Pen and link: Traditional and electronic journaling
Brandi Leonard, a doctoral student of mine and Assistant Professor at Dyersburg State Community College, just finished up her research project about student perceptions of traditional and electronic journaling. It’s a qualitative study that used interviews and artifact analysis to consider how students value each time of journaling. What we didn’t try to do was make one better than the other. The abstract is below and you can download the report of research, too, if you like.
Abstract
This study examined student perceptions of two different journaling formats: electronic journaling and traditional journaling. The study, which took place at one of two satellite locations affiliated with a main campus community college, included a series of qualitative interviews spanning five weeks with six participants. In addition, this study used a general qualitative analysis process by conducting two rounds of open coding. Likewise, journal excerpts were collected and analyzed to establish further connection between the participants’ responses and the journaling the participants completed for both types of journaling. As a result of this qualitative study, four themes emerge as relative to the review literature: (1) understanding and knowing; (2) confidence; (3) convenience; (4) recollection. Finally, two areas of discussion emerged regarding the results, which were the results as relevant to the literature and the results as relevant to the retention of adult learners in the community college classroom.
