Special Research I

　Session 2: (4) How to Publish Research Articles in Professional Journals (Chapter 4)

[How to read a paper in an Academic Journal]

 To begin with, let us read a paper published in an academic journal. Here, it is introduced how your imaginary senior, Bob, reviewed a paper by Matsuda et al. (2005) that he took up as the basis of his study plan. Reading a paper is not just reading it haphazardly. This section is going to introduce a way of reading a paper by mainly grasping the title and the summary, and picking up its contents related to your research and what you would like to know from the main body of the paper.

STEP1: Look for a paper you would like to read

 Look at the title, summary, and keywords in order to decide if you really want to read the paper. You can look through lists of papers in academic journals and search results of search engines (e.g. NII Scholarly and Academic Information Portal (GeNii) introduced in the Session 2). Points to see are, title, summary, and keywords. Select one paper that you are interested in (one you think looks better than the others). When you find a paper you are interested in, you will find other papers, one after another, in the list of references of the first paper. It is important to start somewhere.

STEP 2: Write down (record) bibliographical information of the paper you have selected

 In order to cite (or make reference to) the information from the paper you have selected as a reference for your research paper, you are required to record the reference information: when and who wrote it, and where it was published. The style of this bibliographical information is different from every academic association, but the most frequently used is American Psychology Association (APA) style. Try getting used to the styles, but the necessary information is always the same.

[Style prescribed by the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education]
Matsuda, T., Honna, N., and Kato, H.: “Development of e-Mentoring Guideline and its Evaluation”, Japan Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 29, No 3, pp.239-250 (2005).

[Style prescribed by the Japan Society for Educational Technology]
Matsuda, T., Honna, N., and Kato, H. (2005) Development of e-Mentoring Guideline and its Evaluation, Japan Journal of Educational Technology, 29 (3): 239-250

STEP 3: Guess the contents by reading the title (Decide the strategy for reading)

 The title of this paper is “Development of e-Mentoring Guideline and its Evaluation.” You can imagine (by the words “development of”) that this is a paper that created a guideline for “e-Mentoring” (i.e., mentoring in e-Learning) in some way, and evaluated the guideline using a certain method. For Bob, who is interested in “analysis and proposal of design guidelines concerning e-Learning materials for adults,” the study that mentions “e-Learning” and “development of a guideline and its evaluation” in its title seems to have some relations to his study. On the other hand, “mentoring” is not a “designing material,” so this paper does not exactly the same as his plan (which is good, otherwise what he wanted to do has already been done by somebody, so he needs to change his topic). It is satisfactory.

 According to Bob's research interests, it is not really necessary to know about “mentoring.” In stead, Bob should know how their mentoring guideline is different from his own guideline. He would also like to know what a “guideline” is like (although it is about somewhat different kind of guideline), and how such a guideline was made and evaluated (what steps can be applied for his guideline development). In this way, you should read the paper according to your interests: Some other people read this article to know more about what the e-mentoring is all about, but not interested how to create own guideline. For Bob, the opposite is what he would value this article. So depending on your research interest, the same article would be read differently.

STEP 4: Read the summary and keywords (making a framework to fill in necessary information).

 The summary and keywords of the paper are as below. Reading sentences from the summary one by one, imagine what is written about in the body of the paper and whether or not the paper is worth reading (when you think it is not worth your time reading this paper, then you would look for another paper).

[Summary]
 The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a mentoring guideline for an e-Learning course in higher education, focusing on mentoring among learning support activities. A guideline that describes organized mentoring activities in line with the current conditions of the course was developed. The developed guideline was utilized by mentors of a formal and credit-granted e-Learning course, and its effectiveness was assessed. The results showed that the reaction time from mentors became shorter and the students' impression of mentors improved in the course that was provided with the learning support based on the developed mentoring guideline compared to the course before adopting the guideline.

[Keywords]
 Mentoring, Mentoring guideline, Dropout triggering event, E-learning professional, Appropriate level of mentoring activities

 Take notes of what you know about the keywords and your interests. Add what you get to know from reading the body of the paper.

STEP 5: Collect necessary information from the body of the paper

 Now it is time to collect necessary information from the body of the paper. It is not necessary to read all parts of the paper. First, look at tables and figures. A paper provides tables and figures because it intends to show important information. Next, look at headings. Headings show what is written where. According to your interests and questions made in STEP 4 and the earlier steps, start collecting information. In the beginning, you may have a difficult time looking up terms you do not know in the dictionary. You may feel yourself compelled to look up what you cannot understand because you cannot get it out of your mind. It may be a great opportunity for you to learn something new. On the other hand, there is an optimistic way of reading papers based on the notion that it is enough if you understand what you wanted to know. You will decide which strategy to adopt when you read a paper, depending on the degree of urgency (amount of time you have) and your level of interest.

 Below, we will look at what kind of information Bob was able to get concerning the subject he was interested in. You can read the article if you are actually interested in it, although it is written in Japanese. If you are not so interested in it, remember the way to take notes, and take your time to search for articles you are interested in.

Comments on Matsuda's study (from interests of Bob Suzuki)

Higher education vs. business education in corporation: Is there any difference?

 The article mentions Japanese regulation concerning university establishment standards. Characteristics of universities are described mainly in relation to mentoring. → Further information search required.

Mentoring vs. guidelines for material design: Is there any difference?

 Characteristics of mentoring are: i) difficult to define and verify its effects; ii) unable to distinguish its effects from the effects by other activities; iii) difficult to work out an appropriate value; iv) depends on soft-skills such as interpersonal skills. Accordingly, the study focused on “making sure that mentoring is smoothly carried out according to the guidelines, in other words, that the mentoring guidelines are observed, not strictly finding out the effects on learning and evaluating them (p.241-242).” → need to check if this also applies to material design guidelines.

What is a guideline like?

 A guideline is a set of “structured general rules” (2.1.2). As “a guideline itself is not an evaluation indicator,” it is not able to function as an evaluation criterion to decide its effectiveness. “There are various styles of guidelines: one takes a form of a comprehensive and detailed implementation plan, another is like a collection of simple notes, and another is similar to the unstated and tacit rule (p.240).” “It is thought that stating a guideline in written form is possible.”
→This research seems to develop a collection of notes into a description that is clarified to some degree. There is no list of items of the guideline shown in the paper: may be a secret? The body of the article offers one example for each of the nine activity categories (p.245).
(For example: designation of course range: When learners are deviating from the course coverage, make them realized s/he is off the range of coverage.)

What do we call learning support activities that are not mentoring activities? (digression )

 Roles of mentors, tutors, instructors and others are described. “Mentoring, moderating, etc.” is mentioned.

Development procedure of a guideline in line with the current conditions of the course → seems to be useful
Are there “levels” in appropriateness? Are there levels in each item of the guideline?

 The development procedure of the guideline is shown in Figure 2 on p.242.
 Mentoring activities are categorized into a total of nine types: six types of academic supports (designation of course range, explanation of contents, evaluation, progress monitoring, development of learning skills, and exploration) and three types of non-academic supports (information services, suggestion/recommendation, and exploration).
 A framework to assess appropriateness in terms of four dimensions is proposed: contents (accuracy and comprehension), reaction time (response within 12 hours, solution given within 24 hours), good relationship (sincerity, positive attitude), and media (response using the same media). Give priority to the dimension of contents over reaction time.

Effectiveness of the guideline was assessed. → How the effectiveness was assessed will be useful (my study will not cover this stage?).
Question: what was compared to “the course that was provided with the learning support based on the developed mentoring guideline”? Is it the same course as in the past, or a different course (with the same learners) that was not provided with the learning support based on the guideline?

 Prevent unnecessary dropouts (except for unavoidable dropouts) and improve learning efficiency – these are prescribed as the objectives of the mentoring activities.
 Cutting the number of dropouts and improving learning efficiency = conditions partly improved by two year comparison
 State of mentoring: reaction time, media used, etc. ← LMS records + postmortem open-ended questionnaire
 Evaluation from mentors: easier to give mentoring, etc. ← by semi-structured interview given to three persons
 Evaluation from learners: ← by questionnaire survey: significant difference after two years was reported

Question: Was the guideline directly used for the formal and credit-granted course? Was there a formative evaluation?

 It seems so. The guideline itself seemed to have developed, and outcomes were compared with those of two years ago. In a sense it is still in a developing stage.

Is a dropout triggering event referred to as an event leading to dropout?

 It seems so. Using acronym DTE, earlier studies of UK Open University are introduced.

Is the e-Learning professional a qualification system considered by the Japan e-Learning Consortium (eLC), or a different one?

 It does not seem so. This study says that a mentor development program is going to be developed based on the study outcomes.

STEP 6: List useful points (and questions) for the implementation of your study

 Bob has collected information from the paper and listed the points below that will be useful for formulating his own research plan. If you look up your questions using different sources, do not forget to take notes of their reference information.

 While all of this was going on, a satisfactory amount of information may have been collected in order to write the background and the current progress related to the theme in the academic circle in your thesis for the master's degree. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For the best results, do not start engaging in too many things when you write a thesis.