Topic: Do you see any places that you believe qualitative research data can help you improve decision-making where you work? If so, where? What kinds of data would you capture? How would you use it?
I have been in the technology field for about thirty long years and have automated manual data entry operations to better facilitate and serve the user to do work faster and efficiently. I used to go around searching the work environment, inquired, explored the user’s daily functions, and tried to find better ways to improve their daily functions. After joining the education field, I realized that there was a huge gap between information technology and education departments, when so many things could be automated these were done manually which took an endless amount of time and energy. As an example, I could create a user ID in a day in the local area network, but I had to wait for more than two months to gain access to a computer.
Seeing the gap I always wanted to improve the system and that’s the reason I opted to further my education through learning technology hoping to bridge this gap and better facilitate the faculty to make an impact on the life of the learner. Acknowledging the fact that it takes time to make the lesson interactive and also incorporating learner collaboration, engagement, clear, concise, accurate, and with up to date information.
Being offered to take up a new role as interim Instructional Design specialist at Tarrant County College, Center for Teaching and Learning, and while the department facilitates district-wide faculty training and upliftment, my aim is to do qualitative research to see how best the faculty would serve the online learner who had a quick change over from the traditional classroom setting to online learning. Whether proper guidance is provided by the Dean and Chair to these faculty positions, or are they suffering in silence with the whole heap of work, not knowing how these can be better managed or better communicated to the learner.
I would do a descriptive form of data collection from the faculty to check what are the prevailing issues that have resulted from the changeover from traditional to online, who can help from your campus, why do you think that Center for Teaching & Learning could help to solve the issue. For this the research role would be to check the system structure, process and procedures used the demand of influence on the subject and how resources can be identified. The data capturing could be through surveys, already created focus groups, documents, and content collection.
From the information gathered we could better facilitate the faculty for their training needs, guidance in curriculum changes, and providing advice on technology and the benefits derived from technology, information sharing through focus groups to eventually help the learner to make the maximum use of the online learning facilitation.
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