Help My Grad Survey Research Methods Students With a Class Survey Project

Would you like to help with some academic research to help graduate students?


The following is a link to an online voluntary and confidential survey being conducted as part of a class research project. We are trying to get as many responses as possible and I am asking your help in getting this done. If you are interested in responding to this survey and you are an employed adult of at least 19 years of age, click on this link and read in the information page regarding the research. I appreciate your time. Next, I would like you to consider reposting information to your social networks about this post. Please repost, retweet, etc. the original tweet without adding any additional text. Thanks so much for your help on this research project!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/UAB-SOC-ICT-USE-STUDY

If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please contact us by email at uab.tech.work@gmail.com or contact the principal investigator, Shelia R. Cotten, Ph.D. at 205-934-8678.

If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, or concerns or complaints about the research, you may contact Ms. Denise H. Ball. Ms. Ball is the Interim Director of the Office of the Institutional Review Board for Human Use (OIRB) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Ms. Ball may be reached at (205) 934-3789 or 1-800-822-8816. If calling the toll-free number, press the option for “all other calls” or for an operator/attendant and ask for extension 4-3789. Regular hours for the Office of the IRB are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CT, Monday through Friday. You may also call this number in the event the research staff cannot be reached or you wish to talk to someone else. Thank you in advance for your help with this study.

XO Laptops in Birmingham - NSF Article

The National Science Foundation is funding both my projects related to the OLPC XO laptops in Birmingham. They just put together an NSF Discoveries article on our work with the XOs. This is great exposure to have the NSF do this type of article on our work! Take a look.

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116638&org=NSF

My New NSF Grant - Integrating Computing Across the Curriculum (ICAC) Using XO Laptops

I received notice last week that the NSF grant I submitted in January was funded. The goal of this grant is to enhance STEM education in Birmingham City schools using XO laptops. The study builds off my current NSF grant investigating the educational, career, and social impacts of the XO laptops in Birmingham City schools.

Here's a link to the abstract of the new grant: ICAC

Data Collection for XO Laptop Project

is done! It was a grueling year with surveying 1600+ 4th and 5th graders twice (before they received their XO laptops) and then at the end of the school year. And, my graduate students just completed in-depth interviews with 20 of the students (10 high tech and 10 low tech).

Now, the survey coding and data entry, as well as interview transcription, begins and/or continues. I can't wait to see the data! This is the largest study of the kind focusing on the XO laptops in the US and perhaps the world.

Here's to lots of interesting results to come!

My New Grant

I just found out this week that a grant I'd submitted to NIH/NIA for a big randomized trial project has been funded. The goal of the project is to go into assisted living facilities, train older adults to use computers and the Internet, and assess the impacts on various aspects of their quality of life over time. I think it will be a great project, which will hopefully have a very positive impact on quality of life among older adults.

I'll report more info on it as the plans progress.

Webmetrics

I went to this interesting presentation this afternoon at the NSF PI conference on webmetrics. In a hopefully soon to be funded project, we've proposed to do some webmetrics - i.e., determining where people are going, what they're doing, how long they stay in various activities, etc. when online. There are lots more possibilities for 'monitoring' usage than I anticipated. I look forward to receiving some additional material from the presenter and learning more about this topic.


I think one of the more interesting things is being able to compare what they report doing vs. what they actually do.


Who is watching where you go online, what you do, how long you stay in various places, etc.? And, what do you think about these activities?

Juggling Becomes More Important

the longer I'm in academia. I have this whiteboard in my office where I keep a list of my various research projects and the 'next steps/status' of each of them. Yesterday I spent some time with my whiteboard - updating, reflecting upon the projects, etc. I have 10+ projects listed on my board. 10+ projects! I knew I was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed lately, but didn't necessarily attribute it to the 10+ projects that I have ongoing.

I told one of my research assistants the other week that I feel distanced from most of the data I'm involved with of late. With 10+ projects there is no way I can be the one who is actually analyzing the data. I miss this part of the research process as my intuition and prior experience often guide me in looking at the data, thinking about the best way to proceed, etc. Don't get me wrong, I have GREAT RAs - but I still miss getting my hands 'dirty' in the data and getting a better sense of what it all means at that level.

I think one of the things I realized yesterday is that I can't take on any new projects right now (especially as it looks like I will be getting another grant early next year which will take up a lot of my time), or at least not any that require much involvement on my part. Hopefully by not taking on more things, I can get many of the 8+ manuscripts that I'm a primary or secondary author on that are in various stages of progress out the door.

So, here's to knowing our limits and learning to say 'no' although we may want to say 'yes'...

So Many Things of Interest . . . So Little Time . . .

I think one of the reasons that I became a sociologist is because the social world fascinates me. There are so many things of interest to me that I would like to study and that need to be studied that it is hard to say "no" when you see opportunities. I wonder though how well we do things when we over commit ourselves.

Some of my graduate students have such great ideas of things they want to study; it is hard to remind them to keep their feet grounded until they finish their dissertations when it is hard for me to not branch out as I think of and see new things I'd like to investigate.

I mentioned in an earlier post that it is harder and harder to find time to think and write the longer I'm in academia. I think part of this is because we become more and more involved in 'new' projects. A friend of mine once remarked that he felt almost like a small business owner, as he tried to manage all his projects and the associated tasks and other people involved. I understand what he means.

So, I'll keep pursuing my interests but also try to be mindful that I have limited time and resources with which to pursue new projects (as best I can anyway!). If you have suggestions for how to manage time and projects, please feel free to post a comment.

Here's to pursuing our interests, managing our time, and doing it all in some semblance of order . . .