Introduction
Unfortunately, student participation in the final workshop was zero due to the following reasons:
• Stress and tiredness, as the workshop was scheduled at the end of the term, close to submission and presentation deadlines.
• Optional status: Because I had to find an extra slot in the schedule, my course leader explicitly stated that the workshop needed to be optional, which jeopardized attendance.
• Greater interest in hard skills development to meet deadlines.
• Timing conflict, as the workshop was scheduled immediately before another mandatory class. the workshop was scheduled immediately before another mandatory class.
This affected my data gathering, as I had intended to collect more qualitative data from students through an extensive questionnaire and by using observation and field notes to capture their behaviour and thought processes during activities.
Therefore, I decided to analyse students’ blogs, all Padlet documentation, PDF/PPT presentations, and observations from class interactions to gather more information and check progress against my goals. I consider this as “last-minute holistic approach” to use Observation as the only research methods used for this ARP.
Although the workshop was cancelled, analysing existing artifacts and classroom observations provided authentic evidence to address my research questions on soft skills development, engagement, and metacognitive practices.
Despite the cancelled workshop, triangulating data from blogs, Padlet, presentations, and classroom observations provided a reliable basis to address all three research questions.
All data analysed were part of normal coursework and anonymised for reporting.
Goals
The goal is still the same: answering the main questions relevant to cycles 3 and 4 of my Action Research Project here.
I had to adapt to the unexpeted failure of the data gathering process reserved to the missing workshop and elaborate a new method of analysing any data available by students related to soft skills development.
The first question are easy to answer quantitatively and qualitatively as there are concrete data gathered through blogs, Padlet and oral/written final presentations. However, the 2nd and 3rd question must rely on my own data analysis and interpretations due to lack of students’ reflections (data that I was intending to extract from the “optional” final Workshop through observation, field note and questionnaires and unfortunately was cancelled due to zero attendance).
Data Collection, Analysis and Interpretation
I have uploaded below the file with all the data gathered and organized. I was able to gather not only qualitative but also quantitative data.