January 2011 - Vol.2 No.1

Carolyn Rogers, Faculty Chair                                          Melissa McIntyre, Faculty Lead
            Phil Corkill, Core Faculty                                                     Doug DeWitt, Core Faculty                

                Ted Ray, Core Faculty                                                   Alma Rodriguez, Core Faculty          

LEA Specialization Meeting Minutes - January 11, 2011 (or click here for the .pdf version)

Next Mentoring Meeting:

January 18, 2011 at 8:00pm CST (Facilitated by Skot Beazley & Sam Song)
Phone Number: 888-227-5650 — Access Code: 29213#

New Research Design Resources

The Capella Library recently added two new useful resources pertaining to research design:

The Encyclopedia of Research Design
http://www.sage-ereference.com.library.capella.edu/researchdesign/
and
Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods
http://www.sage-ereference.com.library.capella.edu/survey/

Dissertation Template & Best Practices

Dr. Corkill led discussion of the dissertation template and its usefulness to mentors and their mentees. Dr. Alma Rodriguez noted that investing time with researchers is very valuable, that she always refers them back to the template, reminding researchers that if they follow the guidelines of the template, they will have a successful proposal.

Best practice highlighted: Dr. Lee Monroe holds weekly webinars with researchers until they get through the proposal. During the webinar meetings, Lee and each mentee go over the various sections of the template and review accomplishments for the week. Once close to the approval, he gives more freedom to operate on their own. The webinars are held at the same time each week for each of Lee's learners. The meetings provide resources to help learners conceptualize a proposal that is worthy of the School of Education. Over a ten-week course, the meetings provide each researcher up to 10 hours of work on their proposal. If a researcher does  not show up within five minutes after a session begins, Dr. Monroe ends the conference; after missing three scheduled webinars,  the researcher is dropped from the program.

Dr. Corkill suggests that we share ideas like these at our next meeting.

Help Desk Reminder [from our December meeting]

The SOE Research Team is available to all SOE mentors for guidance, consultation, and feedback about research methods in proposals and dissertations. If you have a research question, contact the Research Team by sending an e-mail to SOEResearchHelpDesk@capella.edu. When communicating with the team, please do the following: (a) Provide the team with specific information about your question or concern and (b) Attach the source document, and summarize the issue in your e-mail to facilitate the review and analysis of the issue. The team will respond quickly and efficiently to assist you. Your questions can be about qualitative, quantitative or mixed design studies. The team encourages mentors to ask the team to review pre-proposals or initial planning documents to obtain feedback regarding methodological soundness or answer specific research design questions. The SOE Research Team, which is part of the Research and Doctoral Processes department, is lead by Adell V. Newman-Lee (Chair), and includes full-time faculty members Larry Reynolds, William Tetu, Michael Worthington, Grace Gao and Rebecca “Susie” Watts.

Colloquium

Dr. Corkill provided some background information about Colloquia past—Colloquium has changed at Capella; it used to be a week long experience that began on Saturday and ended Thursday night. Learners were exposed to a variety of mini-seminars. Now, it begins Thursday afternoon, runs all day Friday and Saturday, and ends at noon on Sunday. Is very condensed. Now, the weekend event is devoted primarily to dissertation writing; very little relationship building or interaction with faculty. The event is designated for things like Track 1 critical thinking, Track 2 methodology, and Track 3 completion of the dissertation.

It bothers us that there is very little relationship building among learners or with faculty; also, we are  concerned that many of our faculty have never attended colloquium. We are recommending inviting other faculty to Colloquia, rather than only core faculty, so all can witness what learners are exposed to regarding the dissertation.  Dr. Alma Rodriguez added that many of the learners attending the most recent Jacksonville Colloquium stated that they needed more one-on one interaction with instructors so they could get information regarding what was coming up, as well as interaction with other Tracks to learn from them what to expect as they proceed through the program. Learners asked us to convey to Capella their requests to make these changes. Dr. Rodriguez added that it would be an asset to the program to invite other faculty than just core. Alma has facilitated Track 1 and Track 2, and this enhanced her ability to mentor learners as they develop their proposals and dissertations—attending colloquium enhances our abilities to help learners.

Dr. Bill Wold shared that he found Colloquium attendance to be a valuable experience, providing opportunities to connect with learners and faculty; if he had more opportunities, he would attend. Dr. Steve Crenshaw added that the Colloquium is valuable not only for meeting learners, but also for meeting other faculty members. Steve reminded us that Dr. Melissa McIntyre mentioned at our last meeting, though, that if one is close to the maximum number of units, one cannot attend Colloquium, since it requires an additional 2.70 units (1.35 for the on-site event + 1.35 for facilitating the Colloquium courseroom).  Perhaps we can exempt the  units so others can attend. We used to have all adjuncts attend Colloquium and gave them at least two chances each year to meet face to face. Please email Phil, Carolyn, or Melissa if you wish to attend, and we’ll work out something so you can attend. Dr. Corkill closed this discussion with, "the more we interact with learners, other faculty, and faculty with other schools, the more we  learn. Currently, there is not enough relationship building." Dr. Corkill concluded by saying, if we are going to provide quality instruction to learners and quality professional development to our faculty, then we must convince Capella to revisit the point/unit system that we are currently using.  We will convey these recommendations to the weekend event planners and to Capella's HR department.

Faculty & Mentor Recruitment and Faculty Development Courses

Dr. Corkill: It is frustrating to report this, since several of you have sent us names for new faculty candidates. FD1800 is a 3-4 week course on how to teach online, along with information about the culture of Capella; after that, new hires are considered qualified to teach. Next, they shadow an experienced instructor, and then they are assigned their own courseroom. Next, it is suggested that new faculty complete FD2000, a course on how to mentor learners through the dissertation process. The problem we have experienced is that many of our recruits, almost half, do not make it through FD1800—there are a number of cited reasons:  no pay for the significant time investment, the course is a "grind," is difficult, course instructions are confusing. This is frustrating for all who spend time recruiting great people. Phil shared one situation in which a well known expert in our field,  after three weeks of training, informed him that he could not do this—that there was no courseroom support and that instructions in the courseroom were confusing. We are loosing good recruits in FD1800. On the other hand, Dr. Steve Hinshaw, who recently completed the training, offered reflections of his training experiences: thought it "was informative, was appropriate in terms of letting me know the expectations of Capella."  Steve did not find the training too onerous on time; Capella was upfront that FD2000 would require 4-6 hours per week. Course was not terribly difficult, but Steve could tell that others were struggling with the course. Thought is was spot on.

Dr. Corkill noted that we are continually in our recruiting mode, so if you know folks whom you think would make quality instructors or mentors in LEA or C&I, please let Carolyn, Melissa, or Phil know. We are developing a strategy to help/coach our new faculty through the training course. Our mentor pool is down as well, so it hurts us when we lose almost half of our recruits.

For the Good of Group

Steve Obrien—I do have an issue, the unintended consequence of giving all learners a Capella email address; writing to learners using their Capella email address doesn’t work; we need their personal email addresses for proactive communications with learners who have not shown up in the courseroom. Out of 29 learners in the course, only 2 received Steve’s welcome email because it was sent using the Capella email addresses rather than their personal email addresses. Dr. Rogers has forwarded this concern to Dr. Barbara Butts Williams. UPDATE: Capella is sending instructors personal email addresses for their learners. Hooray!! Problem solved!!

Next LEA Faculty Meeting: Tuesday, February 8, 2011 at 8:00 am CST

Skot Beazley will join us and we will go through further discussion of proposals and dissertations.

Monthly Mentoring Meeting

The next mentoring meeting will be held January 18, 2011 at 8:00pm CST (Facilitated by Skot Beazley & Sam Song). All mentors are encouraged to attend.

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Disrupting Class

Clayton Christensen's Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns is a must read in my view, full of thought provoking perspectives for education leaders. But, since I'm not charged with doing book reviews in our LEAnews, I am not providing a "rating" for the book; instead, I did feel compelled to share with all of us involved with research (particularly those of us who mentor Capella researchers) this excerpt from chapter 7, "Improving Educational Research,"  so telling of our need to adjust course as we fine tune the direction of educational research. Scholar-Practitioners who fail to recognize the fallacy of simply "applying" research findings to practice will likely miss the mark. "Simply" is the key word here—

[T]he statistically valid research too often leads nowhere. Much of it is contradictory. Other times, when a principal or teacher or policymaker applies some of it, it just doesn't work. Other fields have bodies of research that allow people to predict with great certainty the results of actions. Many people in education—from teachers to researchers—say that it is impossible to build models of this sort in education because education is unique. It is not a science, they say. It is an art. Certainty is impossible. We disagree. [T]he prevailing paradigm in which education researchers have been trapped does not even give them a chance at producing research that can lead to predictability to better schools. This is because the existing paradigm causes researchers to stop their work when it is half done. This gives us statements of correlation but not causality. Education research consequently creates more contention than consensus. (Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2008, p.161)

So, is it possible for educational research to establish causation versus simple correlation? Christensen believes so. I do, too. ~Ted, ed.

 

Reference:

Christensen, C.M., Horn M.B., & Johnson, C.W. (2008). Disrupting class: How disruptive innovation will

change the way the world learns. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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Mentoring Meeting - January 18, 2011 at 8:00pm CST

LEA Faculty Meeting: Tuesday, February 8, 2011 at 8:00 am CST

Residencies 2011
Arlington, VA February 3-6, 2011
Dallas, TX March 10-13, 2011
Minneapolis, MN May 19-22, 2011
Atlanta, GA June 9-12, 2011
Anaheim, CA July 14-17, 2011
Dallas, TA August 4-7, 2011
Jacksonville, FL September 22-25, 2011
Arlington, VA October 27-30, 2011
Phoenix, AZ November 3-6, 2011
Orlando, FL December 27-30, 2011

Just for Fun :<)

Archives

Previous editions of the LEAnews are available by clicking the links below:

November 2010 - vol.1 No.1

December 2010 - Vol.1 No. 2