I realize the topic of this week’s blog is to continue to discuss our evolving topic, this time focusing on qualitative results. However, I was one of the ones who did that last week (sorry Dr. McCoy)! At any rate, the more I read about note-taking the more interested I become in this topic. I figure the best way to go about gathering research for this is by surveys, interviews and perhaps a little observation. If it is not too much to focus on both teachers and students, I have a few questions in mind that I think I would like to incorporate.
In a survey form for teachers I would ask things like; do you expect your students to take notes while you lecture, do you give your students a graphic organizer to focus their note-taking, why or why not? Then perhaps in an interview setting I could get various teachers’ opinions on which style of note-taking they think is most effective, or if it really doesn’t matter to them as long as the students absorb the information.
For students I would ask things like; do you take notes while your teacher is lecturing, if so do you use colored pens, highlighters or other tricks (please list). Do you take notes in such a way that you can make sense of them later? Do you use your notes for homework and/or to study for tests? If so, do you ever consolidate your notes or compare them with a friend? Then perhaps if I interviewed students I could see which style of note-taking they prefer, graphic organizers or Cornell style? Again I would ask them why they prefer one to the other (I guess both of those questions could go on a survey as well). I would also be interested to find out if they have ever heard of the note-taking tricks in the instances when they are not given graphic organizers. Tricks such as writing down anything the teacher repeats more than once, or making sure you write down every name the teacher writes on the board, or points to on a map etc.
I feel like I will do better with structured interviews, but I may not limit myself to just doing a structured interview. I’m sure I will need to find more articles on note-taking to better structure my questions. I am also interested in the idea of doing a focus group. I’m not sure if it would be completely necessary for my topic? However I think it is interesting to have experience with students interacting with one another. At this point though, I just want to make sure I am on the right track with a topic that is broad enough to gather data on, yet not too narrow in that I won’t be able to get enough information?
2 comments:
I think you have a great idea. Taking notes is something that we don’t even think about as student’s ourselves. However, it is a really big deal when you teach students. Some don’t want to take notes and some just don’t know how. I think that this is definitely something that you could use later on to help you in your own classroom as well as something we could all use. It sounds like you are developing a good plan to cover the topic. I really like the idea of interviewing/surveying students and teachers. It would be interesting to see if they showed different preferences.
Amber, this is good thinking. Your topic is evolving very nicely!!
I think you will want to focus on either the teacher or the student perspective in order to keep it manageable.
If you want to find teachers who use graphic organizers, Parkland H.S. adopted this last year and everyone is using graphic organizers throughout the school. You might use that as one site...
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