As a research assistant at ISKME, I have opportunities to investigate cutting-edge innovations in education everyday. This past year I was tasked with a project to investigate alternative pathways in education, such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), personalized online classrooms, and free, university-level courses. Developments in this space have accelerated over the past year and disrupted how we view education.
From the moment I met Emmy Negrin during dinner at Big Ideas Fest 2011, I knew that I liked her. We hit it off quickly, sharing interests in LGBTQ issues, backgrounds in international education, and enthusiasm for our Action Collab groups. I learned she had previously been an instructor with Outward Bound and had come to BIF to explore what her next move could be. Great conversation aside, I appreciated the easy, confident attitude that Emmy exuded.
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As my colleague Shen pointed out in her blog last week, a sense of community is critical for facilitating the learning process for both teachers and students. Unfortunately, community is not a word many teachers would use to describe their work; in fact, many teachers, who tend to focus on their classrooms and students, feel isolated from their colleagues.
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I recently started coding the BIF participant survey data using my typical method. I imported the data into excel, looked for patterns in the open responses, and developed categories based on what I found. For the BIF survey, there are 77 responses, and for many questions respondents provided a lot of rich information. I finally concluded that due to the volume and richness of the dataset, my usual method was not the right fit for this job.