I invite you to join me at my main blog, More With Les.

Like you, my work  is demanding. I work every day. If I don’t, I easily and quickly fall behind.

A good  example is the literature review for my dissertation. Having finished a first draft, I must continue to refine it. In truth, it will never really be finished. The research will continue, and the writing will be a regular part of my life.

I chose this path, the road Les traveled, if you will. Maintaining the pace requires strict discipline. I usually do pretty well in the discipline department, but there are days when I would just as soon goof off and spend the day in mindless frivolity.

I remind myself that what I do is not difficult physical work, like coal mining. But sometimes simple, even difficult physical work, allows you to suspend your mind and exercise your body. My work is not like that. Everything requires precise thought, planning, and execution on deadline. It’s all mental. That can be much more tiring than physical work.

It it relentless. With some physical work, like building a wall or clipping a pasture, you can finish it and look back at the completed work. Mind work is seldom like that. It seems to never be quite finished. There is always an improvement to be made, some random embellishment that makes the work better.

But it is what I do, and I love it. Now, I must get back to work.

The iPad is here. This $500-to-$800 device is the latest in a line of popular, high quality products from Apple, which has received 240,000 advance orders for the iPad. Part laptop, part smartphone, part book reader, the iPad is everyone’s darling at the moment.

I wonder. As I work on my literature review, especially the section on Web 2.0 technologies, I can’t help but wonder what Postman would think about today’s launch of the iPad. 

I am studying the influence of Web 2.0 technologies on Millennial Generation students’ interpersonal communication skills and abilities. The Millennial students I teach are all around 20 years old. But the influence of technology seems to take hold at a very early age. I wrote about that in my last post after observing a circa-3-year-old girl play at texting while crossing a busy street.

I wonder if she (and my Millennial Generation students) will simply have to have an iPad?

But perhaps more important, I wonder if they ever simply have to carry on a conversation face to face? Are my Millennials moving toward a world of more high tech and less high touch with an  inherent loss of interpersonal communication skill and ability? I hope to find out soon.

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I was looking out a restaurant window last Wednesday evening when an SUV pulled up and stopped in the parking lot. Mom was apparently letting her two daughters out to enter the restaurant while she parked the vehicle. I could see one daughter, a high schooler I’d guess, opening the side door to help her younger sister out. They both came around the back of the SUV and crossed the parking lot in route to the front door of the restaurant.

Like ducks in a row, the older led the younger. The older girl, about 15 or 16, was texting like crazy as she walked unconcerned across the parking lot. Her little sister, who could not have been more than 4 years old, was doing the same thing on what I assume was a toy cell phone.

There’s the future, I thought. That is, if fortunately for them, no speeding vehicle shortens their days, because each was too absorbed in her texting to notice little things like oncoming traffic.

The Pew Research Center finds that 75 percent of Americans ages 12 to 17 own a cell phone, and the age at which kids  get their first phone is dropping. If what I saw at the restaurant is any gauge, it is dropping really low.

Pew reports that 66 percent of users use their phones for texting. It is sometimes carried to extremes, like the Japanese teenagers who use Ziploc bags to keep their phones waterproof while they use them in the bath. In Japan, 20 percent of high school girls have not only one, but two, cell phones, and some own even more. These teenagers stay on the phone “all the time” as one of them put it.

What concerns me is how technology is used by my mostly Millennial Generation students. They seem to build and maintain relationships via technology and not personal contact. Web 2.0 technologies are exciting and useful, but are they having a negative effect on Millennials’ ability to communicate face to face? When they enter the job market, employers will expect excellent interpersonal communication skills.

Seeing the 4-year-old play at texting while crossing a busy thoroughfare concerns me. But I am more concerned about my current Millennial students who are such heavy users of Web 2.o technologies. Can they engage in interesting, effective two-way communication? I hope my research will help me answer this question.

I devoted this week — spring break — to the project. I have spent the entire week at my computer searching peer-reviewed journals online for research that relates to my area of interest, then writing my first draft.

Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

I was making good progress, then my computer keyboard died. The space bar cease to work, so there was no spacing between words. My lit review copy came out like this:

“communicationisareciprocalprocessofexchangingsignalstoinformpersuadeorinstruct…”

I’d write a sentence, which smunched together, then go back and add spacing between words, a tedious chore to say the least. I wonder if the great scholars whose work I am now reading ever had to go back and add spacing between each word? I think not, because there is a huge amount of research out there. The inability to space words in sentences would be detrimental to their prolific output, I think.

It sure was detrimental to my efforts. But that was then, and this is now, writing on my new keyboard. You can’t be a scholar without some practical tools.

Now, what I need is research materials related to my topic. It is hard to find relevant and timely research that relates well enough to be instructive. One might think it would be easy, but I am  finding it difficult.

Perhaps the problem lies with my Boolean logic.  Conducting an advanced search through Towson’s excellent Cook Library databases and subject gateways appears to be at once art and science. I am trying many different combinations of search words, but I seem to be missing something, somehow, somewhere.

I have not mastered it yet, but I keep at it.

My research topic involves studying the influence of Web 2.0 technologies on Millennial students, those who were born from 1981 to 2001. I want to study whether or not heavy use of Web 2.0 technologies adversely affects their interpersonal communication. Long credited as being the most tech-savvy generation, does this easy ability with Web 2.o technologies come at the expense of interpersonal communication skill and ability?  Can Millennial students carry on effective two-way, verbal  conversations?

Literature on this and closely related topics is probably located across many disciplines — education, psychology, communication, and computer science, etc. There should also be extensive literature on Dyadic communication, the method of communication that only involves two people such as a face-to-face job interview, telephone conversation, letters, etc.

Therefore, I see my literature review organized as a funnel, as described by Diana Ridley in The Literature Review (Sage, 2008, chapter 6). It seems to me that I must first explore an extensive amount of research into a broad area of related topics to gradually funnel down to my target.

 In chapter 3, Ridley begins with basics of what a literature search is and offers important tips for making it the best it can be. She lists helpful sources of information, including:

• Books, including textbooks, specialized books, and reference books
• Journal articles
• Published literature reviews of a field
• Grey literature, material that is not provided commercially and is difficult to obtain, such as reports, theses and dissertations, conference literature, popular media, monographs/works-in-progress papers, and specialist literature and primary data sources

Ridley also explains various tools for finding relevant sources which can be divided into these main categories:

• Catalogues
• Bibliographical databases
• Internet subject gateways
• Internet search engines
• Open access databases

Regarding Internet search engines, I learned that there  is one called “Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) that is a more specific search engine enabling me to search for scholarly or academic Web page links. I was not aware of this search engine even though, like everyone else, I use Google often because it is quick, easy, and, well, there.

I found Ridley’s refresher on using Boolean logic to be helpful. Even though I do searches frequently, that does not mean that I am doing them effectively or efficiently.

Of particular value was Ridley’s suggested form for keeping records of literature searches. She stresses the importance  of keeping clear records of which word searches we use and on what databases. I had not thought of this. I plan to follow her advice and keep such records.

I found chapter 4 on reading and note taking less helpful. Admittedly, it contains solid advice, but for most of us who have gotten to the point of writing doctoral dissertation literature reviews, our reading and note taking skills are fairly well set. By now,  I believe that most of us have developed our own style of taking notes, including a familiar and comfortable way of abbreviating.

Ironically, Ridley discussed “serendipity”, which she defines as “the fortuitous and unexpected discovery of something useful” (page 38).  She mentioned it in the context of finding a key source while looking for something else. It happened to me as I read an example in Chapter 4. The example of note taking discussed computer-mediated communication (CMC) and language (“netspeak”) among young people. CMC is also discussed in the Write and Respond (W/R) assignment, specifically in the article by Loel Kim on online technologies for teaching writing. This relates to my literature review topic, so I was pleased to see it.

I was really looking forward to Ridley’s chapter 5 on reference management. This is a great concern of mine at this point, and I want to learn all I can before I get started. The opening information on managing the process was helpful, if not revolutionary, but the rest was a detailed discussion (and dare I say promotion) of EndNote. It was way too tedious for my tastes. Perhaps I am just tired, but my eyes glazed over at page after page of instructions on how to use this program.

And why is just this one covered in so much detail? Ridley mentioned two others, Reference Manager and ProCite, but they were not given the extensive discussion that EndNote was.

Ridley warns that EndNote’s user guide is over 600 pages! That is just what I need on top of all the searching and reading for a literature review — 600 pages of software user information. Isn’t there a simple and effective way to manage references?

Before I start to write, I need a plan to guide me.That is where I am now in the literature review process. I am trying to be as organized as possible before beginning research.

I am interested in studying the influence of Web 2.0 technologies on Millennial students, those who were born from 1981 to 2001. Specifically, I want to study whether or not heavy use of Web 2.0 technologies adversely affects their interpersonal communication.

I have been working with library experts to help me plan my approach. One of the challenges of this topic will be that the literature is located across so many disciplines — education, psychology, communication, computer science. I’ll need a systematic method of tracking down relevant research.

All advice is welcomed.

I have often felt that quantitative research purists come across as elitists in their views of qualitative research. The quantitative purist, emphasizing rhetorical neutrality, writes formally in an impersonal voice using technical terminology to establish and describe social laws. Quantitative purists, especially educational researchers, must eliminate biases and remain emotionally detached and uninvolved with the objects of study to test and justify empirically their stated hypotheses (p. 14).

The major characteristics of quantitative research are:

• Focus on deduction, confirmation, theory/hypothesis testing
• Explanation
• Prediction
• Standardized data collection
• Statistical analysis (p. 18)

By contrast, qualitative purists believe in the superiority of constructivism, idealism, relativism, humanism, hermeneutics, and at times, postmodernism, contending that multiple-constructed realities abound. Qualitative purists eschew the detached, passive style of writing favored by quantitative purists, using instead a detailed, rich, thick, descriptive style that is more direct and less formal (p. 14).

The major characteristics of qualitative research are:

• Induction
• Discovery
• Exploration
• Theory/hypothesis generation
• The researcher as primary “instrument” of data collection
• Qualitative analysis (p. 18)

Can there be, then, a workable middle ground? Yes, there can be, and that is the goal of mixed methods research. Mixed methods research does not seek to replace either approach, but rather seeks to take from each its strengths and to minimize each’s weaknesses. Both quantitative and qualitative research use empirical observations to address research hypotheses. Both approaches describe their data, construct explanatory arguments from their data, then speculate on why their observed outcomes happened as they did (p. 15).

Formally defined, mixed methods research is the class of research where the researcher mixes or combines quantitative and qualitative research techniques , methods, approaches, concepts, or languages into a single study (p. 17).

The mixed methods approach enables researchers to mix and match design components that offer the best chance of answering their specific research questions. To me, mixed methods research takes the strengths of quantitative and qualitative research and combines them in an effective way to find solutions to research questions.  It expands rather than limits. It is inclusive, pluralistic, and complementary. It is eclectic in method selection; therefore, it provides the researcher with a larger tool kit from which to work.

As an instructor in Mass Communication, Public Relations track, I see mixed methods as the best approach for my chosen area of study, Millennial students and the influence of Web 2.0 technologies on their interpersonal communication skills. I believe it will take mixed methods to get at answers in this research.

In their article about socially responsible research approaches, Reeves, Herrington, and Oliver (2005) argue that the motives for conducting research in higher education are related to the concept of social responsibility. They argue that as long as education research is focused on learning and performance problems and adheres to a set of principles appropriate to all research methods, it will be socially responsible. They argue that all instructional technology research can be said to focus on questions of how people learn and perform, especially related to the influence of technology.

Reeves, et al., (2005) advocate for a design research approach versus developmental research. Design research is characterized by:

• A focus on broad-based, complex problems critical to higher education
• Integration of known and unknown and hypothetical design principles with technological affordances to render plausible solutions to complex problems
• Rigorous and reflective inquiry to test learning environments and reveal new design principles
• Long-term engagement with continual refinement of protocols and questions
• Intensive collaboration between researchers and practitioners
• A commitment to theory construction and explanation while solving real-world problems (p. 103)

Reeves, et al., (2005) argue forcefully for this approach: “in our estimation, instructional technology researchers who sincerely wish to advance teaching and learning in higher education, should engage in design research” (p. 108).

I sincerely wish to advance teaching and learning in higher education. Therefore,  according to Reeves, et al., (2005), I must adopt a socially responsible  design paradigm. But is it right for me? From the readings, no, design research is not for me, for these reasons:

1. According to Reeves, et al., (2005), the normal research cycle takes from two to five years, and in some cases, design research is ongoing for even longer periods. That is simply too long a period for me to conduct research and to derive some value from the findings for my instructional design.
2. Design research requires the collaboration of diverse academic instructors and other staff. That is a major problem, too, in that more collaboration from diverse individuals takes more time and adds to the complexity of conducting this method of research.

From these and other readings of different research paradigms, I still view mixed methods as the correct approach for me, especially for my dissertation topic.

After months of reading, study, and contemplation, I have arrived at what I think will be an interesting and relevant topic for my dissertation. Hopefully, it will be original enough so as to not mirror too closely existing research. Now, I am ready to begin my literature review.

My research topic: I am interested in studying the influence of Web 2.0 technologies on Millennial students, those who were born from 1981 to 2001. Specifically, I want to study whether or not heavy use of Web 2.0 technologies adversely affects their interpersonal communication. Long credited as being the most tech-savvy generation, does this easy ability with Web 2.o technologies come at the expense of interpersonal communication skill and ability?

As an instructor in Towson’s Public Relations Track in the Mass Communication department, I work hard to prepare my students for career success. But to be successful, these students will need more than just craft skills. They must be effective at interpersonal communication. From the time they write cover letters with attached resumes seeking job interviews, to the interviews themselves, to on-the-job interaction, they will be judged by their interpersonal communication skill and ability.

I am interested in whether or not technologies like text messaging have had an effect on students’ ability to communicate coherently and proficiently face to face, one on one. Can Millennial students carry on effective two-way, verbal  conversations?

It is called Dyadic communication. It is a method of communication that only involves two people such as a telephone conversation, letters, a face-to-face job interview, etc. In Dyadic communication, the sender can immediately receive and evaluate feedback from the receiver. I want to study this and find answers that might have implications for the instructional design of my courses.