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As GradBloggers, we have the opportunity to use our websites for more than just online musing or freelance opportunities. Some, like Heather Woods from SEL-in-Action, use a website to support their academic research.
Using your website as a tool for research
Heather is currently a PhD student in education, underteaching and learning at the University of Ottawa. Her website is a tool to broadcast the results of the research as well as a tool for recruiting participants for research. Heather also shares her processes via the website, which demonstrates research transparency, too.
SEL stands for Social and Emotional Learning. It focuses and encompasses five core competencies:
- Self-awareness – how do we think about ourselves? How do we identify our emotions? What are our values? What are we good at?
- Self-management – managing emotions, coping with stress, setting goals, organization skills. How do we manage ourselves in the world?
- Social awareness – being able to take the perspective of others, appreciation and respect for diversity, understand the norms of cultures around us, and empathy or being able to relate to other people.
- Relationship skills – how do we communicate and build healthy relationships?
- Responsible decision making – critical thinking skills, analyzing and reflecting. How are we reflecting on our own behaviours as well as the behaviour of others?
Particularly, SEL and Heather’s research is targeted at the Kindergarten to Grade 12 education system. But more and more research is coming out and looking at these competencies in higher ed. And then, also, within organizations, where it’s often related to emotional intelligence.
Heather did her undergrad in psychology at Carleton University in Ontario. She was working with Dr. Robert Copeland, looking at kind of shy behavior and aggressive behaviors, and how are teachers or Early Childhood Educators were responding,
That research also informed Heather’s master’s in Education, which she completed at Brock University, as well as her PhD work.
“I was looking at, how confident are teachers to address and prevent bullying behaviors? Aggression, but more targeted aggression… And then, just kind of thinking through it, in bullying prevention, there’s so much underlying, and most of the programs themselves rely on social and emotional competencies and fostering those within the children. So, for my PhD, here at the University of Ottawa, I’ve kind of taken that broader lens and zoomed out, almost, to now look at, okay, what does research, policy, and practice say about social and emotional learning? How are they conceptualizing it? How are they enacting?”
Heather’s website, SEL-in-Action.com supports her research efforts in education and transparency.
Throughout the research process, Heather provides a resource that is educational in terms of how research is conducted. She is cognizant that teachers may not always understand the process that they go through in research. Sharing the research process and results on the website provides transparency to both graduate students, research students, and also, the research population. They can see everything as it’s happening, which kind of breaks down those walls of the ivory tower of being kind of separate.
“A lot of times, we go in and conduct research, and then, our participants don’t know what happened to their stories that they’ve shared with us.”
Each time Heather introduces a new phase or analysis method, she breaks it down in a blog post on her website. This allows her audience to see the rationale for why she chose that particular method.
Website efficacy is integral to successful research communication.
In order to attract an audience of both researchers and participants, Heather says, “You want your website to look whole.” This means ensuring your work and research are represented on the home page. This may mean refreshing the site content and look for each research project.
Heather looks at the site as a landing page with all the vital details that answer the audiences questions, such as:
- What is the research method – interview, focus group or other?
- What are the steps or tasks that method requires from participants and researchers?
- Why are you doing the research?
- What do you want to learn about?
- Who can participate?
The website becomes the one spot where respondents can get all the information that they need, should they choose to participate in the research project and contribute to the learning.
Heather’s experience has shown her that her website has built a rapport with her audience. She often has people commenting on her blog posts, “That’s also part of your research, because people can comment right there on whether or not your ideas are outlandish. It’s almost like this built-in peer review system that’s ongoing and open, in terms of open research.”
In turn, by using the website as a tool, Heather has found she’s engaging in her own social and emotional competencies through the research.
“I’m creating space for communication. I’m building those relationships. And reflecting, and analyzing, and providing an opportunity for my readers and my audience to be able to do the same and engage with me in a constructive conversation about what I’m finding, what I’m doing.”
Successful communication is based on telling a story and tailoring that story to the research population or those that you want to engage with.
Heather suggests you provide some background on your research but not to be too prescriptive as you would in your research proposal for your dissertation. She says it’s okay to be flexible on how you’re defining things and how you’re thinking about things for your audience.
This advice toward using plain language and avoiding jargon has been reinforced by her own grandfather.
“He’s always like, ‘Oh, I read all your posts. I don’t always get it, though.’ So, that tells me I need to maybe change how I’m speaking about things to make sure that my 90 year old grandfather can understand what I’m talking about.”
Heather recommends asking people outside of your research field to proofread your website communications for you, to make sure that it’s understandable. Her posts are also quite short and simple, between 450 – 800 words.
Driving traffic to your website.
It’s one thing to share quality, consumable content to your site, another to ensure your audience is actually reading it. Heather advocates doing the research to determine where your audience is, then meeting them there. For her, it’s Twitter.
She’s found Twitter to be a go-to place; where teachers and educators go for resources. The channel has also been an effective platform for recruitment and building connections. The network she’s built has helped amplify her posts, too, providing an opportunity to sample and share her recruitment materials out.
Heather says she posts regularly and ensures that she’s not always posting recruitment material. She posts about recruitment about once a week, and at least once a week on social and emotional learning. She also shares her blog post updates as well as current media about social and emotional learning from other sources.
“I’m building that community. But not overwhelming my audience with recruitment posts.”
Heather also recommends working with ethics and your supervisor or a research team to review your research toward creating an engaging document to read. She points out you do need to include using a website in your ethics proposal when you’re conducting research, particularly if you’re going to use the data and comments that people share on your website. She has a disclaimer on her blog posts suggesting research subjects might want to use a pseudonym and assuring the removal of any identifying information.
Websites have changed research, breaking down walls and providing a space for the experts to be able to tell their stories and experiences in a more open way.
To learn more about Heather and how she communicates her research, join her on Twitter @ha_woods, find SEL-in-Action on Facebook, or visit her website sel-in-action.com. Or share your question with us at gradblogger.com/ask to be featured on a future GradBlogger podcast episode.
Do you share your research on your GradBlog? Has it helped you create and connect more openly? Share your experiences in the comments below.
