Action Research Update and Web Conferences Reflection

Action Research Project Update:

As this school year is progressing along very quickly, I find myself sitting in a great position. The timeline I had set for my project was a complete school year so I could have a chance to collect enough data. At this time I do have 2/3 of my data collected and entered into an Excel spreadsheet.  One more round of fact quizzes given to my students (district mandated) in May.  Until I have this last piece of information, I cannot begin to collect my thoughts and get a true picture of how my targeted students performed this year.  Once I have collected this data, I will spend time this summer analyzing it and researching how to improve my students’ performance. 

My team has been very supported as I have asked them to go above and beyond what is expected of them from our district.  I truly hope that the results I find are a true reflection of how our economically disadvantaged students have improved in this key math area as the year has progressed.  I also am looking forward to working with my team to find new strategies to continue improving all of our students’ scores. I feel that although the data I have collected focuses only on our economically disadvantaged students, all of our second grade students will benefit from the new strategies discovered and utilized as a result of my action research project.  I will also be sharing my findings not only with the entire math team on my campus, but with our district math curriculum team.  

Web Conference Reflection:  

The effectiveness of our weekly web conferences varies from course to course.  I think that they are a great tool and allow us to have access to our professors and make our online experience more personal by making the human connection.  What I like about the most about the conferences is that they allow us, as students, to ask important questions pertaining to our course work.  Even if we are not able to “attend” all of the live conferences, we are able to watch a recorded link in order to gather insight, although we lack the capability of asking questions or making comments.  Many times, the question I had was asked by another student in the course and I was able to get the answer needed. 

The web conferences do have a negative.  I am finding, more so in my most recent class, EDLD 5326 School Community Relations, that the questions asked are highly repetitive and as if those asking have not read the overviews provided and/or reviewed previous chat logs.  When this occurs, I feel it takes away from the overall effect of the live conference and gives off the feeling of being back in middle-school – not in a Masters program. 

Overall, I feel they are a great tool and we are very lucky to have this piece to make certain we are successful in our pursuit of our Masters degree.