Action Research Project Cycle One

EDC-638B Participatory Action Research

Cycle One Report

PURPOSE:

     The purpose of my Action Research is to learn how to increase students’ learning with a deeper understanding of the concepts being taught.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

     The situation that I want to improve is students’ ability to have a deeper understanding of concepts taught in Periodontology, and implement these concepts during patient care.

     The problem being addressed in this action research project is the impetus for my entering the OMET program.  The students in the Dental Hygiene Program are strong students academically as they must have a 3.0 or higher GPA and must maintain this GPA throughout the program.  Many have taken one or two prerequisite courses per semester for admittance into the program over the course of four or five years.  The rationale for this is to maintain the required GPA and the need to support themselves through school.  They can memorize things with short-term memory techniques very effectively when taking one or two classes. When they enter the program, they will have 16 unit semesters and this load is overwhelming to them.  They don’t know how to handle the information covered and the short-term memory techniques they have honed over the years are not effective. They struggle to remember what was discussed from week-to-week and they can’t transfer information from one course to another.

     This situation increases dramatically when they start providing patient care.  They struggle to recall the simplest of concepts and then it gets to the more advanced concepts, such as Periodontology, faculty have to lead them through the thought process and implementation of concepts with patients repeatably. Seldom are they able to demonstrate deep knowledge and understanding of concepts during patient care.

RESEARCH QUESTION:

     My research question is can the incorporation of collaborative learning improve students’ learning with deeper understanding?

     The students have historically been engaged in some collaborative learning tasks during the program.  There is a need for learning activities that can be introduced to allow the students to interact with one another, question each others thought processes, and build on their basic knowledge that they acquired during the previous semester courses.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH:

The resources that have helped me the most are:

1. Bransford, J., Brown, A,. & Cocking, R. (2000). How people learn brain, mind experience, and school. Washington, D.C.:  National Academy Press.

2. Crittenden, V., and Woodside, A. (2007). Building skills in thinking: Toward a pedagogy in metathinking.  Journal of  Education for Business, 83(1), 37-44.

3. Dillenbourg P. (1999).  What do you mean by collaborative learning? In P. Dillenbourg (Ed.) Collaborative-learning:  cognitive and computational approaches (pp. 1-19), Oxford, United Kingdom:Elsevier.

4. Gokhale, A. (1995). Collaborative learning enhances critical thinking.  Journal of Technology      Education, 7(1), 22-30,  Retrieved from source http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v7n1/JTEV7N1.pdf#page=23

5.  Liu, E. and Lin, S. (2007). Relationship between peer feedback, cognitive and metacognitive strategies and achievement in  networked peer assessment.  British Journal of Educational Technology, 38(6), 1122-1125.

6.  Liu, X., Magjuka, R., and Lee, S. (2008). The effects of cognitive thinking styles, trust, conflict, management on online students’ learning and virtual team performance. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), 829-846. DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00775.x

7. Papert, Seymour. Seymour Papert on Project-Based Learning. Edutopia Online. Retrieved December 4, 2008. From http://glef.org/interview.php?id=Art_901

8. Peirce, W. (2003). Metacognition: Study strategies, monitoring, and motivation.  Retrieved November 6, 2008, from source  http://academic.pgcc.edu/~wpeirce/MCCCTR/metacognition.htm#II

9. Smith, K, Rook, J., and Smith, T. (2007).  Increasing student engagement using effective and metacognitive writing. Preventing School Failure, 51(3).

10. Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. (2008). Wikinomics: How mass communication changes    everything. New York: Penguin  Group.

11. Wilson, M. and Scalise, K. (2006). Assessment to improve learning in higher education: The      BEAR assessment system.  Higher Education, 52(1), 635-663.

12. Parker, K. and Chao, J. (2007). Wiki as a teaching tool. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects. 3, 57-  72.

What I have learned about this endeavor from these resources includes:

·   Effective learning involves the design of an environment that lends itself to learning, a project that engages and challenges students.

·   A deep understanding of the concept is needed for effective learning to occur. According to Bransford, Brown and Cockling, this involves frequent feedback and student self-reflections/self-assessments.

·   A wiki can be used effectively in a community of learners both asynchronously and synchronously, and can allow students to develop a deeper understanding of concepts if the assignment are designed and monitored effectively. 

·   Wikis allow for the incorporation of constructivism, informal learning, collaboration, interaction, debate, integrate new ideas and critical think through ideas.

·   Wikis can provide an avenue for real life case scenarios where students can learn to facilitate at better understanding of how to handle specific scenarios and then transfer this knowledge to patient care.

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE:

Context

     My position in the community of practice that I’m working in can be described as a full-time community college employee with an 80 percent administrative assignment and 20 percent instructor assignment in the dental hygiene discipline.  As the director of the Dental Hygiene and Dental Assistant Programs, my position allows me to facilitate, initiate, and oversee all changes in the curricula and implementation in the programs

     I work with fourteen faculty members in Dental Hygiene Program, which is a two-year, full-time program. The curriculum is competency-based utilizing a format that starts from novice and progresses to competent.  The continuum continues after graduation as the students are expected to be life-long learners striving to become proficient with some advancing to the level of expert after many years of practice.  Therefore, the first semester courses include basic knowledge and concepts, and courses build upon this knowledge over two years.

     Courses are designed to interrelate concepts and allow students to view concepts from different perspectives.  This design is felt to reinforce or allow for a better understanding of concepts by students.  Students progress through the program as a cohort. In the first week of their first semester, they are placed into learning communities that they call “learning pods” and remain in these throughout the program.  Faculty members are encouraged to incorporate collaborative learning opportunities into their courses. The courses I teach utilize the learning communities through collaborative projects, cases-based problems and such at almost every class session.

     The Dental Hygiene Program is located at on off-campus site on the public sector of the March Air Reserve Base in a building is known as the March Dental Education Center (MDEC). There are three programs housed at MDEC, the Dental Hygiene, Dental Assistant, and Dental Technology Programs.  Approximately 90 students considered MDEC their educational home. The students develop a very close relationship with one another quickly due to the format of the program and the limited access to others during the course of the program.

Literature Review

     Collaborative learning can be used to describe learning scenarios that can range from two up to 40 individuals working together for a minimum of twenty minutes to over a span of a year (Dillenbourg, 1999; Gokhale, 1995) or globally as demonstrated through an open source platform like a wiki (Tapscott & Williams, 2008). Most research is focused on either collaborative learning in groups of two to five individuals for an hour or so, or with 40 individuals that are enrolled in a course (Gokhale).  These numbers align well with the dental hygiene classes since they have anywhere between 21 to 14 students in the cohort.

     Palincsar and Brown (as cited in Dillenbourg, 1999) call collaborative learning 'a method' since individuals are given instructions to follow with an expected outcome.  This concept is going to be followed as we move into the asynchronous activities on a wiki.

     It must be noted that the research doesn’t it state that there is any predictability that collaborative learning will occur just by placing individuals into a collaborative learning environment.  This reinforces the need to have a scenario and mechanism that will motivate, enhance and develop the interest the individuals to interact with other.  Research supports the use of wikis to accomplish this through the design of activities that  incorporate the key elements in collaborative learning and learning for deeper understanding such as: 1) develop learning activities that involve active participation where individuals gain new information and relate it to a current level of knowledge; 2) allows the individual to be engaged with his/her peer, process and synthesize information; 3) allows individuals to benefit from exposure to diverse viewpoints from people with varied backgrounds; 4) provides a social environment that fosters conversation; and 5) provides an environment that challenge the individuals to listen to different perspectives and articulate their thoughts and ideas to others.

     Another appeal of the wiki is that it can allow the individual to become aware of their cognitive style that “determines the tendencies and characteristic style of a person to perceive, process and interpret information for problem-solving purposes” (Sternberg as cited in Liu, Magjuka, & Lee, 2008).  This self-awareness may allow students’ to better understand how they learn so they can become more effective learners. Interesting, Kennard (2008) found women used wikis more than men.  With the overwhelming number of women in the program, this finding reinforces the use of a wiki from a different angle.  Lawler (2007) found that the utilization of wikis promoted and reinforced learning, organizational skills, and collaboration of thoughts.

     With the information presented, the first cycle of this action research project will be the incorporation of a wiki in DEH-33 Periodontology to determine if it fosters a deeper understanding of periodontology concepts both in the classroom and during patient care.

MY ACTIONS (Cycle 1): The research question is will the incorporation of a wiki increase students’ deep understanding of periodontology? 

     The goals for the first cycle is to learn how to use a wiki in both asynchronously and synchronously, develop a mechanism to provide timely feedback to the students, and to facilitate an increase in knowledge of the key concepts.

     The first actions that I have already taken include the identification of DEH-33 Periodontology and DEH-43 Advanced Periodontology as the courses for the implementation of the action research project.  These courses were chosen since they share the subject, building of knowledge will be easier to track with the two classes, and I teach them both. I have incorporated an asynchronous, community of practice wiki assignment in DEH-33 Periodontology that the students started this semester.  Students will share their ideas and communicate with one another.  This was developed using constructivist-learning theory and extrapolated from Seymour Papert’s belief that children migrate to meaningful projects and learning through the act of communicating when they have a common interest.  The dental hygiene students can collaborate online or while at school due to the learning environment at MDEC.  The wiki will also allow for the incorporation of constructivism and reflection approaches to learning.  If the wiki activities are designed effectively, they will allow the students to move towards true community of learners. 

     Since the action research assignment has been incorporated into the course syllabus, I didn’t obtain student approval for their participation.  A wiki site at http://dlesser.wikispaces.com/ was developed for the students.  The students had two class sessions introducing the wiki, its purpose and how to develop it which included the use of synchronous open source programs such as Skype and AdobeConnectNow.  The assignment was distributed and they were given four weeks to develop it.  December 8, 2008, is the cut off date for working on the wiki.

ARTIFACTS COLLECTED:

1.  Results from the literature review.
2.  Analysis from the Force Field Analysis.
3.  Input from faculty members on the process.