MA Dissertation #3

SURVEY REQUEST HAS NOW ENDED*  

FINAL UPDATE: 107 RESPONSES RECEIVED AS OF 8 JULY

Are you involved in English Language Teaching?  Can you spare approx. 20-25 minutes of your time to complete a survey on the current use of ICT/Web Tools in ELT?   I am asking teachers, trainers, teacher-trainers or anyone else who has recently taught, is currently teaching or will be teaching English as a second or foreign language, in the near future, to take part in this survey.  More details follow the link below:

Please click this link to go the survey. Please read the first (information) page before proceeding with completion. At the end you can see for yourself the results of the survey to date.  The first completion was on 23 June.  *By the cut-off point, 107 responses had been received.  I will go through these now and chase up everyone who left a contact address, with regards to follow-up interviews, after survey analysis.

The title of the research paper is:

'Technophilia or Technophobia:  Exploring teacher autonomy in learning ICT tools for the ELT classroom.' 

Originally this blog was created as part of the assessment for one module on my MA in ELT course.  I have maintained it and added posts, primarily for the purpose of carrying out research for and reporting on my dissertation.  I intend to maintain it in the future as I write more about the topic, especially findings from the dissertation, which I will report on.

The title of this survey is:

'Taxonomy of English Language Teachers' use of ICT'

Notes:

The above links are for the same survey with the same questions.  I am just splitting the responses by how the survey was found.

You should only complete the survey if you have been recently teaching, are currently teaching or will be teaching English as a Foreign Language in the near future.  By EFL, this includes other definitions and variations on this, such as English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).   Please do not complete if you have NO experience at all of teaching EFL.

The survey consists of 20 questions in total, a mixture of closed, open and matrix (multi-item scale) questions with optional comment boxes.  Some of these are optional.   

No personal information other than some general information is required.

The data will be collected only as part of my research for an MA dissertation as indicated above.  Quotes from open-ended questions may be used anonomously.  The data will be collected and stored online but will only be available to the researcher and, possibly, my dissertation supervisor.  I hope to publish the findings later in the year.

More information about me can be found on the left-hand column of this blog. 

Focus Group / Pilot Study

On 20 June, I conducted the second of two webinars with a small focus group which looked at the wording of the questionnaire.   I wrote the survey questions based on the discussions from the first webinar.  These questions were then checked by everyone from that focus group with either an emailed response or participation in the second webinar. I also asked my focus group for an open-ended final question (no.10), which I chose from the suggestions received. There was a  lack of demographic questions, which has now been addressed and some additional questions have been added for a better assessment of my research interest area.

Postgraduate Conference - 26/27 June

On 26/27 June there is a PostGraduate Conference held at the University of Warwick.  Many distinguished researchers will be presenting at this conference, with keynotes from Prof. Anne Burns

and Dr Dorien Van De Mieroop.  Each of the papers being presented are grouped under one of the following four research areas at the Centre for Applied Linguistics: 

• English Language Learning, Teaching and Assessment
• English Language Teacher Education and Development
• Professional and Academic Discourse
• Working and Communicating Across Cultures

I was delighted to have my abstract chosen under the ELTED banner, although I have briefly been involved in the ELLTA group before. The option to present is normally only open to PhD. students and above.  I am due to present a paper on my thoughts and research so far on my dissertation. It is the first time I have ever done something like this, and it could be a good experience if I want to present at a conference in the future, especially IATEFL next April, in Liverpool.

UPDATE: I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT THIS ON MY OTHER BLOG 

 - DATE ENTRY 1 JULY