Author: Peace & Pout-Live & Shout

Week 6 – Reflection #crit101

Originally published here.

I have enjoyed the course of developing my interdependent skills, because firstly it was unlike anything I have taken part in before. I have learnt that the world of online courses is one that I should explore further, and that the badges are a good acknowledgement of your achievements. I found my first experience of a online course good and I am therefore keen to try others. 

I believe my progress as an independent learner has progress some what, because I was encouraged to go away and conduct research and blog posts by my own with self motivation. I think this was a good achievement because only a number of the participants managed to complete the course this far. 

As for my interdependence, especially working with those that I don’t know, has improved greatly. Due to the weekly time constraints I was encouraged to take control and allocate positions within the group. This skill is not something I perhaps would have previously always done in the past. I have definitely learnt that greater efficiency within a project is division of labour and working online at the same time.

Clearly I have gained the new skills taught in each of the weeks themes, which are already helping me with school work, such as evaluations. But I have also acquired greater leadership skills within a group and time management skills. These will be especially important to me in higher education. 

Thank you very much James Michie for creating #crit101, I definitely found it beneficial! 

Week Five – synthesis & evaluation reflection

Originally published here.

This weeks project was very different to anything I have done before for a project. It was a fun project to research and learn about, and once again this week I found that I was learning new technological skills. I learnt how to create a voiced video that films my screen, which will be a very useful skill for other presentations I will make later on in life.

As for the collaboration with the other participants, we discussed our ideas effectively, and together split the work evenly between us. Myself and Lou created our videos and they were pieced together, unfortunately Sana has been very busy, and we have not yet been able to include hers.

Furthermore, this weeks video collaboration helped strengthen my interdependent learning skills, as collaborating with others I have never met before, encouraged me to voice my opinions and engage in research to contribute to the project.

Below is the link to our video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ttus5b2ystz53ky/Chicken%20or%20Egg.mp4

Week 4 Reflection – Reading & Analysis

Originally published here.

This weeks assignment helped teach me not to always take for granted what is just written infront of you. Instead it is very important to always ask questions and consider the reliability of a source. Furthermore, this weeks assignment prompted me to criticise Wikipedia, and not just view it as a definite source of fact. I learnt about how it can be so very easily edited, and therefore its articles can become significantly subjective. 

As for the process of this weeks assignment, once again it was collaborative, however this time just in pairs. This collaborative work was much more efficient and successful than previous weeks. Towards the start of the week, I contacted Sana and we arranged a time to work and the google doc, as we both believed working online together at the same time would be a much easier process. Rather than constantly stopping and starting the work. We shared the work fairly and frequently discussed the contributions we would make. Therefore I think be worked together well.

Overall so far on the course, not only is it teaching me how to improve skills important for later life self-lead work, but also importantly, time management skills. It is key to organise yourself effectively in order to be able to complete all parts of the assignments set. 

Our analysis of the article:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jZxnBOopcQlczjDhJImejR-Q2Zt0rnV899y1-FoBB-A/edit

Week Three: Reflection

Originally published here.

I thought that this weeks follow up project was very important, even more so than last weeks project. I think this because we learnt a very crucial technique, which is to be able to critique your own work.

One must be honest and realistic when evaluating research, because when publishing findings, you will want them to be able to be generalised to various other settings and or populations. This can only happen if there is high reliability and validity. Therefore necessary skills to know how to test. 

Overall, on the #crit101 course so far, I feel I have been stretched to build upon elementary skills and knowledge I have of independent learning, collaborative work and the measures of validity and reliability, and develop them in to scientific techniques and skills that I will be able to apply in real life.

I also believe the course is very helpful to my study of psychology, because the topics we are discussing in #crit101 are helping me to understand psychological studies in more depth, by me being able to evaluate, discuss and collaborate with others better. 

Week three: Critique of the #egg research project

Originally published here.

What is validity? Firstly, there are two types of validity we must consider when investigating how valid the results of a study are. There is internal and external validity. Also, what is reliability? Are our results reliable and valid?

According to Graham R. Gibbs (University of Huddersfield), he defines that internal validity is when the evidence found reflects the reality under investigation. As for external validity, he defines it as when the results have relevance beyond the situation being investigated. This can also be know as generalisability. Furthermore he describes reliability, it’s defined as when an investigation is repeated by different researchers using the same methods and the same results are obtained.

We were told to investigate the best way to cook an egg, however seen as ‘best’ could be interpreted in various ways, as a group, we decided to investigate what would be the tastiest method. Therefore seen as we only investigated one line of inquiry around the word ‘best’ I think that the internal validity of our results is quite low, because we didn’t investigate the question as a whole so it doesn’t represent the reality under investigation. 

As for external validity, I believe the generalisability is very limited for our results. The survey we conducted via twitter had 18 responses, therefore only a small sample, so we can’t generalise the results to the rest of the population. 

Lastly I need to consider how reliable the actual findings of the investigation are. We did use triangulation, therefore our findings are based on more than one source. However they didn’t all correlate. Smith, Delia (2013) How to fry an egg and Kerrison, Melissa (2013) What’s the best way to cook an egg? [survey] did correlate, but Berry, Mary p84-86, had different results. Therefore our reliability is limited as not all of our sources agreed. In addition, our results have not be tested by any other groups, also reducing their reliability. 

It is always very important to therefore plan an investigation first, and try to consider techniques to improve reliability and validity before you begin the research process.