WORKSHOPS CONTINUED
Iteration Two – November 14th: 120 minutes – the same session taught three times
LESSON PLAN 4th November DRAWING AND PROTOTYPING TO SCALE Download
Following Kolbe’s reflective model (Kolbe 1984) I reviewed my notes of the first session, and adapted the way I recorded and gathered my data. The way in which I used the resource in the session, as an aid to character visualisation, was very similar.
I spent a little more time explaining the research context. I emphasised the idea that non-participation carried no penalties ( they wouldn’t be judged or miss out on any of the activities and teaching in the session) and that I am researching and learning alongside them. I created a more formal information sheet ( See blog post – Participant facing documents) which was prominently displayed in the room for them to refer to and had more low contrast consent sheets available.
- Written feedback:
This time, to avoid transcribing a lot of audio, I decided to ask for written feedback, hoping it would be easier to analyse.Previous experience encouraged me to ask for this in person and on the spot, rather than through digital surveys, to ensure maximum engagement. I asked all three groups the same simple but open-ended questions :
What did they think of the resource?
Was there anyone missing?
I had printed their consent forms in a way that I hoped would save paper – this didn’t work but left a blank portion on each form, so I improvised and asked them to write down their answers there. This way it was easy to link participant to response and drawing, even though I intended to anonymise all the content. Having written feedback did make it a lot easier to analyse and identify themes within the responses – next time I would complement this with a few yes/no questions to capture any potential change in their attitudes before and after the session.
- Photographing the sessions
This process was conducted in the same way as before, with me walking around as the participants worked taking images of them as they interacted with the resource. It helped to remind me what media the participants had available to them and gave me a sense of the focus they the resource while drawing ( for example, the students here either have the image in front of them in their eye-line while they are drawing, or covered over by other papers ( Fig 3 )
- Drawing the sessions
This time I decided to draw while the participants drew to place myself alongside them (this is something I have done before to emphasise a continuum or community of practice). I hoped this would in some way
” seek to disrupt traditional power relations between researchers and the researched by locating knowledge generation at the local level” ( Loyd – Evans 2023)
I played music relevant to the context of the session to create a relaxed atmosphere and hoped that my working alongside them would make it feel less like I was walking around peering over their shoulders, though I was still available for consultation and to encourage them as they worked.
- The participant’s drawings
This process was conducted in the same way as before. In this session the catalyst for drawing was an “emotion word” picked at random that the participants embodied in a character. As this session was tighter on time and the drawings in a slightly different context, my photographs were less well considered than before. It is hard to maintain your focus when it is split between your role as researcher and your role as a teacher! I would consider drafting in a colleague to observe the sessions.
Next time I would standardise my recording of the students drawings across all the workshops – we are used to taking ad hoc images of the students work in lessons, and I defaulted to that way of working rather than having a more formal set up – eg. The same background and view point: this is something I would do next time to equalise external factors that aren’t relevant to analysis. I could not collect the drawings themselves as the students needed them to present for assessment.
NEXT STEPS : Future iterations of research methods
- I would review the methods of my data collection – particularly recording devices, to make it easier harvest audio responses in a text based format
- I would include some before and after questions in my feedback survey to generate some quantitive data. Looking at other ARP projects, it is helpful and engaging to have some instant statistical evidence to illustrate the broad efficacy of the intervention.
- I would consider a more visual, freeform way of responding – perhaps a post it note wall or a giant white board to gather quantitive data
- To consider the resource itself, I would hold a focus group with the students to interrogate the content further and brainstorm its potential future uses in the classroom.
- This could also be followed by a conversation with Isher Dhiman, our drawing tutor to gain her feedback.
- I would ask a colleague to observe a session and to use a resource in their own teaching to gain their feedback on it
- I would use a standardised way of recording the participants drawings – a neutral background, each set of drawings individually, including their model image.
