Research design & changes in Cycle

I will briefly sketch out in this section the research design and findings of cycle 1 to justify changes in the methodology and teaching style in Cycle two. A detailed description of the research design in steps, data labeling, description of online tools, writing class assignments timeline, data analysis and identification and reflection of learning problems in Cycle 1 & 2 can be found in Chapters IV & V correspondingly. The cohort of participants was under the

122 label of convenience sampling. Particularly, I used data from 12 ESL 2, non- native freshmen college students who registered in Fall Semester in the College. Students attended intensive ESL classes from Monday to Thursday (8 hours per week). In these courses, I spent two weeks training students how to use wikis and taught them how to avoid online writing pitfalls such as plagiarism. Students were asked to create personal wiki accounts and invite two of their classmates to join them. They were assigned to write mainly summaries of the reading texts that have been taught in class following a guide with useful expressions for summary writing. Next, students posted their summaries on wikis and asked from their joined friends to give them feedback. I advised them to use a rubric for feedback but I did not insist on following that strictly. Students were free to make comments on their classmates’ writings and interact with them both online and during class time.

Regarding the introduction of blogs, they were used only for four weeks due to academic syllabus time constraints and the fact that it was quite challenging for the students to familiarize with the blog environment and start engaging in online reflective writing. So, I spend two more weeks than I initially estimated to monitor and coordinate this project. During the final four weeks of fall us Semester I created a blog in WordPress.com and I asked students to do the same but assign me as the administrator of their page. I trained students on how to write reflective posts in blogs via class discussion and providing examples of good practice and asked them to reflect on their writing experience in the ESL class. I also gave them some oral guidelines/questions to use as a starting point for reflecting writing and asked them to write one post per week.

During week 15, students were invited to a face-to-face semi-structured interview. Their answers were audio recorded and transcripted to a word document. I interviewed 15 students and the mean time of each session lasted approximately 10 minutes. Data from wikis and blogs and interviews were labeled and coded following a thematic analysis approach (See Appendices). Reflecting on the findings of cycle 1: students’ distrust on peer

123 feedback, their difficulties to give quality feedback, the limited interaction that offered the wiki environment, students inadequate understanding of the use of reflective writing in blogs as part of their writing class and their natural tendency to use dialogue to reflect on their learning I did the following modifications: Instead of the wiki task, I selected to introduce Google Drive Docs to enhance interaction options among students and augment the monitoring of the writing activities. Also, students were given a written detailed guideline on how to give feedback and were trained on how to follow it instead of writing other comments. Next, to prepare students to share their writing and make reflections on their essay drafts, I created a shared document for the class where students had to write their essay plan and share sources with their classmates. Finally, I re-designed the goals of the reflection activity. To save time, further motivate students to use technology and give students more choices for reflection; I introduced video blogs. A rubric with reflection questions was given to students to help them on the procedure. Also, students could choose the language that they felt comfortable to use (English- Greek). Data collection methods were also improved: data were collected from online documents, video reflections and video interviews. I adopted the video oral reflection activity (output) to promote students metalinguistic and reflective thinking (Swain, 2001). So, I followed the model below: I encouraged students to engage in reading their peers’ essays and the comments on the shared essay plan (comprehensible input) give and receive feedback (which is comprehensible since their peers are either at the same level or more capable) and finally asked them to produce a written draft and orally reflect on this process (written and oral product).

124 3.5 The rationale of the choice of data analysis method: Thematic

analysis

Thematic analysis, one of the most common qualitative data analysis

techniques in social science (Holstein & Gubrium, 1994) is used in this study.

“Thematic analysis is a data reduction and analysis strategy by which qualitative data are segmented, categorized, summarized, and reconstructed in a way that captures the important concepts within the data set. Thematic analysis is primarily a descriptive strategy that facilitates the search for patterns of experience within a qualitative data set; the product of a thematic analysis is a description of those patterns and the overarching design that unites them. Thematic coding is the strategy by which data are segmented and categorized for thematic analysis” (Ayres, 2008, p.867).

Theme identification and coding are typical characteristics of qualitative research. Some researchers utilize software programs such as NVivo in order to analyze and group data in similar ideas while others prefer to do it manually (Kelle, 2004; Seale, 2000). I decided to do this procedure manually because I was sensitive to Welsh’s (2002) criticism on computer assisted qualitative data analysis software in comparison to manual methods. Welsh (2002) argues that combining both methods would be ideal for securing a rigorous qualitative analysis but relying heavily on software might be challenging. Additionally, Welsh (2002) states that “the software is less useful in terms of addressing issues of validity and reliability in the thematic ideas that emerge during the data analysis process and this is due to the fluid and creative way in which these themes emerge” (p.9).

Thematic analysis is considered the most appropriate for this study for the following reasons: First, it enhances researcher’s opportunity to deal with diverse subjects via interpretations (Boyatzis, 1998) and to understand widely diverse aspects and data that have been gathered in different situation at different times during the project (Marks and Yardley 2004). Second, the

125 flexibility of thematic analysis enables the researcher to apply both inductive and deductive methodologies (Frith and Gleeson 2004; Hayes 1997) to ensure that themes are effectively linked to the data (Patton, 1990) and can be achieved and in-depth analysis of participants’ behaviors actions and thoughts ((Hatch 2002; Creswell 2003). Namey and Namey et al. (2008) endorse this view and claim that thematic analysis “May include comparing the relative frequencies of themes or topics within a data set, looking for code co-occurrence or graphically displaying code relationships.” (p.138). Finally, thematic analysis contributes towards understanding similarities and differences between participants’ perspectives, which leads to an appreciation of the whole picture (Joffe & Yardley 2004; Blacker 2009). Braun’s and Clarke’s (2006, p. 87) phases of data analysis have been followed. The table below summarizes the research methodology and methods of data collection that have been applied in this action research study.

3.5.1 The rationale of the choices of data collection methods