Responses provided insights into the resources used by survey respondents in teaching multimodality, but there were many types of responses captured. This question appeared easier to answer than the previous, related question which asked about the theories that informed multimodal teaching rather than the practical resources, perhaps due to the practitioner nature of the question or due to the insertion of the “i.e.” section.
Although the question asked for “top 5” resources, many respondents provided more or less than 5 resources.
Isolating the responses to this question illustrates the importance of context in research. There appears to be some correlation to theory because respondents are ordered in the same sequence as previous questions, but we are not sure from this question how respondents interpret the term multimodal or the question itself. In fact, one response indicates there is a problem understanding the question, so perhaps it needs clarifying or closing to some degree. If we could isolate the questions that deal with multimodality, we might be able to gather further insights into how the term is interpreted and what multimodal teaching means to these respondents.
The #2 respondent displays a consistency with the previous question (137) that provides insight: he or she restates the question according to how s/he interprets it, and then provides a response. The response also includes an explanation of how the resources are used, rather than just a list of resources as most other respondents provided.
The list-style response to this question is what was asked for, but other than the response by #2 they provide little more than a listing. This is excellent if what the research is designed to do is to gather a list of resources, however, this limits the knowledge that might be made from this opportunity.
Considering this is the second-to-last question out of 140, the brevity of answers might also be due in part to survey fatigue.
Four main categories resound when looking to the plethora of responses to the practical resources survey question. These categories are represented below. Some of these require further categorization, thus the sub-categories.
Our analysis shows a wide array of answers which suggests the question was not fully understood by all respondents (as directly stated by the second participant). In the process of categorizing the responses, we made a list of recurring trends. From this list, which we’ll detail below, we noticed a pattern in which the respondents provided a spectrum of answer that ranged from specific books or web sites to more general media resources. As part of our method, we discussed the pros and cons of dividing the elements of participants’ answers or approaching them holistically. We recognized that approaching the answers holistically would provide more information about the teachers rather than the resources. Consequently, we chose to divide their responses into six categories: (1) Specific Printed Texts (including articles and textbooks), (2) Specific Web Sites (names or URLs provided), (3) Non-Specified Media (for example, “comics,” “film,” “television,” “news stories,” etc.), (4)Self-Authored Resources, (5) Student Work, and (6) Non-Specified (for example, “there are no top five,” “mish-mash,” etc.). Based on the patterns we noticed in relation to the categories we created, we noticed a trend of teachers using specific textbooks and web sites as guides and examples for teaching multimodality. Even though this is only one particular trend we observed, we feel that using these categories as a lens for analyzing the responses can give researchers insight into other possibilities concerning the teaching of multimodal composition.
While we initially felt the responses given were too diverse to provide much insight, after coding the responses, conducting actual counts for each category, and determining what percentage each category was of the total, we discovered that there were at least some generalizations we could make (about this group of responders, anyway) and some impressions which weren't so clear before organizing the responses in this way. Our coding system involved placing each resource into one of the following 13 categories: textbooks; other books; journals; other periodicals; websites with multimodal examples; websites with information; other media; student texts; teacher-created texts; colleagues; other people and publishers; general, unspecified, or unknown; and non-responses.
We found that, by far, the most commonly cited resources were textbooks (over 32% of total) and websites (with almost 31% of total - 20% offering examples of multimodal texts and 11% providing sites with some kind of information related to the creation of multimodal texts), although in both of these general categories there were many different specific titles mentioned and no titles appeared more than three different times. The next largest category was what we called "other media" with 7% That category was significant because it included the CD rom by Ball and Arola which was mentioned by name four times, making it the most frequently mentioned specific resource.
It seems to us to be significant (and appropriate) that electronic resources outnumbered traditional print resources, although not by a large margin. The fact that specific titles in both print and electronic media were rarely repeated suggests to us that what is taught under the multimodality umbrella is not clearly defined or prescribed and that there is probably a wide spectrum of skills, concepts, and processes being taught in such classes. It is interesting to think about what might be done in classes using these different resources. Based on these lists of resources alone, it appears that some teachers have a strong emphasis on the development of the technological skills needed to produce these multimodal texts while others emphasize the rhetorical analysis of already circulating multimodal texts.
We used categories as well as a catchall (“uncodified”) for what remained. It turns out, there’s a lot that fell into that “uncodified” category—some of it, however, are names or items we just don’t recognize. For example, I (Tony) recognized “Adbusters” as a website b/c I’ve used it, but many other things are unfamiliar to me (like “web monkey”). We also decided to include “comic books” in the category of books, even though they’re not scholarly texts; thus, websites and books become are two largest categories—this provides some good statistics to go off of, but we also overlook some differences in quality. For instance, we could separate “creative” websites from “informational” ones like a previous group did, but such categorizations could be quite subjective. Of course, we think all methods are subjective. There are many valid responses we excluded with the “uncodified” category. Case in point: “Library of Congress” was a source labeled “uncodified” since we don’t have a category for it (though I’m not sure how the Lib of Cong would be multimodal).
N=42
Number of participants who listed each type: 1. uncodified (22) 2. Websites (19) 3. books/articles/ journals (18) 4. student created (5) 5. self-produced (4) 6. Newspapers (4) 7. Nonresponses (3) 8. movies (3) 9. television (2) Number of times each type of answer appeared out of total number of answers, or Frequency of answers (n = 136): 1. Websites (46) 2. uncodified (36) 3. books/articles/ journals (31) 4. student created (5) 5. self-produced (5) 6. Newspapers (4) 7. movies (4) 8. Nonresponses (3) 9. television (2) These two categorizations, although still a little subjective (i.e., deciding what constitutes an “answer”), show one major flaw in our system yet: the high number of uncodified responses. This is a flaw because many of those items would fit into our other categories if we knew what they were. Still, I think we could say most of those would either by books or websites. And—eureka!—we have a consistent finding: websites and books are both a) cited by the most participants and b) the most frequent types of sources cited.
We color coded all of the responses and I'll bring a copy to class tonight.
First, we noticed that the question was somewhat vague and could therefore lead to some diverse or non-codifiable responses. For instance, requiring a “Top 5” might be too presumptuous, as it suggests that everyone taking the survey uses at least five resources. This does not take into consideration the respondent who may only use one, two, three, or four resources. Furthermore, by using the adjective “practical” when describing the resources, the study could provide too much agency to the respondents—“practical” is quite the subjective term, and what might be practical for some respondents might not be practical for others. Moreover, a “Top 5” that is also “practical” might not be feasible for some respondents. In addition, the two examples they provide (“everyday texts” and “examples”) lead the respondents to focus specifically—or at least more so than they might—on those types of resources. In other words, the question seems to be asking specifically for those types of responses. What we found interesting was that while both question 137 and 138 asked for resources, the responses in 137 were mostly names in the field. But the responses in 138 were rarely names, which we attributed to the two examples provided in the question. Thus, immediately, the question is not very concise: the “Top 5” concept could possibly force respondents to provide more resources than they like (perhaps they only use 2); the language used (“practical”) could preclude certain answers from respondents; and the examples predispose the respondents to think in terms of two materials (“everyday texts” and “examples”).
Next, we counted how many responses there were (41), and afterward, we started to scan the responses, looking for reoccurring responses (trends). We noticed that there were a lot of vague answers or ones that would be difficult to categorize (“I'm not sure I'm understanding the question…,” “information,” “mostly self-authored,” “Typically, my practical resources change from class to class. I bring in examples and ask students to do the same,” “as ab0ve,” “there are no top five,” “Not sure--mishmash of stuff … not codifiable”). We attributed these diverse answers to vagueness of the question, which we make mention of above. However, we then decided to count how many non-codifiable answers there were, and we found 9. We defined non-codifiable as answers that were non-specific, vague, or could cause multiple interpretations.
Nonetheless, we did discern some common trends, and consequently, we started to make some categories, which were as follows: websites, books, textbook CDs, video games, comic books, former student work, and specific authors.
5 comments:
Question 138 - qualitative analysis
Responses provided insights into the resources used by survey respondents in teaching multimodality, but there were many types of responses captured. This question appeared easier to answer than the previous, related question which asked about the theories that informed multimodal teaching rather than the practical resources, perhaps due to the practitioner nature of the question or due to the insertion of the “i.e.” section.
Although the question asked for “top 5” resources, many respondents provided more or less than 5 resources.
Isolating the responses to this question illustrates the importance of context in research. There appears to be some correlation to theory because respondents are ordered in the same sequence as previous questions, but we are not sure from this question how respondents interpret the term multimodal or the question itself. In fact, one response indicates there is a problem understanding the question, so perhaps it needs clarifying or closing to some degree. If we could isolate the questions that deal with multimodality, we might be able to gather further insights into how the term is interpreted and what multimodal teaching means to these respondents.
The #2 respondent displays a consistency with the previous question (137) that provides insight: he or she restates the question according to how s/he interprets it, and then provides a response. The response also includes an explanation of how the resources are used, rather than just a list of resources as most other respondents provided.
The list-style response to this question is what was asked for, but other than the response by #2 they provide little more than a listing. This is excellent if what the research is designed to do is to gather a list of resources, however, this limits the knowledge that might be made from this opportunity.
Considering this is the second-to-last question out of 140, the brevity of answers might also be due in part to survey fatigue.
Four main categories resound when looking to the plethora of responses to the practical resources survey question. These categories are represented below. Some of these require further categorization, thus the sub-categories.
**Web Resources-->internet websites (Informational)
(Creative) -->blogs, games, archives, tutorials
**Print Resources-->textbooks (Undergraduate, Graduate)
-->magazines
-->newspapers
-->comic books
**Media Resources-->movies
-->music
-->everyday objects
**Vague/No Information Resources
--> “no top 5”
-->“information”
-->“mostly self authored”
-->“I find new material on the web all the time”
JULIA, LIANE, JILL
Our analysis shows a wide array of answers which suggests the question was not fully understood by all respondents (as directly stated by the second participant). In the process of categorizing the responses, we made a list of recurring trends. From this list, which we’ll detail below, we noticed a pattern in which the respondents provided a spectrum of answer that ranged from specific books or web sites to more general media resources. As part of our method, we discussed the pros and cons of dividing the elements of participants’ answers or approaching them holistically. We recognized that approaching the answers holistically would provide more information about the teachers rather than the resources. Consequently, we chose to divide their responses into six categories: (1) Specific Printed Texts (including articles and textbooks), (2) Specific Web Sites (names or URLs provided), (3) Non-Specified Media (for example, “comics,” “film,” “television,” “news stories,” etc.), (4)Self-Authored Resources, (5) Student Work, and (6) Non-Specified (for example, “there are no top five,” “mish-mash,” etc.). Based on the patterns we noticed in relation to the categories we created, we noticed a trend of teachers using specific textbooks and web sites as guides and examples for teaching multimodality. Even though this is only one particular trend we observed, we feel that using these categories as a lens for analyzing the responses can give researchers insight into other possibilities concerning the teaching of multimodal composition.
While we initially felt the responses given were too diverse to provide much insight, after coding the responses, conducting actual counts for each category, and determining what percentage each category was of the total, we discovered that there were at least some generalizations we could make (about this group of responders, anyway) and some impressions which weren't so clear before organizing the responses in this way. Our coding system involved placing each resource into one of the following 13 categories: textbooks; other books; journals; other periodicals; websites with multimodal examples; websites with information; other media; student texts; teacher-created texts; colleagues; other people and publishers; general, unspecified, or unknown; and non-responses.
We found that, by far, the most commonly cited resources were textbooks (over 32% of total) and websites (with almost 31% of total - 20% offering examples of multimodal texts and 11% providing sites with some kind of information related to the creation of multimodal texts), although in both of these general categories there were many different specific titles mentioned and no titles appeared more than three different times. The next largest category was what we called "other media" with 7% That category was significant because it included the CD rom by Ball and Arola which was mentioned by name four times, making it the most frequently mentioned specific resource.
It seems to us to be significant (and appropriate) that electronic resources outnumbered traditional print resources, although not by a large margin. The fact that specific titles in both print and electronic media were rarely repeated suggests to us that what is taught under the multimodality umbrella is not clearly defined or prescribed and that there is probably a wide spectrum of skills, concepts, and processes being taught in such classes. It is interesting to think about what might be done in classes using these different resources. Based on these lists of resources alone, it appears that some teachers have a strong emphasis on the development of the technological skills needed to produce these multimodal texts while others emphasize the rhetorical analysis of already circulating multimodal texts.
Ruth and Brittney
We used categories as well as a catchall (“uncodified”) for what remained. It turns out, there’s a lot that fell into that “uncodified” category—some of it, however, are names or items we just don’t recognize. For example, I (Tony) recognized “Adbusters” as a website b/c I’ve used it, but many other things are unfamiliar to me (like “web monkey”). We also decided to include “comic books” in the category of books, even though they’re not scholarly texts; thus, websites and books become are two largest categories—this provides some good statistics to go off of, but we also overlook some differences in quality. For instance, we could separate “creative” websites from “informational” ones like a previous group did, but such categorizations could be quite subjective.
Of course, we think all methods are subjective. There are many valid responses we excluded with the “uncodified” category. Case in point: “Library of Congress” was a source labeled “uncodified” since we don’t have a category for it (though I’m not sure how the Lib of Cong would be multimodal).
N=42
Number of participants who listed each type:
1. uncodified (22)
2. Websites (19)
3. books/articles/ journals (18)
4. student created (5)
5. self-produced (4)
6. Newspapers (4)
7. Nonresponses (3)
8. movies (3)
9. television (2)
Number of times each type of answer appeared out of total number of answers, or Frequency of answers (n = 136):
1. Websites (46)
2. uncodified (36)
3. books/articles/ journals (31)
4. student created (5)
5. self-produced (5)
6. Newspapers (4)
7. movies (4)
8. Nonresponses (3)
9. television (2)
These two categorizations, although still a little subjective (i.e., deciding what constitutes an “answer”), show one major flaw in our system yet: the high number of uncodified responses. This is a flaw because many of those items would fit into our other categories if we knew what they were. Still, I think we could say most of those would either by books or websites.
And—eureka!—we have a consistent finding: websites and books are both a) cited by the most participants and b) the most frequent types of sources cited.
We color coded all of the responses and I'll bring a copy to class tonight.
First, we noticed that the question was somewhat vague and could therefore lead to some diverse or non-codifiable responses. For instance, requiring a “Top 5” might be too presumptuous, as it suggests that everyone taking the survey uses at least five resources. This does not take into consideration the respondent who may only use one, two, three, or four resources. Furthermore, by using the adjective “practical” when describing the resources, the study could provide too much agency to the respondents—“practical” is quite the subjective term, and what might be practical for some respondents might not be practical for others. Moreover, a “Top 5” that is also “practical” might not be feasible for some respondents. In addition, the two examples they provide (“everyday texts” and “examples”) lead the respondents to focus specifically—or at least more so than they might—on those types of resources. In other words, the question seems to be asking specifically for those types of responses. What we found interesting was that while both question 137 and 138 asked for resources, the responses in 137 were mostly names in the field. But the responses in 138 were rarely names, which we attributed to the two examples provided in the question. Thus, immediately, the question is not very concise: the “Top 5” concept could possibly force respondents to provide more resources than they like (perhaps they only use 2); the language used (“practical”) could preclude certain answers from respondents; and the examples predispose the respondents to think in terms of two materials (“everyday texts” and “examples”).
Next, we counted how many responses there were (41), and afterward, we started to scan the responses, looking for reoccurring responses (trends). We noticed that there were a lot of vague answers or ones that would be difficult to categorize (“I'm not sure I'm understanding the question…,” “information,” “mostly self-authored,” “Typically, my practical resources change from class to class. I bring in examples and ask students to do the same,” “as ab0ve,” “there are no top five,” “Not sure--mishmash of stuff … not codifiable”). We attributed these diverse answers to vagueness of the question, which we make mention of above. However, we then decided to count how many non-codifiable answers there were, and we found 9. We defined non-codifiable as answers that were non-specific, vague, or could cause multiple interpretations.
Nonetheless, we did discern some common trends, and consequently, we started to make some categories, which were as follows: websites, books, textbook CDs, video games, comic books, former student work, and specific authors.
-Rory, Kara, Emily
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