StewartbDIS9322E_Dissertation Proposal
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Purpose As a means for providing better professional development support in Mexico, a qualitative multiple case study seeks to explain how EFL educators interact with ideas, materials, and with other educators through open, informal dialogues based on how to improve teaching and learning. Specifically, this study will explain how EFL educators in higher education who currently teach at three different universities in Mexico conduct open, informal dialogues and contributions to open educational resources (OERs) within public web sites. The EduQuiki (2012) wiki will be the initial hosting web site where contributions and forum discussions will originate. But since participants will be given the option to contribute to the public web site of their choice, additional web sites may also be used. To obtain information about informal dialogues about teaching and learning, various data collection strategies will be employed: electronic artifacts which include contributions and informal dialogues uploaded to the Internet, user statistics obtained by Wikispaces (e.g., page hits and number of user edits), focus groups, and pre- and post-interviews. An exploratory study, the purpose is to analyze how participants connect ideas, opinions, and perspective; materials; and individual educators via a personal learning network in such a way that fosters informal pedagogical dialogues. And since most of the informal dialogues will be conducted openly online, a secondary purpose is to understand what challenges EFL educators face when conversing with others in public web sites. In order to study how participants conduct informal pedagogical dialogues in public web sites and to better understand the challenges they face when doing so, three types of online textual data will be collected: (a) contributions, (b) informal dialogues, and (c) personal