The practicum process (or “research apprenticeship” as it’s called on our annual review form) gives students the opportunity to experience all the practical mistakes and failures that are almost definitely going to occur while carrying out your first formal research project, but allows us to do this in a lower-stakes context. The idea is that we can learn from these mistakes early, so we know what to do differently when we are going through the same process with our dissertation research.
I have been outlining my experience throughout this process, as I think having it documented will be helpful to me when I begin my dissertation research, but also because it might be helpful to other students starting their practicum.
My practicum research investigates whether instructors experience changes in teaching perspectives when they begin teaching online for the first time, and whether teaching online allows instructors to better align their teaching beliefs, intentions, and practices.
The initial idea for this research came from the conversations I’ve had with the instructors I’ve worked with over the years as part of our online teaching professional development program. Many instructors going through the professional development say they find the process of preparing to teach online impacts how they teach in their face-to-face classes as well, and people at other institutions have claimed this, too. I wanted to try to find a way to frame what might be happening as part of this process.
I am currently in the “Data Collection” phase of this project, per the practicum checklist. IRB approval has been granted from both MSU and the institution where the research will be taking place, and a link to the pre-survey has been distributed to potential participants.
Final revisions to the proposal, based on practicum committee feedback, are forthcoming, and will involve relatively major edits. The biggest change is that the project no longer uses the instrument adapted by Owens (based on Kember’s original instrument), but instead uses Pratt and Collins’ Teaching Perspectives Inventory. This change reflects the feedback that there is no consensus suggesting that student-centered teaching approaches are superior to instructor-centered approaches, and recognizes that good (and bad) teaching can occur regardless of what perspective or approach an instructor embraces.
Sarah Dysart 