Sorry for neglecting the blog - life got complicated for me! I got home from visiting my daughter and new grandson and we then have had company. They had never been to Montana, where I live, before so we had to do the tourist thing.
In the lab in week 10 we introduced the idea of having students pick an article related to our study and aging. While the articles were very good, we had some problems with getting students to give sufficient detail in their posts. So in week 11 we required that they follow the same structure as our earlier article report form. This seems to be working much better! This week's discussions have been interesting, because I have been trying to get the students to think beyond the article they are reviewing and to speculate on related issues. For example, one students discussed an article set in Japan, we had her speculate on how she thought things would be the same or different in the US. It is important for students to get out of the mindset that everything is done with a particular article. Science is based upon building on previous research, and students need to begin to think about how the results might change by altering different variables.
So far we have 13 completed interviews that look great! Nine have been sent to the transcriptionist so far. We had 2 students who didn't quite follow the directions and will have to redo the interviews. Hard for me to waste participants, but that is the way of research. The quarter is wrapping up, next week is the final week of the quarter and our last conference call of the quarter. We have decided that students will have to have all 4 of their interviews completed by the beginning of the third week of the next quarter so we can have them begin to analyze data. It will be exciting to see how things come out!
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