to support your conclusions and propositions.

When you encounter learning roadblocks or desire further explanations about research concepts, please do not hesitate to share your concerns with me. The quickest and most reliable way of contacting me is via email. However, there are times that the richness and spontaneity of a telephone call (765-285-5648), face-to-face meeting (Applied Technology 207C) or chat session (let's try Blackboard's Chat feature) are more desirable. No matter the venue, the key here is to communicate and share concerns.

Now, let me explain the organizational logic of ITEDU 699...

Robert Gagne, a well-respected instructional theorist, contends that nine instructional events should create optimal conditions for learning (Gagne, Briggs & Wager, 1992). The first of these are: (1) gaining attention; (2) informing learners of the objective; and (3) stimulate recall of prior learning. Although other educators refer to these instructional goals as establishing an anticipatory set, their  goal is essentially the same: to enhance a learner's readiness to learn.

In ITEDU 699, a redundant strategy will be used to achieve these goals:

• Announcements. On Monday morning of each week, I will post an announcement to the Announcements section of Blackboard. This message will direct you to a lesson plan that describes my vision of the goals, content, and activities for the week.
• Teaching and Learning (T&L) Plan. In a traditional class, the student rarely sees the lesson plan. Yet, in this Web environment, the lesson plan is used by all of us to identify the minimal instructional components that you could use to guide your learning pathway. Because both the instructor and the learner use the lesson plan, I call it a Teaching and Learning (T&L) Plan. These plans may be accessed from the Announcements section of Blackboard or from the hyperlinked date on the Course Calendar.

All T&L plans contain the same set of standard components, including essential questions, objectives, a learning pathway, assignments, and references. In addition, color coding has been employed to alert you to specific elements. For example, RED text indicates an important feature, such as a delivery date or caution statement. BLUE is used to highlight concepts important to a study of educational research. Midnight BLUE indicates a required learning activity.

• Course Calendar. The ITEDU 699 Course Calendar contains a chronological listing of the lesson plans, essential questions, and activities for each lesson. CAUTION: The course calendar is expected to change in reaction to learner needs and characteristics. Therefore, future activities are TENTATIVE and subject to change.

You can optimize this distributed learning opportunity by self assessing how these weekly goals and activities relate to your own knowledge and skills. If you are missing critical prerequisites, you should immediately inform the instructor. More often, however, this self assessment should provide you with valuable information to use in creating your personalized learning plan for the week. For example, during the first few weeks of the course, you may want to plan 4 to 5 hours for reading and 2 to 3 hours for synthesizing, composing, and discussing the content.

The primary resources for this include two texts:

• Creswell, J.W. (2008 or 2005). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (3rd or 2nd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 2005 ISBN: 0-13-112790-X or 2008 ISBN-10 0136135501
• American Psychological Association. (July 2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th Ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.  ISBN:1557987912n

Companion Website

Prentice-Hall, the publisher of the Creswell (2005) text provides a Companion Website at www.prenhall.com/creswell. This site offers online support materials, such as a PowerPoint presentation, for each chapter. These presentations can be extremely helpful in providing an overview of the most important concepts of the chapter. You might also find the companion website for Gay & Airasian (2003) to be a useful source of information.

BSU Libraries

In addition to these informational resources, we will conduct a review of the research literature by using several research tools and databases. The University Libraries at BSU is an important access portal to these resources, including:

• WebCat, the BSU's online catalog of resources.
• Electronic Databases, especially:
  • Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), also available at http://www.eric.ed.gov/
  • ProQuest Digital Dissertations
  • EBSCO Host Research Databases
  • Educational Testing Service (ETS) Test Collection Database

Relevant Sources of Information

Of course, databases and tools that are relevant to the study of industry and technology are especially useful, including:

• Virginia Tech's Digital Learning and Archives Database (DLA)
• NSDL, National Science Digital Library "The comprehensive source for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Funded by the National Science Foundation."

To practice with new concepts and processes of educational research in a distributed environment, several learning strategies can be used. During this course, we will:

• Summarize and critique course readings.
• Analyze and abstract research studies.
• Debate and collaborate in group discussions.
• Compare and contrast various research studies and methods.
• Use a spreadsheet to derive descriptive and inferential statistics.
• Synthesize understandings by developing a research proposal.

Chief among these strategies is participation in the discourse of our discipline through class discussion. This discourse may serve a variety of functions; Henri (1992) suggests that discussion may serve to support learning (pedagogical), metacognition, interpersonal relationships (social), and the mechanics and logistics of working together (management). Although a productive discussion includes elements that achieve all of these functions, it is important to focus most of your discussion on research concepts, procedures, logic, and terminology. and inquiries into the nature of research. Please use the discussion to ask about the nature of research, to rehearse your evolving understandings, and to practice using the new terminology. In other words, the class discussion should be a major proving ground for us to develop skills of critical thinking and inquiry.

Of course, you will also receive feedback on your efforts from the instructor and your peers. In turn, you will be expected to offer substantive, well reasoned feedback to your instructor and your peers. This information exchange may occur by email, telephone, fax, or within the Blackboard Discussion forum.

Offering feedback can be a little tricky when facial cues and voice inflections are missing from the communication channel. Therefore, I ask you to craft your communiques with attention to clarity and netiquette. One way of assisting the process is to use parenthetical remarks or emoticons to cue readers to your intent. For example, humor in our conversation is HIGHLY encouraged, but is often misinterpreted. Therefore, when offering humor, label it or use cues to indicate your intent. For example:

"In educational research, errors due to statistical sampling occur at 11,025 Hz  or 10 fps" (Hee, Hee! For all you audio/video techs out there.).

Formative Assessments will typically include online quizzes, self assessment, and peer assessment. An online quiz, for example, will allow you to take and retake a quiz several times. In so doing, you will be given feedback on your achievement and directives on where you can find relevant information and ways to develop more sophisticated understandings of these concepts.

Summative Assessments. I, as the instructor, will critique your progress on each of the required deliverables according to an established, minimal set of evaluative criteria. More specifically,

1. Activities (30% of Overall Grade): Students will provide evidence of thoroughly conducting several learning activities, including:
   • summarizing two research studies, one quantitative and qualitative study;
   • completing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) tutorial entitled: "Human Participant Protections Education for Research Teams" located at http://cme.nci.nih.gov/ ;
   • surveying the literature using several online databases; and
   • calculating descriptive and inferential statistics using Microsoft Excel.
2. Participation & Discussion (15% of Overall Grade): Class participation will vary in form and quantity to complement weekly learning goals and activities. Students will be expected to independently pursue self-directed learning activities, as well as contribute substance and insight during group discussions and role playing. These class discussions can be productive learning activities if the learner:
   • conscientiously shares relevant resources and experiences;
   • makes connections between first-hand observations of educational problems and research issues;
   • critically examines their own assumptions, as well as the assumptions of others;
   • offers and explains propositions, ideas, and insights;
   • justifies their assertions with evidence or authority;
   • interweaves the ideas of others into their own posts; and
   • summarizes readings and discussions.
3. Exams and Quizzes (30% of Overall Grade): Students will complete small quizzes (≈25 points) and one exam (≈100 points) during the semester.
4. Research Proposal (25% of Overall Grade): Students will envision and propose (NOT conduct) an original experimental research study. The topic of the proposal should be directly relevant to Technology Education or Career and Technical Education. This APA-formatted proposal should be a minimum of 15 pages and include an abstract, specific research questions, significance, review of the literature, and methods.

Note about MINIMAL criteria: I use the term minimal to refer to indicators that establish an ACCEPTABLE performance level, i.e., the learner can apply the new information in reasonable, similar contexts. At the graduate level, a "B" is considered an indicator of acceptable performance. Performance at the "A"  level, however suggests that the learner has progressed beyond application and has provided evidence of synthesis and adopted a disposition of inquiry. In essence, this level of achievement requires that the learner demonstrate consistent and sustained commitment to learning about, participating in, and applying educational research.

• Asking you to envision yourself as a researcher and statistician;
• Developing a collaborative action plan to apply research findings to your own teaching practice;
• Discussing future studies and applications; and
• Measuring your progress with that of your peers.

So, let's follow Costa and Kallick's (2002) suggestion and get in the habit of modeling and practicing self-reflection.

References

Costa, A., & Kallick, B.(2000). Sustaining change: Getting into the habit of reflection. Educational Leadership, 57(7).

Creswell, J.W. (2005). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Gagne, R., Briggs, L. & Wager, W. (1992). Principles of Instructional Design (4th Ed.). Fort Worth, TX: HBJ College Publishers.

Gay, L.R. & Airasian, P.W. (2003). Companion Website for Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Applications, 7/E. Pearson Education.

Grow, G. (1991). Teaching learners to be self-directed. Adult Education Quarterly, 41(3), 125-49.