DARnet

This is my second visit to the DAR website, and although action research is not new to me, I had (and still have) difficulties getting a clear idea what DAR is about.

On my first visit I went straight to the wiki to find out more, but that did not much to clear things up. Today I first looked at the research links under Cycle one and Cycle two, and then followed the Derivative DAR Wiki links.

Having these as entry points, and the purpose of looking up something, it all made much more sense. I now understand the DAR wiki as a kind of knowledge pool on action research / online technology /communication, a place where one can look up and contribute information and experiences. As such I think it has great potential.

The presentation (user interface) is excellent. Using wordpress and mediawiki certainly has helped here, but still these systems have to be configured, and you have done a very good job there! The only minor point I could make is the relatively small font size, but that is personal preference.

Also liked very much your audio introduction and would urge you to do more of that. You have an excellent voice and should make use of it!

I think it would be interesting (and helpful for first-time visitors) if you could give some practical examples or describe situations where/how the DAR site might be useful. They could be a key for others to understand your idea better, and could spin off discussions in which others may carry the idea on.

On a similar note, when you invite visitors in the wiki to contribute, it might help (for a start) to give some examples what you think might be useful to contribute. This is not meant to patronise people or control something, but to further understanding and spark off action.

The DAR site is interesting. I will come back…

Hello Rob
I was a bit bewildered thee was a lot of technical terms I wasn’t aware of. I an interested in doing research on-line I feel that’s where a lot of my own research has been lead. I use many government websites and community rooms to help with the work I do in education.
My biggest worry is the skills needed to access on-line research. Through the work I do with Teaching Assistants they feel that IT is an area in which they would like training or further training.
We do have a website www.mgrid.org.uk in which everything to do with education is placed on here. If you haven’t got the skills to access this then you could be missing out.
The use of community rooms I feel is great. I am able to communicate and join in discussions with people. I can make announcements, offer congratulations, or start a debate. This allows a wide spread audience other than your immediate colleagues.
There are so many sites that offer research info but it is nice to see one set out clearly, with appropriate links and language.
If time permits I would like to investigate this site further

Hi Andy,
I am really impressed with the presentation of the website, it looks very smart. I found the 10 minute audio interesting, but wondered if you could use your creative talent further and produce one of your movies? This would help people who are grasping with some of the difficult concepts you are discussing.
It might just be the pressure that I’m under at the moment..but at first I couldn’t work out what to click on, I take it the main pages are the blog and the wiki, I clicked on the links under the title ‘pages’ first.
Perhaps a ‘guided tour’ for first time visitors would be helpful. There is so much excellent information here, you have a search facility, that’s good, but perhaps a comprehensive site map might also be helpful.
I think this is a very interesting and worthwhile project and can see it lasting you well beyond your time at Ultraversity,
I wish you every success,
Denise

Hi Andy,

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to look at your work. I found it fascinating the way you utilised the internet to link Hannah Moor Zider and UK Cider in order to generate research data for DARnet. Ingenious! You seem to have hit on a great topic, CIDER. There seems to be a hardcore of people out there passionate on the subject.

My research project is about engagement within Talking Heads, which is an already existing online community for headteachers. It was launched in Feb 2000 with 800 headteachers as part of the Laptops for New Headteachers scheme, and was originally facilitated by Ultralab, until it was novated to NCSL (National College for School Leadership), where I work. The project was aimed at identifying how online communities could support school leaders in 3 key areas:

1) reducing isolation amongst newly appointed headteachers
2) promoting the sharing of good practice
3) offering emotional and professional support

Talking Heads is now part of a much bigger amalgamation of Online communities called talk2learn. For further information visit

http://www.ncsl.org.uk/online_communities/comms-index.cfm.

To be a member, you either have to be a headteacher, on a college programme, or have some other “worthy” educational objective. Even then, you’ll only get membership of certain communities, e.g. Talking Heads is exclusive to headteachers.

Interestingly, we’re now looking at the sort of sites you are developing to see how we can improve engagement within the talk2learn communities. The College commissioned some research which made the following suggestions:

Put what’s on the inside outside to draw people in

Let users organise the site more, develop a sense of “ownership”

Less formal dialogue - “encourage small talk and the big ideas will emerge”.

I am going to try some of these suggestions in my research,
but I see you are already doing it!

I think a strength of the sort of communities you are developing, i.e. UK Cider, is that it is relatively easy to join, it gives participants a sense of empowerment and enables them to find a voice. They can overcome shyness by using a pseudonym if they wish, so there’s an element of anonymity. We may not be able to incorporate all of these strengths within talk2learn, but we need to try to make changes where we can.

Thanks again for including me in your research.

Best wishes
Julie Leek

Hi Andy,
As promised have visited your site. Very comprehensive, open, honest and explanatory. Have not been able to listen to podcast though? Do I need something I haven’t got?
Your explanations of ethos for research proposal is well thought out and succinct. I am in total awe of ability to create the ‘beast’. Well done.

Andy,

I haven’t checked the presentation part, but i did check the rest and have some comments.

As a starter on Internet research ethics:
http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf
It is *very* important that whatever the research is about we start with an ethical design and write a statement before starting collecting data.

Now, about the podcast:
As somebody else told you, your voice is simply terific, so you could invest more about it. I also liked your concepts but I found you to be too verbose and I couldn’t finish listening to the whole thing So, my suggestion is: map your concepts on a sheet of paper and follow a structured discourse while you are recording.

About the concepts:
wonderful, terific. I’ll throw in some unstructured ideas to furtherly develop (if you want):
*applicability of action research to CoPs:
I’ve blogged about it from different perspectives:
http://gionnetto.blogspot.com/2005/07/theory-vs-practice.html
http://gionnetto.blogspot.com/2005/06/idealising-cops.html
http://gionnetto.blogspot.com/2005/07/in-cops.html
I wouldn’t cite myself normally but I noticed you already put a link to my blog so… *other useful concepts to explore:
1. Communicating and learning styles
2. Linguistics of email
3. “media richness” and personality styles
There are studies I know of in these fields, if you like to dig more, just ask me.
*practical ideas on how to do DAR:
A. starting with testing the several definitions:
Majerstin discovered about 44 definitions of CoPs. Plus there are similar concepts that are worthy a reflection upon IMHO.
B. gathering case-studies and seeing how many of them match a definition of CoP and in case which one:
MANY “studies” call a bunch of people a CoP WITHOUT specifying the properties that makes it a CoP (or not). I could tell you which authors to stay away with, in case ***grin***
C. using qualitative and quantitative measures
D. using linguistic analysis of collaborative exchanges and artifacts as qualitative measures of the “degree of CoP” present in a group of professionals.

I’m very interested in what you are doing, Andy.

Hi Andy
Congratulations on your work. Interesting and innovative!

About the DAR idea, the research and the proposed Wiki …
The notion of having a place to pool ideas on concepts of DAR is very helpful. I’m not sure that I would fully agree with DAR as “Research into or using online communities and digital tools.” – I would suggest factoring in to the definition ‘action’. There are other sites which look at online research methods but yours is different as it has the ‘action’ in it. For me that is your great success here. As it is such a new idea the spaces you are developing will help the ideas evolve and develop.

I think the technology choices to consider DAR are critical to your success, though is a slightly different context this point: “maybe Wiki Talk pages are never going to be appropriate places for many-2-many discussions” may be important. If this is true (I don’t doubt it!) then would the technology choice of a Wiki be limiting engagement around the idea of DAR. A blog is more established and widely recognized – I wonder if this technology would be worth considering.

2) about the presentation of this ‘pilot exhibition’ and your experience of it.
I think you have done a good job on presenting your findings. You use a range of media was varied. I agree with Rosanna about mapping your ideas for audio, not necessarily a script but some points. In principle though the audio is really helpful as an introduction and it may be good to use short clips to introduce the text area of the site. Especially this may be a way of introducing new concepts on each page (technical or methodological).
I think the derivative pages are a useful way of showing additional findings.
Though to be honest I wasn’t sure how they fitted in to the wider research.

Really interesting ideas.

Hey Andy,

Interesting process you’re starting here. I listened through the podcast, checked out the wiki, and read through the intro. Looks like you’re digging into the process and participating in your research areas, which seems wise in developing understanding. That said, I’m still not entirely sure what you’re trying to accomplish.

You’re doing several different studies into online communities, then reporting on the methodologies and patterns you’ve found across all of your research projects?

Hi Andy,

Where do I start?
1) about the DAR idea, the research and the proposed Wiki

I think it is an innovative idea that is very worthy of research, although to be honest I still don’t feel like I am 100% understanding the DAR concept. The more I go around the various links etc the more it seems to make sense, but within all of the data provided the definition on the wiki page gave me the most clarity, as I could read it, re-read it, read another section then come back to it again to see if I had “got” it..

I won’t pretend to be knowledgeable about Wiki’s, they sound (and have always sounded when others have discussed them) a great idea, but I think that for the uninitiated they remain a bit of a mystery so a idiots guide to usage would be useful, however probably not appropriate for the level of the audience that you are aiming at/would have due to the focus of the research.

2) about the presentation of this ‘pilot exhibition’ and your experience of it.

I LOVED the podcast! Your voice was perfect for it, if someone is going to sit and listen to a recording with no visual stimulation about a relativley complex topic, an interesting and enthusiastic voice would seem to me to be essential and the tone of your voice and the way in which you covered the various aspects of the topic was just about right.

I like the way you considered area by area email, wiki’s CoP’s etc.

The Podcast made me really think about the topics you were discussing, more so than if I had been reading through a transcript of what you said, the intonations in your voice lent meaning and importance and question to certain parts that is lost when reading through text. That is not to say that I don’t usually like to read and re-read things a few times to “get” it, but as a stimulation for thought and consideration, the audio was excellent; all I needed was the opportunity to come straight back at you with all the questions I had jotted down on my scrap of paper
Is there a way that someone could take notes electronically, while listening to the podcast? I was aware that I wanted to jot down notes, not just becuase I was aware that I was going to ultimately give you some feedback, but because it was such a relatively long audio covering such a number of areas and I wanted to note the key points, which with text I would probably re-read or highlight.

I think your introduction is very good, the links are all excellent but I think for a “pilot” it is quite a huge thing to take in, it is not a “small area” of your AE but the whole of it to date which was quite daunting (probably me and my technologial deficiencies though).

Hello!
A very nice and pretty site, much thought has obviously gone into it. As a few people have pointed out in the comments though. What exactly is it you’re trying to research? Just saying ‘changing the way to research the internet’ is not enough. Are you trying to change community? Even this is waaaaaay to broad! What is the change that you’re hoping to instigate by this action research? Are you going to be collaborative? What methods and analysis are you going to employ? What is your hypothesis, what exactly are you trying to do? You mention exploring and a view to make improvements, but for who and why? Learning? Fun and games?

You mention “getting interested in this idea”, I’m entirely not sure what idea you’re actually talking about really. Maybe a real nuggat of focus would be useful. Sorry!

Hi Andy,

I like the podcast - easier to understand than reams of text - very good method of presentation for this - but possibly could be available as both the whole and a choice of bite sized chunks - J wouldn’t keep quiet for all of it and I had to keep refinding my place…

I find the DAR idea a little hard to catch a firm hold of - I keep ‘getting it’ and then it drifts away again - I worry that the small cycles need a bit of direction to their travelling direction - they need to be water droplets being guided rather than bubbles floating every which way …

I’m not sure why there is a blog as well as ‘discussion’ pages on the wiki - none of the ones that I followed seemed to be in use ….

On the whole there is a ‘feeling’ of a theme appearing through the blog and wiki - my question would be “where next?”

Dear Andy

I found it hard to follow the general thread of the data as there were so many links to click to and at times I read the same information twice in different places. I think my preference for not diving around so much may be due to my learning style! Although it is making me reflect that I have done this in my exhibition too so perhaps it is a measure of whether I am thoroughly familiar with the information or still at the level of working hard at trying to understand it.

What I would like to have done is listen to your podcast whilst being able to click through links.

The odd summary would be helpful e.g. what improvements you felt were needed after the first cycle. Chat mode often makes me think I understand it as I am reading and yet when I get to the end if I was asked questions on it I would not pass muster. All I can remember whilst writing this is that you felt the need for a definate time frame.

I don’t get any sense of where you are thinking of going next with the 3rd cycle.

1:01 am is not the best time for giving feedback. I didn’t really say enough complimentary things.

It was great to see a pilot exhibition in a different format. Very innovative.

I agree with others that your speaking voice is one of your greatest assets. You sound relaxed and managed to maintain my interest - so perhaps use more of it next time.

This direct method of feedback works well.

[…] the 14 day thesis to look forward to. Two pieces of good news though. The first response to my online pilot exhibition has appeared there, and I couldn’t wish for a better start. Now to test my theory that nobody […]

[…] response to some of the feedback kindly left on my online pilot exhibition […]