Examinando por Autor "Charbonneau-Gowdy, P."

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  • Miniatura
    Ítem
    Insights for community outreach building to promote lifelong learning with higher education alumni in Chile
    (Laureate Education, 2020) Charbonneau-Gowdy, P.; Magana, H.
    Despite conclusive evidence from high performing higher education (HE) institutions worldwide demonstrating the benefits of strong alumni relations, institutions in many evolving countries often neglect their graduates. And this, despite rapid advances in technology that can support ongoing relations. The objective of our year-long project was to address this neglect. We (re)connected with 220 English pedagogy alumni through a digital newsletter. The newsletter provided a forum for building community and mediating professional development among graduates and current faculty. Our qualitative mini case study focused on uncovering the emotions, perspectives and needs of former students through the lens of sociocultural and identity theory using a Likert scale questionnaire, field notes and writing-based interviews to collect data. Positive gains from this initiative were evidenced in clear signs of alumni’s increased recognition of their agency in mediating empowered professional identities through continuous learning. This recognition accompanied a trajectory of their investment in their professional development, characterized by a sense of affinity, then engagement with and support of the institution and community building. We believe these findings speak volumes of the potential of such outreach for all stakeholders in education, including the society at large.
  • Miniatura
    Ítem
    Moving outside the box: Researching e-learning in disruptive times
    (Academic Publishing Ltd, 2017-04) Charbonneau-Gowdy, P.
    The rise of technology’s influence in a cross-section of fields within formal education, not to mention in the broader social world, has given rise to new forms in the way we view learning, i.e. what constitutes valid knowledge and how we arrive at that knowledge. Some scholars have claimed that technology is but a tool to support the meaning-making that lies at the root of knowledge production while others argue that technology is increasingly and inextricably intertwined not just with knowledge construction but with changes to knowledge makers themselves. Regardless which side one stands in this growing debate, it is difficult to deny that the processes we use to research learning supported by technology in order to understand these growing intricacies, have profound implications. In this paper, my aim is to argue and defend a call in the research on ICT for a critical reflective approach to researching technology use. Using examples from qualitative research in e-learning I have conducted on three continents over 15 years, and in diverse educational contexts, I seek to unravel the means and justification for research approaches that can lead to closing the gap between research and practice. These studies combined with those from a cross-disciplinary array of fields support the promotion of a research paradigm that examines the socio-cultural contexts of learning with ICT, at a time that coincides with technology becoming a social networking facilitator. Beyond the examples and justification of the merits and power of qualitative research to uncover the stories that matter in these socially embodied e-learning contexts, I discuss the methodologically and ethically charged decisions using emerging affordances of technology for analyzing and representing results, including visual ethnography. The implications both for the consumers and producers of research of moving outside the box of established research practices are yet unfathomable but exciting