Self Evaluation
I believe that overall, I am in a good position to conduct research during the Fall and have a good foundation on tools such as Qualtrics, Articulate Storyline, and a developed Conceptual Framework that will allow me to create an effective dissertation. I also believe that I have a long way to go in a few areas. In particular, I need to develop surveys and measurement tools that can effectively measure the things that need to be measured for the research. I also need to submit proposals for conferences over the Summer.
Currently I think that I am a little behind because of the transition from advisers. Earlier I had Dr. Branch as an adviser. However, over the course of the conversations we decided that Dr. Choi had more connections to my research agenda. I did not feel like I had as good of a grounding as I should on what I wanted to study in my first semester. I thought that Dr. Hill was very helpful during her conversations about the Conceptual Framework in her 9990 course and got me on track. I only felt like I was more on track with the area after a conversation about Alessi's fidelity model mentioned during one of our advisement meetings. I read the material and thought this was better connected to many of my ideas that I wanted to discuss through research.
I am also worried about research studies as far as obtaining an adequate measurement for concepts such as fidelity and immersion. These are tools we need for an IRB proposal written for Dr. Rieber’s course. I have found a few related to immersion but not the specific area of fidelity. Through more search I hope to discover tools for fidelity measures. I also think I have only gotten ready to submit materials for review to conferences at this point rather than immediately after the first semester.
I think I have also gotten a better foundation on design-based research through the use of Articulate Storyline and other tools in Dr. Rieber’s Design Studio. In particular, I am working on a case-based medical diagnostic simulation. The simulation is very low fidelity and I am attempting to obtain some research data from students about the level of immersion they feel through going through the diagnostic process. The course has also introduced me to Qualtrics, which I had not used extensively until taking the course. The program is very intuitive and is very helpful in creating various questions that will be helpful in doing future research.
I believe that I am up to a good start in the program. However, there are many areas in which I want to improve and catch up. I want to get my submissions to conferences in during the Summer. I also want to develop several research tools that can be used through Qualtrics to evaluate the level of fidelity of different methods of instructing doctors and diagnosing patients. After these tools are developed I believe that I will have an effective research study to submit for IRB approval during the Fall semester.