My research proposal

I have had a very busy two months, what with submitting my research proposal and participating in a marvellous Online Facilitation run by CET- UCT.  I shall rave about this in my next post, but I want to talk about my long journey to writing my proposal; and then reflect on the implications for my practice as a writing consultant.

I think everybody has a grand idea on what they want to write their dissertation.  I started with a blank; honestly I did.  A requirement for the course in which I am enrolled is that we should first attend the research methodology course; and this we did in Feb 2012.  Did I ever mention my fear of statistics?  So, I started the course on wrong footing - was petrified of the section on quantative research.  I was fortunate; our mentors are pro-qualitative research. 

The most demanding area of our contact session was formulating the research question.  And then there was me thinking I could kill two birds with one stone - find a research question for the dissertation, which I could turn into our Writing Centre project for this year.  WIKIs.  Yes, wikis.  That's what I would research.  Wikis...then a blank. I could not formulate a question on wikis.  I took me three long days, to finally come up with something that could be worked, and reworked and reworked and reworked before it would make a sound research question.

Steps to finding that question.

I decided to come up with key words, and here they are:  social presence, writing confidence (I shall explain why confidence is red), facebook, consulting. I wonder if you see how how I was still trying to match everything to my job.

I believe the first question was along the lines of  "How can writing center consultants enhance their social presence using Facebook as a consulting platform to improve students' writing confidence?"  I think it's a mouthful, but at least I had a question.  The mentors were probably swayed by key concepts in the question, but they made me realise that it was going to be an uphill.

The Lit Review

There was literature on social presence, facebook, none on FB as a supplementary platform for consulting, but luckily there is emerging literature on how FB is beginning to be used as a LMS, and how some tutors are using it to keep in touch with students.  The tricky bit was how I perceived our writing centre work; where would be the student's writing, what were the limitations with going online when it came to doing the consulting work as we traditionally know it.  I needed to reflect on the various responsibilitites we have as tutors, and the various challenges that result in our students coming to see us - we are the most preferred place for students to "visit for no particular reason really." 

The tricky bit with confidence was on its definition.  How could I define writing confidence, how would I measure it, and how reliable would that measurement be? The literature I read was on writing apprehension - but I did not want research writing apprehension, not yet anyway. Apprehension is the opposite of  confidence.  The next best thing was to look up all the words people use to refer to confidence. Voila, there is was - the word I was looking: writing self-efficacy!  Thank you, Albert Bandura! Finallyt, I could define exactly what I wanted research, and it would measureable.

Theoretical Framework and Rationale

As a construct, efficacy was coined by Bandura; and this therefore automatically provided me with a sound theoretical framework - Socio- Cognitive Theory.  It was choice I could defend, especially considering that our pedagogy is socio-constructivism. I could base my argument on the view that very seldom do lecturers first ask their students about their self efficacy for the writing task they are to assign them.  Imagine if we assigned students task that they felt their self efficacy was high, and what it would do to their througput, and what it would do to students if we helfped them improve their self efficacy for the task before setting them off to perform it for assessment? How much time do we as writing consultants spend with our students talking and doing something about their self efficacy for the tasks they bring to us for consultation?

So,

This is where I am right now:

I am investigating the impact of  Writing Centre using Facebook Group as a supplementary consulting space to enhance students' writing efficacy. 

• I shall investigate which efficacy sources are best served through using Facebook and which are least served
• How the converstations consultants have with students on Facebook affect the quality of face to face consultations.

Limitations of the study

The study will be limited to a small group (+/- 25 students in one particular course, and one particular task). Also, I shall not investigate the impact of the intervention on student's performance.