Category Archives: Action Research

Action Research

Contents
Learning by Doing – interview part 5
DARnet interview part two.
Reflection on keeping an Action Log for a month
Action Log examples
Keeping an Action Log for 1st person research
First Person Action Research
Google Analytics for Action Research

Learning by Doing – interview part 5

Posted on 30/08 by Andy Roberts


Continuing the interview with Cormac Lawler, in which we begin to address the nature of “learning by doing” as it relates to distributed projects, and wiki in particular.

Cormac Lawler:

About changing of groups’ structure over time, I think my own domain (Wikiversity) is showing an increasingly strong tension along the lines of making Wikiversity a place of ‘blue-sky’ or experimental learning versus an alignment to known pedagogical forms. See Wikiversity_talk:Learning_resources#the_wiki_way.3F and below for some discursive material on this topic. It’s perhaps not an example of a change of guard as such (and the debate within Wikiversity’s development is not new), but I’m starting to see the tension as a pretty fundamental one for Wikiversity.

Andy Roberts asks:

Reading that discussion again on the Wikiversity page, it strikes me that both sides of the tension referred to are in fact agreed upon working within the same framework. The dispute, if I’m not mistaken is over the nature and quality of the learning resources which are to be accumulated in the Wikiversity. Neither side appears to be questioning the basic model of education based on learning from supplied content. The references to ‘experimental’ forms seem to remain within experimental forms of content provision, without questioning that preconception. Despite the claim that

“Wikiversity has adopted a “learn by doing” model for education”

the doing appears to consist entirely of editing pages to create more resources.
Do you think a bias towards conventional content based learning is built in to the wiki way?

C:

It’s a fascinating question – and I think you’re right that it is to a large extent. However – and this is more on the basis of knowing the involved people, rather than on what is on the page I linked to previously – I think that there has always been a strong desire to take a broad look at educational activity, and what role a wiki can play in that process. For example, some of the “content” produced on a wiki can be a record of a discussion where someone asks a question, and people respond with answers, suggestions, and/or questions of their own. Some of the content on Wikiversity has been explicitly initiated and developed as a debate – eg en.wikiversity.org/wiki/War_and_Iran. I don’t know if that conforms to your view of conventional content creation?

However, this “learning by doing” is a tricky concept – and I’ve been
pushing JWSchmidt, the originator of this concept in Wikiversity, to be more
explicit in explaining to me and the community what he thinks it might mean
in practice – and in detail. So far, I’ve found the concept as applied to
Wikiversity to be infuriatingly opaque – and I can see that others do too.
It’s something that I’ve always wanted to clarify on Wikiversity – what do
we mean by learning by doing, how can someone be guided through or motivated
to begin in such a model, and what kinds of educational experiences can we
anticipate, so as to scaffold learners if, whenever, and however
appropriate?

A:

How might other learning processes be facilitated through Wikiversity? I’m thinking of the newer emerging learning models such as connectivism, which would place the emphasis on the network between people and the community above content. This might require additional tools to the document based wiki, but needn’t be entirely separate.

C:

I agree – and we’ve been discussing tools to facilitate just such initiatives on a centralised page: Wikiversity:Technical_needs including the SocialProfile extension www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SocialProfile. We already have a ‘sandbox server’ to experiment with different tools – but to actually get extensions and other innovations approved on a relatively small Wikimedia wiki is difficult when in the shadow of Wikipedia. However, with community mobilisation, and more developers’ resources at our disposal (a software developer hiring was just announced yesterday, and there may very well be more) – we should continue to build on the mediawiki platform to see what it can offer in the world of connected, collaborative learning.

I see we’ve forked into a discussion of Wikiversity – and it’s very welcome! – but I also very much wanted this discussion to focus on action research and issues that we’ve both experienced in an online AR context. I think I’ll leave this to my next mail. Learning by Doing interview part 5 icon wink

Cheers,
Cormac

Earlier posts in this series:

Posted in Action Research, Wiki | Tagged |

DARnet interview part two.

Posted on 15/06 by Andy Roberts

In part one of the DARnet interview, Cormac Lawler asked me, Andy Roberts, about distributed action research, cycles, groups and background.

This second episode continues the interview, again with Cormac’s questions in red, followed by my reply.

* So, which online university did you attend? What were you studying?

The online university was a research project itself at the time,
called “Ultraversity” and run by the now defunct “Ultralab” centre
attached to Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, Essex. I
registered an interest before it started up and was admitted to the
first cohort, who came to think of ourselves as guinea pigs for the
revolutionary new online degree with zero face to face element and no
content. That may sound a bit mad but you have to understand that the
BA Learning, Technology, Research degree is workplace based, so mainly
for adults in employment. The subject for the research and therefore
content for the degree then derives from individual circumstances. So
the Ultraversity research project was launched with high hopes of
becoming an independent force for transforming UK higher education,
but has ended up being absorbed into the Anglia Ruskin education
department, minus some of the ideals and as a shadow of the original
ambition. I hear that some of the original ex-staff are building
something elsewhere.


* Did your research there feed directly into what you do now, or are you referring to a grounding in research methods/practice?

In a way, yes I did manage to make my studies relevant to future work.
I set up the distributedresearch domain and the DAR wiki as a major part of it, for example, and one third of the subject (L,T,R) was a grounding in action research theory, methods and practice.


* Are you still affiliated with any formal study programme?

I really don’t have a taste for undertaking any post graduate studies,
but as one of the alumni, I still have access to the online community and I’m
a member of a small informal group where we try to help and sometimes
mentor individuals from subsequent cohorts.

* I’m still not sure if I understand the domain of your research. Is it fair to say that it’s all based on your own practice, and not that of a group?

At its best, action research is always participatory and I do work
with groups in terms of facilitating online communities, with a
particularl interest in communities of practice. But since I became
a full time work-at-home internet entrepreneur last year, I’ve needed
to concentrate at first on activities such as pro-blogging, hence the
need for a spot of first-person action research to get my own act in
order. My domain and primary interest is still very much the social web.


* What is/are that/those practice(s)? What is the relationship between your community/ies in/to your work?

Sometimes it’s a very indirect relationship. For example, one of my oldest communities of practice is the UK cider makers group “ukcider” which I convened and facilitated since 2001. There is no business model, and it’s sometime difficult to find a way to pay the web hosting fees, but I suppose I’ve learned stuff through the processes and development there which I then manage apply in other domains.

About changing of groups’ structure over time, I think my own domain
(Wikiversity) is showing an increasingly strong tension along the lines of
making Wikiversity a place of ‘blue-sky’ or experimental learning versus an
alignment to known pedagogical forms. See Wikiversity_talk:Learning_resources#the_wiki_way and below for some discursive material on this topic.

Education is a political battlefield, and it often looks to me as if
the war was lost ages ago. The fundamental question is to ask “who is
this institution meant to serve?” which requires an understanding of
the nature of the state. Often the people who work in education start
out with idealistic notions of what the work is for, and imagine they
are helping to shape people’s minds in an empowering way, but end up
carrying out orders in the interests of the powers that be, who long
ago gave up believing that an educated general workforce is a
desirable thing as far as advanced capitalism is concerned. They need
people educated enough to be able to work the machines of an
information economy, and to be consumers in a digital age, but only a
small number are required to be independent, creative, critical
thinkers and problem solvers. So the prevailing model for education
is always content based, with the students viewed as empty vessels to
be filled. Even the UK Open University, which was born out of the pro
labour reforms in post war Britain, has been based largely on a pushed
content model, now with added forums.

I’d be very interested to hear to what extent parts of Wikiversity have managed to break away from the idea of the “course”, the expert, and the content. If you have people transfering across from the Wikipedia culture then it’s going to cause problems, but you could always fork a minority project for the more revolutionary work if it seems to be getting defeated.


It’s perhaps not an example of a change of guard as such (and the debate within Wikiversity’s development is not new), but I’m starting to see the tension as a pretty fundamental one for Wikiversity. I’m not predicting the splitting into groups, as you say, but I think it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Indeed, I see the role of my own action research to explicitly throw into relief the sometimes conflicting viewpoints that people bring to the project – in order to reveal something deeper about what we’re doing, and how we can move forward with a simultaneously more critical and expansive mindset.

You’ve used a phrase from Wikimedia’s mission – “the sum of human
knowledge”. Do you think such an entity exists? How do you see it? How do
you have access to it? How do you participate in it?

I’ll rephrase that to “The full extent of human knowledge” because of
course knowledge doesn’t really have a sum, does it!

Ten years ago you could find out just about anything by tracking down
the right bulletin board or newsgroup, asking a carefully explained
question, and coming back later to view responses or ask a
supplementary. Within a few days you’d have the best the net could
come up with. Now we have Google search, with all its limitations and
gaming, and google scholar for some of the hidden internet, but you
can still usually track down the author of particularly pertinent
idea, find out their online presence with a bit of luck and chance a
speculative email. So the backbone infrastructure of having
connections between devices all over the world will always find a way
to serve people who know a little bit about how to seek and connect,
no matter what infrastructure is built on top of it all, and I’m still
pretty optimistic about that regardless of whether we lose some
battles along the way such as net neutrality or the health of the
regime in charge of Wikipedia.

End of part two of the DARnet interview. To be continued.

Posted in Action Research, Wiki | Tagged , , , |

Reflection on keeping an Action Log for a month

Posted on 27/05 by Andy Roberts

This is the fourth post in a series of Action Research posts, following on from
1) 2008/04/27 First Person Action Research
2) 2008/04/29 Keeping an Action Log for 1st Person Research
(also 11 comments on the above link)
3) 2008/05/12 Action Log Examples

Reflecting on the process of Action Logging

Having meticulously kept up my Action Log for one month now, it’s time for me to reflect on the process and the implications for my practice as a self-motivated online worker.

Some thoughts about the Action Log in practice have been burbling away, somewhat informally near the front of mind in the past week, especially since writing up the examples. So now it’s time to use one of the reflective models to scaffold a deliberate piece of reflective writing and discovery. I’ll turn to the Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle model based on the simple diagram below:

Reflection on keeping an Action Log for a month gibbsmodelreflection

Description – what happened

I took to Action Logging quite readily, keeping up the short daily notes from 16th April until 15th May and have continued since. There is only one day off without any actions at all recorded, a deliberate day off. Apart from that the number of actions recorded varies between 1 and about ten, but of course the size of the actions varies enormously. Most if not all of the records are still meaningful, so a working log of all the various additions and adjustments made is now available to me, each tied to an exact date. After two weeks, I started dividing the days up into AM and PM, sometimes adding EV for evening. I very rarely had to go back and fill in a previous day’s log, but regularly use the browser history now, to check back over the past half a day or so to refresh my memory of where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

Feelings – what did I think and feel about it

I felt good about it. Satisfaction that I was indeed getting things done, and not just whiling away time browsing and checking. Sometimes it would still feel that the only things to show were quite small things, but better than nothing. A little bit of wonder that I seemed to have come up with an idea that was really taking me forward through instilling the beginnings of a good habit of self discipline. Later on some self doubt began to emerge, as I began to suspect that I might be letting myself off from some larger tasks by making do with having achieved some small ones. A slight sense of waste that I might be expending energy on accumulating valuable data without having any formal plan for getting around to actually using it.

Evaluation – What’s good and bad

What’s good
  • The simple format of the action log works well.
  • My chosen medium (internal mediawiki) works well.
  • The habit was sustained over 5 weeks without struggle, suggesting longer term sustainability.

What’s Bad
  • It’s a chunk of writing that doesn’t get published.
  • The data is unformatted, untagged, not coded or counted.
  • It may expire after a time by becoming impossible to interpret.
  • Not linked to any goals or targets, nor easily linked to any ‘downstream impact’.
  • With the documentation of small wins, the focus shifts inevitably more towards the humdrum than on big exciting ideas.

Analysis – What sense can I make of it

Keeping an action log is giving me a sense of reassurance at least, and quite possibly that very act is making sure that at least a minimal number of concrete positive are taken each day that go out into the world and stand a chance of having an effect. Almost certainly. Once logged, however, nothing else is happening to them at present. It’s got nothing to do with testing and tracking, but perhaps something to do with probing, pushing, and building.

I think it’s also quite healthy to have a sense that there also need to be some checks and balances to makes sure that some longer term goals and bigger tasks are being addressed. That’s fine. At this stage, the greatest achievement is to find something that seems to be working and largely stick to it.

Conclusion – what else could I have done

That’s a hard question, which is a good thing in some ways, or am I failing to spot something that’s missing? Maybe I should have recorded some reflections on the process as I went along, so I would have more to chew on now.

Action Plan – What will I do differently next time?

Mostly I think I shall declare this first cycle of my 1st person Action Research a productive one, and aim to introduce modifications only gradually. Steady as she goes.

I’ve always insisted that the Action Log method is not a complete package, it’s just a useful tool for use in a situation that might already be a bit out of hand. It’s almost an emergency remedy, a blunt instrument of rescue. Once the patient is stabilised, we can then start to introduce solid food and gentle exercise.

This has to be in the form of some kind of planning or task list, but still keeping the main focus on the actions getting done and logged, avoiding the tyranny of being surrounded by lists of things not done. I’m starting to imagine a supplementary system which is like a kind of ‘lucky dip’ of additional tasks that could be done, nice ones, interesting but necessary ones, without any deadline. The lucky dip will sit somewhere a bit more at arms length, and every so often when I think of something appropriate I might add it in. The lucky dip shouldn’t grow in size to more than about 50 tasks, and they should be things of a size that the whole lot could be cleared in a month if it was decided to concentrate just on them, but that isn’t the plan. The plan is that every now and then when I come to a juncture in my activities, I might decide to go the lucky dip and pick a task to do straight away. That will then give me something to put on my action log for the day.

Reflective process

For the sake of completion it’s customary to reflect on the reflective process itself so without disappearing up my own whatsit, I’d like to record that I’ve noticed that while this piece of reflective writing has not gone into any really deep reflection, it has spontaneously produced a very clearly defined action for my second cycle – implementing the “Lucky Dip” list.

Addendum: Using Twitter for the Action Log

This paragraph doesn’t really belong here but I postponed it once already.

I suggested a private space online, a text document or a physical notepad. Another alternative which Bill observed is the idea of using a twitter account. I can see how that might work, especially for people who can take advantage of mobile access to send in some action records while on the move somewhere. There are some disadvantages as well, such as the clunky interface for accessing archives but I suppose you could always pull in the RSS feed and archive it yourself. The main point would be to set up a separate twitter account solely to log the actions, and not expect it to attract and retain followers, or even try.

Posted in Action Log, Action Research |

Action Log examples

Posted on 12/05 by Andy Roberts


This is the third in a series of articles exploring the Action Log concept for 1st person research. The first article began to explain the practice of first person action research, and the second introduced the idea of keeping an Action Log.

In the comments, Shelley asked for a real example of an Action Log and Bill Anderson has provided one already, which we discussed there. He also sent me his second day’s log which I can publish and discuss here, together with an example from my own. First let me repeat how I described the type of actions to put down and the purpose of the log.

The simple idea is to jot down on at least a daily basis, a list of the actions taken. By actions, I mean visible external steps which are intended to have a positive effect, to add to a movement in the desired direction.

The purpose of an Action Log is:
  • To make a useful record which may improve the chances of being able to detect the weak signals of a reproducible relationship between cause and effect, when there is one.
  • Motivation to increase the number of actions taken.
  • A pragmatic form of appreciative enquiry, focussing on the positive accomplishments.

Two Action Log Examples

So this is Bill’s Log for Tuesday, May 6, 2008
  1. Replaced air filter
  2. Tried to replace light bulb – need professional help.
  3. Contacted AD about his blog error about me.
  4. Contacted TB about TCDL presentation req’ts.
  5. Commented on JM’s FB wall.
  6. Contacted UIUC info sys prof about ASIS&T07 session on training curators of digital science resources.
  7. Phone call with DH.
  8. Note to AD about his blog.
  9. Memtester run on pandora (2x).
  10. Voted in city election.
  11. Minimal HD cleanup.
  12. Sent class times to ML R-L.

My comments

This is a great example of an action log, with minimal description of discrete tasks accomplished. My first reaction was to question #2 , which could be about decision making rather than action taking but if you think about it the act of trying to replace the light bulb has been done and it’s moved Bill forward towards solving the problem. The other one is the phone call at #7. If the action was to make a call to DH that needed doing for a specific reason then fair enough. But If it was just to receive a call and pass some time discussing this and that, then this is just accounting for time spent rather than logging actions.

Andy’s Log for three days
    7th May

  • PM: Posted News at LTB and updated category news and redir.
  • AM: added to Old WordPress blogs and blogged Shirkey extract to some blogspots and WPs with link-also on flickr. Added Rose’s stuff to cider wiki. blog2 redirection. Added MammaMia to blog post after seeing unsucessful searches. Finished setting up accounts for Social Bookmarking
    6th May

  • PM Changes to London Theatre Breaks blog – name change and blog tab. Posted Grease. Updated 2 blogspots. replied to comments.
  • AM tweaks to LT posts. Redirections added to blog2
    5th May

  • PM posted sneeze post. Edited a music page at zetnet. Added some tags and links in WordPress.com
  • AM blogged at ukcider. worked on draft at DAR

Comments

These entries are fairly typical, representing a number of small tasks and one or two larger ones. The descriptions are not very helpful sometimes, for exaple ” tweaks to LT posts” doesn’t help me remember what the tweaks were, but at least I know I was doing something useful, hopefully. “Worked on draft” is a giveaway, so I’ve caught myself out justifying time and recording an action prematurely. Not until the draft is published does it become an action of the type I am interested in, although I suppose I felt I’d made some good progress towards publishing.

General Points:

Not a timesheet.

Action Log examples actionlogisnotatimesheet

We are not trying to account for our time, in fact the actions which I log only represent about a quarter of the time I spend working online. The rest is research, interaction, reading, learning, and taking actions behind the scenes that may precipitate effective actions later on, but at this stage don’t yet count.

Not the Total Solution.

The Action Log isn’t a “Total Solution”, it doesn’t account for reflection, prioritising, decision making or lots of other essential tasks. It’s only intended to address one aspect of the personal workflow, not the whole thing.

In the next post in this series I shall reflect on the possible impact and implications from keeping the Action Log and also discuss briefly the idea of using twitter.

Posted in Action Log, Action Research | Tagged , , , , , |

Keeping an Action Log for 1st person research

Posted on 29/04 by Andy Roberts

Keeping an Action Log

In my first post about First Person Action Research I mentioned the Action Log, and now I’m going to explain what I mean by that, and invite you to take the first action but first, here’s some context.

Goals

One of the most frequently occurring goals on 43things has always been “to stop wasting so much time on the internet” and one of the most talked about applications is the “Getting Things Done” ( GTD) system. This suggests that I’m certainly not alone in grappling with the problem of meaningful productivity amongst so much distraction and information overload.

Reflection

I reflected quite easily that I had succumbed to the common affliction of spending too much time monitoring data and checking statistics, at the expense of creating new content, networking with contacts and making improvements to websites. There is some convincing behaviourist theory about the addictive nature of checking inboxes etc when the reward or gratification is irregular or sporadic. People at computers, especially when tired or feeling low can act like rats in a cage who keep on tap-tapping on that button just because every once in a while a piece of cheese rolls down the tube, especially when we can’t predict when it will happen. I blame the evil scientists for setting up an environment like that!

Hiding the distractions

One drastic solution is to move the temptation further away. Get those shortcuts off the browser’s toolbar, remove applications from the dock or system tray. Make it harder to get to the addictive stuff. Now you might have already spotted the dilemma with that approach, which stems from the fact that the person doing the hiding is one and the same as the person doing the seeking!

Action Log

Arising from circumstance, I came up with the idea of starting an Action Log. The idea is simply that I would jot down on a daily basis, a list of the actions taken. I have it in my mind that by actions, I mean visible external steps which are intended to have a positive effect, to add to the movement in the direction I’m headed. Publishing a blog post, joining a forum and posting an introduction, tweaking a theme or plugin to improve usability, uploading a picture, publishing a video, leaving a useful comment somewhere, these are all considered to be actions in this context, whereas doing google searches, reading RSS feeds (without responding), learning and observing are not considered to be actions. Incidentally, taking the step of beginning an Action Log is the critical action for cycle one of my own action inquiry.

Dual Purpose

The purpose of the Action Log is twofold. One of the problems with monitoring web activity is that it’s a complex adaptive system which is often opaque in its mechanisms. You might get a gentle rise in traffic over a couple of weeks, followed by a perplexing sharp dip. Was it because of something I did yesterday, last week, or last month, something unknown external change or a random coincidence? When the subjective inputs are small and widely spread it’s very easy to lose track ( ie forget ) what exactly has been done and when. So having a diarised record in the form of an Action Log should at least improve the chances of being able to detect the weak signals of a reproducible relationship between cause and effect, when there is one.

Recording actions to improve

The second and probably more important purpose, is to act as an incentive to increase the number of actions taken, to begin to reverse the balance that had shifted too far in the direction of passivity. “What gets measured gets done” can be a harsh mantra, but this is a very soft implementation. It’s nothing like being forced to fill in a timesheet for example. And the great thing about it is that all you are doing is focussing on the little positive accomplishments that can be ticked off for each day. There’s no being beaten about the head with a long “To do list ” of things that still haven’t been done, just a simple record and celebration of those that have, so there’s a nod in the direction of appreciative enquiry.

The Action Log is not a learning Journal

For those already familiar with Action Research it’s important not to confuse the Action Log with a Learning Journal. This is not the place to document critical incidents, record insights and diarise about learning. The Action Log may well become an object for reflection later, but is not the place for lengthy narrative. It needs to be very easy to maintain, a matter of a few seconds really, just enough to jot down the small actions taken in a very few words. A record of concrete subjective interventions into the world, always action-orientated.

Where to keep the Action Log.

I keep my Action Log on an intranet wiki but you could use a text file, word document or a physical notepad. As long as it’s reasonably near to hand, dead easy to add to, and can’t get lost or deleted. A private area is necessary, you don’t want to be distracted by spending any time thinking about audience and publishing of this one. Just do it.

Action Log Checklist
  • Could your context benefit from setting up an Action Log?
  • What are your goals?
  • Understand what to record in the Log and what doesn’t belong there
  • Decide where to keep the Action Log
  • Spend no more than a minute or two updating it.
  • Keep it up, at least daily

Anything you don’t understand please leave questions in the comments and do let me know how you’re getting on with this after a few weeks or so.

Posted in Action Log, Action Research | Tagged , , , , , |

First Person Action Research

Posted on 27/04 by Andy Roberts

This is the first in a short series of blog posts about 1st person Action Research, theory and practice.

What is First Person Action Research

This is a type of Action Research or inquiry which is called “First Person” Action Research in a similar way to the “first person singular” part of speech used in grammar which is either “I” or “Me” depending on being the subject or object of a verb. But the “I” in First Person Action Research is both the subject and the object. First person plural would involve “we” and “us” so that’s the more standard participatory Action Research with groups of people who are involved in the research process as well.

Why choose 1st person Action Research

That’s enough explanation of the name, what’s the use of it? Usually to improve the researcher’s own practice, both as a practitioner in whatever field, and also as a researcher. The researcher may be pioneering a new type of practice, so there’s nobody else to share learning with, or they may be simply isolated by circumstance. So the only way forward is to set up cycles of action taking and data gathering, analysis and reflection, seeking validation from the researcher’s own results, sense of achievement and possibly future sharing of research if suitable contacts can be found.

Who might use First Person Action Inquiry

A classic example is the unmentored teacher, alone in a classroom, with a series of challenges from pupils, under pressure of work and deadlines with no time to discuss with other teachers, poor thing. Another scenario is the homeworker building websites and services, trying out this and that application, able to read and comment on what others are doing in a similar position, but working with a totally unique set of parameters in a specialist niche environment creating an experience in which collaboration almost impossible.

How is it done

Essentially the method is the same as any other action inquiry in that following some planning, a preliminary reconnaisance and literature search may be undertaken, then an action is chosen which is designed to bring about an improvement in the situation being researched, which in this case is the researcher’s own practice. Data is collected, including rich qualitative data, and then at the end of the designated period, the data is analysed and the entire process reflected upon. Any tentative conclusions or findings can then be fed back into the choosing of the next action for the following cycle. That’s the clean version, but it is accepted as given that the actual process in practice will become much messier, with some overlapping cycles and spirals of wheels within wheels. In the next post in this series I will introduce the use of the Action Log.

Further Reading

Handbook of Action Research – Reason & Bradbury 2006: link to pdf or view as html cache.

Building a better blog - DARnet wiki

Transforming Inquiry and Action By Interweaving 27 Flavors of Action Research – Torbert and Chandler ( page 7 ) pdf

Methodology Justification – Linda Hartley ( 2005) from Module UNH3601

Dick, Bob (1999) What is action research?
Available on line at http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/whatisar.html

Posted in Action Log, Action Research | Tagged , , , |

Google Analytics for Action Research

Posted on 03/10 by Andy Roberts

I’m using Google Analytics as a metric to provide quantitative data towards an Action Research cycle.

Web Stats

I get pretty good web logs and working awstats from my web hosting provider for distributedresearch.net, but back in August I decided to try adding the Google Analytics package as part of an Action Research approach towards improving the effectiveness of my blog.

Action Research

Action Research is more than just testing and tracking, but the testing and tracking methods used by professional internet writers, bloggers, developers and marketers begin to look quite similar to distributed action research in some aspects since they are being applied in complex adaptive situations where pure quantitative metrics and ideas such as a ‘fair test’, split testing and testing against a control set are mostly inapplicable.

Goals

The specific and limited aspect of the blog which I have been trying to improve in this way has been the attraction of new visitors to specific posts via the search engines. So I added the Google Analytics code, that’s one action in itself and a very powerful one, and I adopted a more consciously search engine friendly writing style for a series of posts. The research programme ran for about six weeks but during that time I was also making other adjustments to the overall performance of the blog. So there is no way that I can attribute any increase in traffic as being entirely due to one specific action, but that is OK because my goal is to improve the reach of the blog, it isn’t to prove a point. Besides, when you are dealing with unknowns such as the Google ranking algorithm or the interactions between thousands of publishers and tens of thousands of casual web surfers then nothing is either constant or predictable. A page can drop from position number 5 on the first page of search results down to number 13 over the page for two days, and then return at position number 3. The amount of traffic thus fluctuates wildly for those few days with no action having been taken on my part. The totality of all the variables involved is unknowable in a complex adaptive system, but that doesn’t mean research is impossible. You can still prod and probe and gain actionable insights, that’s what action research is all about

Where Google Analytics helps is in the automatic generation of trend tracking graphs for multiple slices of data, which is just great for research purposes. I can look at the traffic which arrived via search engines for the period involved and see a nice upwardly moving path.

Google Analytics for Action Research graph a

So some of my actions may be working well, and I can drill down further to visualise traffic for specific posts, see the most popular pages, aggregate data for individual keyphrases and then zoom back out to see the overall picture.

Google Analytics for Action Research graph 2

Those little saw teeth are spikes caused by StumbleUpon by the way. The temporary traffic increase from that route is fleeting and not sustained, but may pick up one or two more interested readers, you never know.

The optimised posts combined are steadily gaining attention according to the stats, but what are the limitation of this approach?

Limitations of Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides only quantitative data. For Action research to provide a full picture you need to collect qualitative data, which would means gathering narrative from the visitors and readers – not an easy task with distributed action research based around search engine traffic, but not impossible either. Any ideas posted in the comments to blog posts for example would count as valuable qualitative data. Watching over a friends shoulder as they search and surf is another way to gain insights as to some of the alternative habit which different people adopt. Then there is all the data in my RSS reader which comes in as a mixture of advice from subject experts and experiential narratives from fellow learners.

Reflection

Action Research requires a process of reflection between cycles. This prevents the process from running away on its own momentum, provides a check that events are moving in a direction which is in line with stated goals and values, and offers an opportunity to asl wider question which may reveal deeper insights leading to a positive change of direction for the action research project overall.

Google Analytics for Action Research

The graph of traffic via referral causes me to pause. In pursuing one goal, search engine traffic, am I leaving some previously regular readers behind. That’s a known risk, but I wonder to what extent there may be conflict between subtly optimising for search engine traffic and providing value for regular readers. I hope to have kept any such conflict to an absolute minimum, but what do you think? Can I realistically spend two months working on one type of traffic, then just switch over to a different focus for another period, perhaps engaging with regular readers more or attracting RSS subscribers. Or could it possibly be a better approach to try and combine everything at once, always considering every aspect?

data links

The four posts which have been attracting most search traffic are

couscous recipe
homemade scratter
what is bluetongue disease
theatre breaks in london

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Thanks for reading Andy Roberts articles about Action Research on the DARnet Blog