Month 5 Blog Entry for AR or CBR

1.     What are you doing to set up your cycle 1?

My cycle one consists of four parts: my target audience filling out surveys, my target audience recalling family members that were involved in music, target audience comparing the behavior of known musically inclined relatives/friends versus the behavior of relatives/friends who were not musically inclined and then they will generate an opinion of music education. This is how I will set it up. First, the target audience will be given a survey to take. From that survey they will take into consideration the next phase of my cycle 1. After recalling their relatives/friends who were involved in music and were not involved in music, they will recall certain traits, characteristics, behaviors and friends each one associated with. From all of that, they will generate an opinion as to whether music education has a positive, negative or no affect on human behavior and development. Because there aren’t any persuasive questions, the information gathered from the survey will be totally unbiased.

2.   What kinds of data are you planning to collect and analyze to show that your AR project is effecting changes and growth for yourself, your intended target audience, and your AR project setting: Quantitative (e.g., Surveys or Self-Report instruments), Qualitative (e.g., field notes, personal logs, record sheets, interviews, video taping, audio recordings)? How will you measure and report the results of these data once collected? Please answer both of these related questions thoroughly.

The data I will be collecting is both qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative data (survey) will provide a baseline by telling me what the target audience knows about music education and it’s benefits. It will kind of serve as a pretest. The qualitative data (interviews) will serve as a support beam. It will back up anything that was stated by the survey that the target audience participated in. The way I will measure and report the data will be through the use of charts, graphs, tables and bulleted stats through the use of Google Documents and Microsoft Documents. The thought of creating an iMovie presentation is also a great idea that has been up in the air because it will give the viewer more visual stimulation and keep their attention.

3.   How is your Action Research textbook assisting you with your AR design and development process?

After reading part three of the book, I realized that the instructors at Full Sail have this AR thing down to a “T”. Everything that I read, I have heard it or seen it before throughout my time here. With that said, the book has greatly helped me in designing and developing my AR. The “to do” list on page 77 clearly shows me the map of things that I need to do and things to be done before I can go to another part. The part of the list that stood out was the part that read, “keep it small, focused and manageable.” After reading that and listening to the comments that Mr. Moten left, I realized that my problem was too broad/general. Then Mr. Moten suggested that I “validate”, the information I’m researching instead of raising awareness of the topic, which made a ton of sense after I thought about it. That really kind of got the ball rolling again on my creative side because I was stuck as how to go about my AR for about three days. So it helped me substantially.

4.  How has this month’s course helped in shaping your AR project?

This month’s course PUSHED ME. There is no other way to put it. It pushed me more work done, be there for my group members and better understand the information that I'm finding/researching. Now that I have a better understanding, my brain is going to overdrive to find ways to better my AR project and I’m feeling great about it.