Research Design Direction

Earlier on, I had thought about developing a proposal to see how universities approach integration of learning technologies, etc. The other proposal was around "learning futures".  In my literature review, I probably should have concentrated on one or the other.

Found a link to DML 2011 conference and the theme is "Designing Learning Futures" - could be helpful in framing the research framework.

Moving on to research design...

Initial thoughts: Future of Learning...
This would be a qualitative rather than quantitative approach as it is exploratory by nature. I thought about surveys but I think interview ie qualitative interviewing would be more appropriate. There are no fixed or preconceived ideas about the shape of the data that would be collected. It might be possible that from one interview, this may lead to a different direction with subsequent interviews to elicit a kind of working from the ground up. And if I decide to interview a panel of experts, perhaps I could think about Delphi technique - need to read a bit more on this. Have to start planning/preparing the interview questions.

I am also exploring grounded theory and a book on my list is Clarke, A. (2005) Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory after the postmodern turn. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

A note on grounded theory: "The Grounded Theory Method comprises a systematic, inductive, and comparative approach for conducting inquiry for the purpose of constructing theory. (Charmaz, 2006; Charmaz and Hemwood, 2007). The method is designed to encourage researchers' persistent interaction with their data, while remainly constantly involved with their emerging analyses."
(Bryant and Charmaz, 2007, p. 1)

Reference

Bryant, A., & Charmaz, K. (2007) Introduction: Grounded Theory Research: Methods and Practices. In A. Bryant and K. Charmaz (eds).  The Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory. London: Sage Publications.


P.S. Some interesting papers from the DML site at http://dmlcentral.net/resources/articles - to bookmark

• Digital Media and Learning as an Emerging Field, Part I: How We Got Here 
• Modeling, Assessing, and Supporting Key Competencies Within Game Environments. 
• Epistemic Network Analysis: A Prototype for 21st-Century Assessment of Learning