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Many educators think of research as a cumbersome and meticulous process involving piles of data and hours of analysis. Further, educators’ attitudes toward research can be complicated:  while many educators find value in research-supported systems and strategies, they often view researchers as being too far removed from classroom practice to really understand what educators need. This is where educator-driven action research comes in—educators who act as researchers have the opportunity to be their own guide, potentially influencing the discipline in positive and practical ways.

If you find yourself feeling intimidated about conducting your own research, think of the process as very similar to what you already do every day as an educator. When you consider the steps to action research (plan a change, take action, observe, reflect, repeat), it is easy to see correlations to the instructional design process. First, instructional designers and educators must consider their learners and develop objectives for the growth they want to see over the course of a unit or module (plan a change). Then, instructional designers must develop a series of strategies to help learners make progress (take action); instructional designers, in concert with educators and trainers, collect data to understand what is working and what is not (observe). Finally, once a course is complete, instructional designers assess progress made and consider how they can help educators improve on their design (reflect). This cycle continues from one module or course to the next with instructional designers modifying their actions to reflect their assessment of learning. Action research follows in much the same way.

How Does Action Research Begin?

My first experience with action research emerged during my time completing my doctoral research. As I learned more about research methodologies and the processes of research, I naturally saw ways to bring these practices into my daily work of instructional design. I used the weekly reflections on the required readings to identify issues to address in my work with fellow faculty, either through pedagogical changes or adjustments to my curriculum, and I followed the outlined steps to action research to implement a plan, collect data, and develop a report. Yet, what this experience taught me was I was engaging in action research fairly regularly without realizing it.  Similar to my experience in graduate school, the action research process in my current work (teaching and instructional design) often begins from reflection—action steps naturally emerge as part of my own teaching cycle, or from evaluations from my students, during which I identified challenges I was experiencing and problem-solved—usually through research—ways to overcome.

In one particular year, I received a rather late teaching assignment due to an emergency schedule change. This meant that in receiving the late teaching assignment, I would need to work with the online course of the previous teacher, which they had graciously provided to me. In looking at the course, I could see that several of the discussions, while interesting and sure to generate dialogue, were not well-connected to the readings and topics of the week and were likely not to help learners meet the expected outcomes.  Based on this reflection, I realized that rather than moving forward with these discussions as written, this was an opportunity to realign the discussions, but could also be an opportunity to engage students in meaningful work that also aligned with their area of study (curriculum and assessment). This is where action research emerged, though if you had asked me at the time, I would not have identified this experience that way.

I had been interested in constructivism within online learning spaces and the co-creation of learning within instructional design. Engaging students in the design and curricular processes of the course had been an area I had been reflecting on for some time. The reworking of the discussions so close to the start of the course allowed me to consider how I might involve the students in crafting discussion questions of their own, while also allowing them to facilitate and lead the discussions for a given week. This led to the formation of a question that could be the beginning of this informal action research: what impact on learning would stem from student-generated and student-moderated online discussions?

While the research I conducted in my online course was not part of a formalized project and did not emerge in a linear fashion, I will describe it to you using the outlined steps provided in subsequent chapters to make it clear how your own previous questioning and problem-solving experiences might fit into the action research model.

Topic Development

The first important step in any action plan is choosing a topic and understanding what you are hoping to accomplish. If I consider the questions posed in Chapter 2  related to the processes of an action research project, here is what I understood about my chosen topic:

• Does it address a practical problem? I wanted to engage students deeper into the curricular decision making of the online course.  At the same time, I needed to rework the discussion for an about to be delivered online course. This motivated me to address a practical problem with elements that could lead to deeper learning and engagement.
• Does it generate knowledge? The goal was to research the impact of peer-generated discussions and incorporate the practice in my own design approaches if shown to impact learning positively.
• Does it enact change in your pedagogy/learning environment? Yes. By addressing this problem in my own course first, I could test strategies that worked and develop a plan to share those strategies with colleagues in the field.
• Is it participatory? Yes. As the teacher implementing the strategies, I would be actively involved in the research process.
• Could it be a cyclical process? Yes. The strategies I implemented could work to improve engagement, but they may not improve overall performance, which would raise new questions for me as I refined the process. Each outcome could generate a new and interesting question to address in the future. Further, the strategies I develop could have a significant impact on one group of students while showing little effect on a different group, which would also prompt further investigation.

This particular research topic fit in the ‘Improving Educational Practice’  context because my focus was on changing instructional design approaches to improve learner outcomes. From this point, I had to develop a research question to guide my thinking, knowing this question may change as the research process evolved. For this topic, I had two guiding research questions at the outset:

1. What is the students’ perceived value of student-generated and facilitated discussions in an online course?
2. What are students’ perceptions of student-generated discussions for meeting course learning outcomes?

These question started from an initial curiosity about the impact of student-generated discussions and were developed and adjusted as further research was conducted.

Understanding the Research

In a formalized project, the literature review would be a compilation of several pieces of research from different sources that help you understand the research that already exists over your chosen topic. In this example, my next step in this process was to find existing research on student-moderated or student-generated online discussions and use that information as a catalyst for my own research. I read several empirical research articles on online discussions, but most of what I could find was based on student-moderation, rather than students creating discussion prompts. Similarly, the connection to learning outcomes was limited in the existing research. This was good news! It meant, on a large scale, my research would have a place in the broad educational context by filling an existing void in the information available to educators. On a small scale, this meant other educators in my own department and instructional designers in my network could benefit from what I designed.

Researching Action

The action part of the research comes from the literature review and understanding your topic: what are you going to do in your learning environment to address your question? In this example, after reading about existing research on student-moderated discussions, I settled on two elements that would be employed to facilitate the approach I was interested in testing in the learning environment:

• Provide students with a specific learning outcome in order for them to generate a discussion prompt in groups – In this particular course, learners were graduate level education majors and therefore were well-versed in aligning outcomes with assessments and activities. Learners were placed in groups and asked to develop a discussion prompt to meet the provided outcome. Learners were responsible for sending me the prompt for vetting prior to the week in which the online discussion would be held.
• Students lead the online discussion, acting as facilitators, for the week – Learners, in addition, to completing prompts, acted as facilitators for the week that their discussion was being held. My role as instructor for the course was to provide insights at the end of the week as a form of summary contribution. This was to ensure that my input was not seen as the final word on the subject matter and to continue to foster the conversation (an element that was gleaned from the literature around online discussions).

Data Collection and Analysis

The data I collected naturally aligned with the approaches I adopted for the discussions. Since these strategies were all new to the classes, I could isolate my observations on those interventions. I had actually taught the same group of learners previously and so there was also the opportunity for us to collectively compare our experiences to those of a previous course that did not incorporate these strategies.

Data Collection Methods

Covered in Chapter 5.

I collected data using three different sources throughout the course: observation and textual analysis from the discussions themselves, learner surveys, and learner interviews. With both research questions focused on student perceptions of their own learning, it was essential to hear firsthand from the learners about their experiences from both creating the discussion prompts and actively being involved as both a facilitator and participant. The observation and textual analysis of the discussions allowed for myself as the researcher to confirm the experiences of learners while looking at their actual participation and involvement in the online discussions. Surveys and interviews were conducted at the conclusion of the course and reflected a combination of qualitative and quantitative data.

Data Triangulation & Analysis

Covered in Chapter 6.

To better understand the efficacy of the new strategies I implemented, I looked at all three sources of data. Data from the open-ended survey questions and interviews were grouped into themes that helped explore the strategies used throughout the intervention. These could also be compared with my own observations and the text of the discussions themselves.

When I spoke to learners, many mentioned feeling a greater sense of learning when being responsible for the creation of the prompts. On the other side, in facilitating the discussion itself, learners worried that they may not be appropriately qualified to answer the questions provided by other participating students. My summaries at the end of the discussion helped reinforce that learners were indeed on the right track, but since these came at the end of the discussion, it did not alleviate the feelings while facilitating. As participants who were not facilitating, learners expressed no significant differences between when fellow students were facilitating the discussion and when the discussion was facilitated by the instructor directly. Overall, there was a greater sense of collegiality as they wanted to support their fellow students and encourage their success both as facilitator and participant.

Action Implications

The final step in the process is to consider what the data implies about your research question(s). What I learned from implementing these new strategies is that adapting the strategies did allow for greater student agency in the learning process and a deeper connection to the learning outcomes assigned to them. Students, however, did feel ill-equipped to become “experts” for the week in which they facilitated the topic, given that they were still self-identified “novices” in the given topics.  If repeated, I believe it would be beneficial to explore further additional structures or protocols for the co-facilitation of the online discussions between learners and the instructor. This would allow for greater confidence building as a facilitator, but also involve the instructor more actively (a struggle I had in reflecting on my own role in the process).

The development of prompts and its connection to greater perceived understanding of the learning outcomes was a positive development. Having students only focus on this for one week however could mean that a learner was deeply engaged for that topic, but not the remaining weeks. One possible action would be to have learners submit prompts for all topics in a form of crowd-sourcing, and selecting some of the prompts for inclusion in the discussion.

This successful first attempt at changing my practice was exciting because it meant I could (and should) continue to adapt these strategies each year, refining the process until it meets the needs of all learners and generates positive outcomes in all classes. When I set out to change these practices, I did so to meet a practical issue and to benefit my own learners, without any plans for taking the research and its outcomes beyond my single course. However, I have always found the most meaningful professional development for me as an educator is when I get the opportunity to learn from my peers. It was important to share what was happening in my course to give my colleagues that same opportunity.

Dissemination

Covered in Chapter 7.

To share my research, I developed a small presentation for colleagues in my instructional design network. I drafted an outline of the strategies, including examples of student discussion prompts and I shared the positive outcomes I had achieved from making these changes in a brief talk with colleagues. I had several instructional designers request more information about this process and also give suggestions for tools or approaches that might better facilitate the discussion.

Dissemination plans do not have to be extensive to be effective. In Chapter 4, we discussed the need to understand your capabilities and realize that change often happens slowly. My research addressed an issue that has been in discussion within the literature broadly, but it focused just on my course, making data collection and analysis manageable. The opportunity for my research to impact more instructional designers came from my dissemination plan. I could continue to develop my reach by conducting further studies using the basic research design and publishing the results.

Conclusions

Action research is a powerful professional learning tool because it asks you, the educator, to take a critical look at your own learning environment and theorize about your design approaches, with the understanding that this process is both reflective and fluid. Because action research is unique to your own educational context, it does not look the same for everyone, and each educator’s learning will be distinctive.

Though the example of action research provided here does not reflect a formalized project, it speaks to how educators naturally engage in the process of questioning and problem-solving to create change for their learners. It also demonstrates the value in what educators discover in their own learning environments. By thinking of the action research process as similar to the teaching cycle, you can more easily step into the role of educator-researcher and begin developing a plan to positively impact your place of learning.

Recap

To review, the steps to action research and the corresponding examples presented here are as follows:

1. Plan a change: develop the research question and conduct a literature review.
   • • What is the students’ perceived value of student-generated and facilitated discussions in an online course?
     • What are students’ perceptions of student-generated discussions for meeting course learning outcomes?
2. Take action: decide what steps you will take to conduct your research.
   • • Implement two new approaches: have students develop discussion prompts for online discussions; have students facilitate the discussions based on their developed prompts.
3. Observe: collect data on the changes you have implemented.
   • • Use textual data, observations, and survey/interview data to understand learner perceptions.
4. Reflect: consider the results of your study and plan for dissemination.
   • • Develop a presentation for an informal network of instructional designers.
5. Repeat: consider how your research could continue.
   • • Revise the strategies to address learner hesitancy in moderating discussions. Reflect on ways to bring co-facilitation practices into the process to support learners.