Nurses Learning About Research: facetoface

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Nurses Learning About Researchface-to-face
online interaction

• Andy Hall Malcolm Campbell
• School of Nursing, Midwifery Social Work

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Nurses learning about Research

• Online Research Methods course
• Core module and six optional half-modules
• Qualitative data collection and results
• False firsts
• Quantitative data collection and results
• Students characteristics and choices
• Access and assignment marks
• Factors predicting performance
• Conclusions

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Research Methods for Nurses

• Masters-level course to introduce research
  methods to Nursing and related students
• Practical course based on examples of real
  qualitative and quantitative research
• presentations by researchers, discussion of
  relevant research papers
• Online via WebCT since September 2002
• suitable content non-clinical

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Research Methods for Nurses

• Postgraduate students from a number of research
  pathways
• MSc level part of Clinical Nursing, Nursing
  Studies, Collaboration on Psychosocial Education
  (COPE) initiative
• MPhil/PhD
• stand-alone
• mixture of skills and experience

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Researching Nurses researching

• Evaluation of learning in research methods by
  nurses and related professionals
• funded by General Nursing Council Trust
• project team Peter Callery, Malcolm Campbell,
  Will Gibson, Andy Hall and Dave Richards
• Qualitative and quantitative research
• recording of face-to-face seminars, interviews
  with staff and students, diaries
• collection of course access data, student
  assignment marks and student evaluations

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Research Methods modules

• Core module (15 credits)
• mandatory for students in usual pathways
• Optional half-modules (7.5 credits)
• Action Research, Historical Research,
  Intervention Studies, Statistics for Data
  Analysis, Survey Research, Systematic Reviews
  (most students take two options)
• Each module assessed by assignment

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Online nature of modules

• All modules delivered online
• course materials accessed via WebCT
• HTML pages, presentations with/without streamed
  audio, streamed video interviews, files for
  downloading
• modules differ in level of online interactivity
• Students contact with tutor
• face-to-face seminar or online discussions
• Structured on a weekly basis

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Core module in WebCT
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Interaction with module tutors

• Students offered choice of method for weekly
  discussions for each module
• one-hour face-to-face seminar with tutor(s) on
  Monday afternoon
• online discussions available too
• online asynchronous discussions with tutor(s)
  during the week, round-up nominally on Monday
  afternoon
• no face-to-face contact with tutor(s) after
  initial meeting

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Interaction by module tutors

• For Core module, students divided into
  face-to-face groups and online groups
• each led by qualitative and quantitative tutor
• For some optional modules, numbers too small for
  face-to-face online groups
• tutors decided on method offered (sometimes
  blended)

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Qualitative Data

• Qualitative Interviews
• 44 interviews with staff and students
• Qualitative Observational Analysis
• online discussion board postings contributed by
  the students over the two years were downloaded
  and analysed
• 10 of the face-to-face seminars from core methods
  and 26 of the face-to-face mini-module seminars
  were recorded using audio recording equipment and
  analysed.

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Topic shifting in seminars

• Conversation Analysists and discussion
  participants alike are able to recognise topic
  negotiation as an activity in progress
• Interpretive process and relies on the
  identification of markers which indicate the
  start and end of speech topics

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Topic shifting in seminars

• Face-to-face seminars involve the coming together
  of students who undertake interactional activity
  other than the act of talking about the subject
  matter of the seminar

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False-firsts

• Face-to-face seminars often involve false-first
  topic discussion (Sacks 2000) in which
  participants orientate towards talking about
  preliminary issues before moving towards the
  business at hand of the tutorial

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False-firsts in f2f seminars

• 1 (S1) Right. (.) Oh Kay (.) Whos chair
  today?
• 2 Pause (5.5)
• 3 (T) You were and I took over last week dint I
• 3 (S) I
  knowhahahahahahahahaha
• 4 (T)
  (Laughin) Sorry hahahahn 5 hnhnhnhn
• 6 Pause (2.5)
• 7 (T) Ill let you av another go
  hnhnhnhahahahahahahahaha
• 8 (S2)
  oh chears hmhm
• 9 Pause (1.5)
• 10 (S2) Well Ill start then
• 11 (T) Go on.

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False-firsts in f2f seminars

• face-to-face seminar dialogue is characterised by
  a high frequency of movement between topics
• talk is often segmented into structural sections
  in which particular kinds of things can be
  discussed.

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False-firsts in f2f seminars

• Seminars can be viewed as being organised to
  accommodate the peculiarities of the spoken
  discourse
• questions arise as to the ways in which online
  seminars operate in terms of the construction of
  topicality for both subsidiary and topic relevant
  issues

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False-firsts on-line?

• By looking at the preliminary postings within
  discussion boards we can begin to get a sense of
  the ways in which topics are constructed
• With very few exceptions this involved an
  immediate engagement with the work with no
  preliminary remarks at all

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False-firsts on-line?

• All of the students preliminary postings
  entailed an engagement with the subjects
  specified for discussion

C12qual am I doing this right? I'm feeling a bit
unsure and all at sea with this at the moment -
constructive criticism most welcome! Exercise 1.2
the theoretical perspectives adopted in the
study Dr Sbaih states that the design of her
study is an ethnomethodological study, under the
general umbrella of ethnomethodological
principles ()
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Independent Learning

• method of usage is interesting
• displays the potentially self-regulatory nature
  of discussion boards
• environments in which work can be achieved
  immediately without engaging in preliminary
  discussions about other business
• no need for negotiations from tutors to make it
  come about

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Independent Learning

• Viewed in this light, it would appear that the
  use of discussion boards as the primary framework
  for interaction, works towards the progressive
  decrease of the learners dependency on the
  educator
• Tutors role in delineating discussion and
  focusing students on the matter in hand is
  reduced

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Measuring activity outcomes

• Online activity
• WebCT hits (accesses of home page, tool pages or
  content pages in WebCT)
• WebCT discussion messages read/posted
• web server hits and visits from server log
• Not measuring other activities of students
• eg on Nursing web server or other sites
• Outcome assignment mark (/100)

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Data collection

• Student details and assignment marks collated in
  Excel file
• Online activity within WebCT via student
  tracking, pasted into Excel
• Web server access via WebStats server log
  reporting, pasted into Excel
• Data merged and analysed in SPSS

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Students - characteristics
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Students - choices
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Retention

• Little difference in retention rates for online
  students and face-to-face students
• student submissions aggregated over all modules

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Online access Core module

• Online students had more accesses
• Face-to-face students caught up in 2nd year
• Messages read/posted
• median (min-max)

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Assignment marks Core module

• Online students had higher marks
• Marks slightly higher in 2nd year

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Online access Systematic Review

• Online students had more accesses again
• Little difference between years
• Messages read/posted
• median (min-max)

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Assignment marks Syst Review

• No difference between online and face-to-face
  students
• No difference between years

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Factors predicting performance?

• Core module
• exploratory analyses suggested assignment mark
  significantly associated with each of
• discussion method, (log) WebCT hits, (log)
  messages read, (log) messages posted, (log) web
  server hits, (log) web server visits
• mark and face-to-face access differed by year
• Systematic Reviews
• assignment mark was not significantly associated
  with any explanatory variables

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Factors acting together

• Factors are inter-related and simultaneous
• Multiple regression used to predict Core
  assignment mark from
• year, discussion method, (log) WebCT hits, (log)
  messages posted, interactions between year each
  of the other variables, interactions between
  discussion method (log) WebCT hits, (log)
  messages posted
• interactions between each of year, discussion
  method and (log) WebCT hits not significant

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Multiple regression results

• R2 0.22, Adjusted R2 0.16 regression ANOVA F
  3.80, df 7, 95 p 0.001

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And what do they mean?

• Predicting estimated assignment mark from
• year
• discussion method
• WebCT hits
• messages posted

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But

• Face-to-face and online groups self-selecting
• Data difficult to collect, fuzzy at times
• Considerable confounding present
• unrecorded factors may affect mark (previous
  academic performance, ITC aptitude-availability-qu
  ality, work pressure)

• Access data only surrogates for activity
• Regression model only explained 16 of the
  variance in Core assignment mark
• No individual p-values were less than 0.01
• some evidence but not strong evidence

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Conclusions

• Core module assignment marks higher for
• students in 2nd year
• online students
• students with more online accesses
• students posting more messages
• But not for Systematic Reviews
• face-to-face seminars and online discussions were
  very similar in nature