Hey everybody! So I know that the
primary focus of these blogs are supposed to be about my progress with my
research, but I thought that now that I am out on my own, I might as well
include some information about the rest of my life so that you guys know what I
have been doing last week and will be doing next week. So to start, today I was
flown out of state all expenses paid to interview for a summer internship.
Although I don’t want to give away the specifics yet, I just wanted to say that
I am pretty excited about this opportunity.
Anyways, back to my research. This past
week was the first week where I was out on my own conducting my research.
Although it seems like I have a lot of freedom and independence, I still spent the
week at school (maybe I’m not as free as I thought). As most of you are probably
aware, the purpose of my research is to determine what qualities are
representative of a successful charter school, and so, to do this, I have to
spend a lot of time at school. Because of this, I spent this entire week
observing 16 classes and conducting 7 interviews. I know that it might seem
like I am complaining right now, but I have actually been enjoying my research.
So far, the interviews have been my
favorite part of what I have been doing. I have talked with such a cognizant,
enthusiastic group of teachers and believe that I gained a lot of really good
insight into the school by talking to them. Going into these interviews, I was
worried that I would not have enough to talk about, but in fact it is actually
turning out to be the opposite. Although this has been my most successful
method so far, my other ones are still proving useful as well. I have noticed
that my observations have been backing up and exemplifying a lot of what the
teachers I interviewed have said about the student body and teachers. I am
excited for when I do my actual data analysis to see what other connections
emerge.
Anyways, moving onto the plan for next
week. Since I only have one more week for data collection, then, by the end of
this week, I want to have all of my data collected and organized so that I can begin
my data analysis the week after. I already have an organization system established
for my data; now my biggest task is transcribing my interviews. I have been
looking for software that can take an audio file and automatically transcribe
it, but right now it is looking like I am going to have to run through all of
the audio files and transcribe myself. This is going to be a big task, since I
have over three hours of audio, and so this will probably be what I spend most
of my free time doing this week.
That is all for this week! I look
forward to updating everybody next week for another report of my progress.
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Brian -- I'm so excited about this opportunity that has come your way. I hope everything went well (and I can't wait to hear about it!). Perhaps for your next blog, you can start to talk about some interesting information that you've got from your methods. What trends are you seeing? What features are you noticing as important? Is there any data that you're looking to collect beyond these three methods (e.g., teacher experience/education). Also, you didn't really mention much about the surveys in this blog. How's that going?
ReplyDeleteBrian! I am glad to hear that your first week of data collection went smoothly. It also seems like you are having a good time which is great!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to say that I can't think of a software that automatically transcribes audio for you (although I agree that that would be perfect). Even if you do find such a software, it might be worth your time to proofread the new text files just to make sure the program worked successfully. Thinking a bit ahead, do you know how you will analyze your data once you have transcribed it onto text? Keep up the great work!
Hey Brian! Wow, it's awesome to hear about that interview! I'm sure you were awesome! I'm glad that you are having fun with your data collection process and the interviews; I'm sure the teachers had a lot of insightful things to say. So from what I'm getting, you basically have all of your data collected, and the only thing remaining is transcribing the videos. If I remember correctly, Rema was actually using a software that was able to transcribe videos. You might want to check with her what she's using as I'm sure that will definitely help you out. But I agree with Sergio that even if you do get access to such a software, it'll still be good practice to proofread some segments of the interviews to make sure the software transcribed correctly. Have you already organized the data for the surveys and observations? You seem to be on track with your research! Great job! (156)
ReplyDeleteBRI BRIIIIII!!!! I hope the interview and the polygraph and everything was all good. I think you will have an amazing summer opportunity that will lead to bigger and better things! Anyways, I'm glad you have made serious headway in your interview and data collections in school. You can use the DRAGON software to automatically transcribe audio for you into the text in a laptop. I still agree with Sergio in that it is worth proofreading everything regardless. How are you organizing your data? What is the best way to organize everything? How are you choosing teachers to interview for your research?
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Ved Narayan
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