4.26 Quantitative methods, Research drafts & Final exam

We started with a brief overview of the chapter on quantitative methods in your Research Methods text - and then moved on to the Shaggy Dog exercise. We started with an intuitive ranking of  the 5 shaggy dog stories, and then analyzed the features that made them funny.  We next rated the SAME 5 stories using a numerical scale based on  our 7 categories for what made the stories funny.  This rating showed that our numerical scale worked on the stories we used to create it => the stories came out with ratings numerical scores that corresponded pretty well with the intuitive "funniness" ratings we gave the first time around.

We then applied the numerical funniness scale to 3 new stories - and found that it didn't work so well on the new stories.  This means that our funniness scale needed some more work before we could apply it to measure "funniness" to a broader range of stories.  For instance, we noticed that the Ghandi shaggy dog story was really much funnier than the funniness scale indicated.

Jen then gave her presentation on "Is Oral History Good For You?" a study which demonstrated political motivations for resorting to quantitative evidence (to receive funding or to prove the value of a method or theory to an audience that only values "hard" data).

Oral history continued. We then did a slightly different kind of quantitative study to assess the value of oral history.  We rated  our feelings about particular stories - told the stories to each other as a group - and then re-rated our feelings about the stories using the same scale.  Jen is going to report the results for us next week.

Final exam.  Your final exam is posted to the right under Course Documents.  You can look it over this week (or get started if you choose).  We will review and ask/answer questions next week.  The completed final exam will be due May 10.

Research Drafts are due by Sunday night.  I will give you feedback by Thursday you will workshop them in class May 3.  The final draft will be due May 10 when you will share your findings with classmates (and celebrate the successful completion of the course!).

I think that wraps it up = what an awesome class tonight!  Thanks for your good participation.

Workshop

Workshop guidelines

1. State the essay's research question

2. Sum up relevant background, including other research, related to your project 

3. Identify the relevance/importance of the essay's focus to English Studies (identify the problem that the paper studies)

4. Identifythe methods

5. Explain the analysis of data and how it sets up the findings => count the specific examples (particular references to transcripts, observations, textual analysis etc)

6. State the findings (should be a list of observations/generalization relevant to the research question)

7. How does the researcher connect  the findings to the research question

Shaggy dog stories

1.

A man went to his dentist because he felt something wrong in his mouth. The dentist examined him and said "That new upper plate I put in for you six months ago is eroding. What have you been eating?"

The man replied, "All I can think of is that about four months ago, my wife made some asparagus and put some stuff on it that was delicious... hollandaise sauce! I love it so much now that I put it on everything -- meat, toast, fish, vegetables, everything!"

The dentist said, "Well, that's probably the problem. Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive. It's eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new one, and this time, I'll use chrome."

"Why chrome?" asked the patient.

"It's simple," said the dentist. "Everyone knows that there's no plate like chrome for the hollandaise."

2.

Ghandi walked barefoot everywhere, to the point that his feet became quite thick and hard. Even when he wasn't on a hunger strike, he did not eat much and became quite thin and frail. He also was quite a spiritual person. Furthermore, due to his diet, he ended up with very bad breath. He became known as a super-calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis.

3.

A certain lawyer was quite wealthy and had a summer house in the country. Each summer the lawyer would invite a different friend to spend a week or two. On one occasion, he invited a Czechoslovakian friend to stay with him. The friend, eager to get a freebie off a lawyer, agreed.  Early one morning, the lawyer and his Czechoslovakian companion went out to pick berries for their breakfast. As they went around the berry patch gathering blueberries and raspberries, along came two huge bears, a male and a female. The lawyer, seeing the two bears, immediately dashed for cover. His friend, though, wasn't so lucky. The male bear reached him and swallowed him whole.The lawyer ran back to his Mercedes, tore into town, and got the local sheriff.

The sheriff grabbed his shotgun and dashed back to the berry patch with the lawyer.  Sure enough, the two bears were still there. "He's in that one," cried the lawyer, pointing to the male, while visions of lawsuits from his friend's family danced in his head. He just had to save his friend. The sheriff looked at the bears, and without batting an eye, leveled his gun, took careful aim, and shot the female.

"What did you do that for?" exclaimed the lawyer. "I said he was in the other one!"

"Exactly," replied the sheriff. "Would you believe a lawyer who told you the Czech was in the male?"

Quantitative Experiment

1

There was a snake called Nate. His purpose in life was to stay in the desert and guard the lever. Theis lever was no ordinary lever. It was the lever that if moved would destroy the world. Nate took his job very seriously. He let nothing get close to the lever.

One day off in the distance he saw a cloud of dust. He kept his eye on it because he was guarding the lever. The dust cloud continued to move closer to the lever. Nate saw that it was a huge boulder and it was heading straight for the lever!

Nate thought about what he could do to save the world. He decided if he could get in front of the boulder he could deflect it and it would miss the lever. Nate slithered quickly to intersect the boulder. The boulder ran over Nate, but it was, in fact, deflected, leaving history to conclude that is was better Nate than lever

2.

Some friars wanted to do more for their flock but their vow of poverty, simple lifestyle and lack of gainful employment meant that their supply of available funds was, to say the least, meager. Nevertheless, they put their collective heads together and came up with the idea of opening a small florist shop. They reasoned that they could grow most of the flowers on the church grounds, and what they couldn't grow, they could likely pick from the surrounding countryside.

As you can probably guess, everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God and their little business flourished. So much so that the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close their little shop, but their flower business was providing them with much-needed funds for  their good works and they refused. He went back time and again, finally begging the friars to close. By this time, they had tired of the florist's constant whining and they ignored him. The florist even asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of the flower business, but they ignored her, too.

By this time, the florist was nearly backrupt and in desperation hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to "persuade" the good friars to close. Being a man of few morals and even fewer religious convictions, Hugh had no ethical problems with his assigned task and promptly gave the friars a thorough beating and trashed their store. He departed with a stern warning that he’d be back if they didn’t close the shop. Terrified, the friars did so immediately, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

3.

A giant panda escaped from the zoo in New York. Eventually, he found his way downtown and walked into a restaurant, where he found a seat at an emptey table. The maitre d', being a native New Yorker figures he's seen stranger things than this so he sends over a waiter to take the panda's order. In due course the panda's meal arrives and he eats.

After he finishes his dinner he stands up, calmly pulls out a gun from God-knows-where he had it hidden, and blows away several customers and a couple of the waiters. Then he turns around and walks toward the door.

Naturally, the maitre d' is horrified. He stops the panda and demands an explanation, at the very least.

The panda says to him, "What do I look like to you"?

The maitre d' answers, "Well, a giant panda, of course."

"That's right," says the panda, "Look it up," and he walks out.

The maitre d' calls the police. When they arrive the maitre d' relates the whole story to them, including the panda's comment about looking it up. So the chief detective sends a rookie out to get an encyclopedia.

He eventually returns with the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Volume P. The detective looks up "panda", and there's the answer: "Giant panda, lives in China, eats shoots and leaves."

4.

Robinson Crusoe fell desperately ill. Just before dropping into a coma, he called for his man Friday to help him. "Friday, get help! Get help!"

"Yes!" Friday replied, "Get help now!" Not knowing what else to do, he went outside of Crusoe's tent and danced and prayed for the gods to come and help his master.

Shortly afterwards, he went back into Crusoe's tent and found his master awake and staring at a beautiful glowing shape at the foot of his bed.

"Who is that?" Robinson Crusoe asked.

His helper answered, "Thank Friday! It's God!"

5.

All the top chess players show up at a hotel for an important international tournament. They spend the first hour hanging around the lobby telling each other of their recent victories. Their crows get progressively louder and louder as each one tries to outdo the others.

The hotel manager gets tired of this, so he throws them out of the lobby and tells them to go to their rooms. "If there's one thing I can't stand," he says, "it's chess nuts boasting by an open foyer."

4.19 Oral history

Jill gave her excellent presentation on Oral History (and you all learned how to use the periodical list at the Kean Library).  We used our discussion of the article both to think about the kind of work oral historians do - and to map out the kinds of moves researchers make in writing a research essay.

You also did oral history interviews - reported back - and we talked about the kinds of questions and issues that can be studied through oral history.

Next week we will talk about qualitative methods - and workshop your research essays.

Read:  Is Oral History Good for You? The Oral History Review  37.2

Blog 11:  Draft Research project that you will workshop in class

Turn in your draft for comments, as an attachment to the course email on Friday, April 27.

I might be late for class

The Honor's Convocation for Kean University is begins at 3:15 tomorrow - and I will be there in my cap & gown sitting with the rest of the faculty - so I may be late for class.  If I am more than 10 minutes late - get started on your presentation and I will catch up with you.

4.12 Ethnography and Interviewing

Send a copy of your final DA essay to the course email if you have not already done so.

Lauren and Michael presented on interviews, and Krystina and Courtney presented on ethnography.  Good job. For each presentation I raised questions to make sure you were examining the assumptions that lay beneath the research. What was the nature of "truth"?  What was the relationship between researcher and subject(s)?  What did the researcher assume about the way the world worked?  What were the researcher's values?

We finished class with some practice interviewing - and I strongly suggested that if you do interviewing - that you do some practicing before collecting the data for your project.

For next week:

Read:  "I didn't do anything important," The Oral History Review 36.1 2009, available through Kean University data bases; Summerfield in Griffin

Blog 10: Research project writing

4.5 Ethnography

Final DA Projects are Due next Thursday.


Notes from class 


Ethnography

Participant observation = researcher is in the research situation

Purpose = to represent the perspectives of insiders to the culture you are studying

Ethnography is made of “thick description”

Purpose to understand values, identities, beliefs, cultural practices

Often move between reflective and objective perspectives

Characteristics of ethnographic writing

First person

Starts with an arrival story => sets up what the ethnographer will learn

What might you notice when you take ethnographic notes

Who talks

Who has power

Culture= clues to classroom culture are:

Way you talk

Way you look

Way you are dressed

Diversity

Similarities /differences among students

Indications of trust

Associations – relationships

Gender dominance

Individual agendas versus group agendas

On-topic versus off topic participation

Tone of voice, eye contact, body language

Ethnographic activity
In the class presentation on ethnography I directed you to Alsop's classification of the different ways ethographies are of interest in English Studies (119).
1. as literary works (ethnographies as a literry genre)=> like Diane Bell's book
2. as a form that contributes to and shapes other genres: novels (like Moby Dick), auto/biography - like Grealy's book
3. As a tool for studying writing process and literacy learning
4. as a tool for studying cultural behaviors and groups surrounding reading and writing


I said I would give a presentation on that classification - and that after the presentation you would work in groups to classify six books in the categories we discussed.  
AND - all the while you would be taking ethnographic notes to characterize the Discourse community/social dynamic of our class.


You did a GREAT job on this.  I was interested in some the following: 

• that most of you took notes ACROSS groups rather than on dynamics within your own group
• your observations about the teacher's use of humor + sharing personal information as contributing to the class dynamic (as we noted in our discussion - humor is dangerous + two edged)
• your identification of different sub-groups within the class
• different levels of participation

pretty interesting.


For next week:
We will start with Courtney + Krystina's presentation, then cover interviewing.  ALso - we are going to spend some time making sure all of you are started with your research projects.

Read: Visual Literacy for All:  A Fourth-Grade Study of Alice in Wonderland  http://www.readingonline.org/articles/voices/edinger/,  Griffin in Griffin

Blog 9: Final DA project + send your Final DA project to course email

3.29 Visual analysis

New and emerging technologies - the printing press, photography, film, television, the internet and new media we haven't even yet imagined have made images integral to our literate communications.

Texts now important to literacy studies now include: children's picture books, movies, web sites, blogs, you-tube videos, facebook and other sns, instagram, icons & visual elements of digital representations, magazines, newspapers , physical space itself, catalogs, architecture, graphic novels.

We then took a look at the Kean web site on academics, and you pointed out some of the ways you "saw" the site.  Among other things, you identified issues associated with placement, color, justaposition, intertextuality, image content, the lack of coherence among the images, and symbolic associations to particular images.  As I pointed out - your initial analyses drew from all three approaches discussed by Rose - and our discussion then became about learning and applying Rose's terminology to the analysis.  My notes for Rose's  chapter (and the basis for the rest of my part of the class discussion) are posted to the right as Notes for Rose.

During the second part of class Wyndesha and Svitlana presented on Farrell, Arzipe, and McAdam's essay.

For next week

Read:  Livingstone, Alsop in Griffiin

Blog 8: What methodology do Farrell, Azipe & McAdam use in their study?  What methods?  How did their assumptions shape their research findings?  Why is or isn't this a valid study?