Introduction 

Take some time to read and view the following resources. As you read remember to add your thoughts to your Popplet mind map. Clearly you will take more notes and/highlight more things in Mendeley than would fit on your Popplet.  Only include what you view as the most important findings. 

Readings 

The reading by Davis and Niederhauser is a magazine article that is about 4 pages long.  The other two article are research journal articles.  This may be the first time that you've read a research journal article so it's worth taking the time to talk about how to read them.  

How to Read an Academic Journal Article

First, let's look at the different sections that are typically in a journal article:

  1. Abstract: This is typically only one paragraph and summarizes the article.
  2. Introduction: This section introduces the research topic and explains why the research is important to address.
  3. Literature Review: At times this section may be combined with the Introduction but it reviews the previous research on the topic.
  4. Methodology: This section will tell you how the researchers collected data, who they collected it from (the participants), and how they analyzed the data.
  5. Results or Findings: This section presents what the researchers found from their analysis.  It's common for this section to contain tables and figures. 
  6. Discussion: In this section the researchers talk about what their findings add to our understanding and possible implications for future research and practice. At times this is combined with the Results section. 
  7. Conclusion: This is a short summary of the article and the most important findings.
  8. References: This contains references to all of the articles that the authors cited in the body of the article.

So here's how I read an article.  I read the Abstract and Conclusion first.  This lets me know what the article is about and primes me to know what I should be looking for.  I then read the Introduction to judge the importance of the article.  If this is the first article I've read on the topic I will read the Literature Review. If I'm already familiar with the topic I will just skim the Literature Review.  I then skim the Methodology section so that I know who participated in the research and how the authors collected and analyzed the data.  I then read the Results and Discussion sections carefully.  

How to Access Research Journal Articles

I've tried to find articles that are freely accessible to anyone with the link.  When that's the case I have linked directly to the article.  However, it's common for research articles to only give access to those who pay.  Luckily our library has already paid for us (well, actually you paid with your tuition).  All you need to do is search for the article on the library home page using the reference information. The following image highlights and labels the different parts found in a reference:

The following video shows you how to use the reference information above:

 Reading Materials

  • Virtual Schooling: Roles and Responsibilities by Davis and Niederhauser
  • K-12 Distance Educators at Work: Who’s Teaching Online Across the United States by Archambault and Kent.  This is a long article but I only want you to read one section that starts with the first full paragraph on page 376 and goes to the conclusion section on page 380.  This section describes the results from a national survey that asked online teachers to complete the statement "My experience with online teaching can be described as..." 
  • Access the following article via GMU's library: 

    • Borup, J., Graham, C. R., & Drysdale, J. S. (2014). The nature of teacher engagement at an online high school. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(5), 793–806. 

      NOTE TO THOSE WHO ARE NOT CURRENT MASON STUDENTS:  If you are not a current Mason student, you will not have access to the article via Mason's Library.  However, you can read a pre-publication draft here. 

Video Playlists

The first playlist contains some unpolished videos but what is being said is excellent and authentic.  The YouTube playlist contains the following videos:

Now that we've read and heard about online teaching, lets watch some short videos showing us what their jobs look like. The YouTube playlist below contains the following videos:

Remember that you can watch the videos at 1.5x or 2x speed using Chrome.