Towards a Seminar Paper

By now, you should have downloaded and skimmed the following documents:

• "Instructions and Rubrics for Seminar Papers" 

•  "Doing a Seminar Paper with Dr. Backer" and

• Sha'anan English Department - Maintaining Academic Integrity - document for students

As you move step by step along the seminar paper process, carefully read the specific sections of the "Doing a Seminar Paper with Dr. Backer" document about what you have to do. Also check if there are any specific requirements in the official rubrics. 

Please do not waste class time by asking questions that are answered in detail in these documents. As graduate students, you are expected to read and understand such instructions.  

The Topic of Your Seminar Paper

Hopefully, you have been thinking about a topic for your seminar paper (which must have something to do with technology and EFL) and you have checked out that topic with me via WhatsApp or email. You definitely do not want to waste your time on a topic that is unrealistic or unacceptable.

If you have not yet got my OK (via email or WhatsApp) for a topic, please do so asap. Asking me in class is not enough. I need a (digital) paper-trail for everyone's work.  Please send your topic (and all seminar paper related material) to me via email or WhatsApp. 

The Centrality of Your Research Question

Your research question is crucial for the entire seminar paper process!!

The research question points you in the direction you want to go.

The research question is the basis for the research methods you use and the items in your "research instrument" (to be discussed below).

The research question will guide you in presenting and analyzing the data your research instrument generates.

It will be helpful (but not necessary) to develop some hypotheses stemming from your research question. What do you expect the data to show in regard to the research question? What do you expect to conclude from these data? (It's quite OK if something else happens, in which case you will think about why your hypotheses were not correct. In fact, this leads to a deeper understanding of the topic.) Once again, developing hypotheses, based on the research question, is helpful, but not necessary.

Your Seminar Paper Proposal

1. You have to submit your seminar paper proposal by Hanukah vacation (25.12.2024)  Once again, the topic has to deal with technology and EFL.  Please send this proposal as a WORD doc attached to an email.

2. The proposal must have: 

   • a brief introduction, explaining your specific topic and why you are interested in it, 

   • your research question; 

   • a brief description about how you plan to deal with your research question (with a questionnaire, interviews, observations, etc.); and 

   • a short bibliography of potentially good sources.  

(Please see the document entitled: Doing a Seminar Paper with Dr. Backer.)  

Once again, the topic of your seminar paper has to be connected, directly or indirectly, with the nature and content of this course. (You can examine the menu of our class website and skim the various pages to start thinking about possible research topics.) You will develop and present the seminar paper as a traditional research project (although on a very small scale), including original data collection and analysis. 

• Please note: You will present new data, generated for your individual seminar paper. While you may have learned important concepts in other courses, you may not use data produced in other courses. In addition, while I encourage you to discuss your ideas with other students, your seminar paper must be the product of your work alone. 

A problem for some Sha'anan grad students is the weak, or non-existent, technological infrastructure in their schools. This means that examining a particular tool might not be possible. Alternatively, you can survey and report on the knowledge and attitudes of teachers and/or administrators about the concepts or technologies that we deal with during the course. 

IMPORTANT: 

1. You must first get approval for your seminar proposal before you start any other work (other than searching for sources and reading them). 

2. When you get approval for your proposal, the next step is to get approval of the questions for your questionnaire or interview. DO NOT use your questionnaire or interview questions without approval. This will avoid poorly designed questionnaires and embarrassing mistakes of grammar, diction, spelling, and the logical ordering of the questions. 

3. At the same time, you are encouraged to search for sources and to read them in preparation for your Literature Review section of the seminar paper. When you find a potentially good source, make sure you write down the following information (which the Reference List needs): author's family name and first initial; the title of the article or book; the year of publication; if it is an article from a journal, get the name of the journal, the volume number, the issue number (if there is one), and page numbers; if it is a book, get the publisher's name; if it's an online source, get the URL; if its a chapter in an edited book, get the name(s) of the editor(s), the name of the book, the name of the chapter, the page numbers of the chapter, and the publisher's name.   

Research Instruments

Research instruments are the tools and procedures you use to gather data to attempt to answer the research question. Research instruments can include questionnaires, interviews, observations, document gathering, etc. 

Please remember: If you plan to examine the value of using a particular technological tool or procedure, your research instruments will most probably not directly measure the actual improvement (or lack of improvement) in learning. You just don't have the time, a sufficiently large sample size, and the knowledge of statistical tools to even attempt this. You will probably be indirectly measuring the tools and procedures via self-reported responses of the participants (students, teachers, others). This is quite OK, but you have to understand this and address it as a "limitation of the study" in your Discussion section. In addition, such indirect analysis of small samples cannot lead to strong conclusions and assertions about the tools and procedures, so be careful with the language you use in the Discussion section and the Conclusions section.    

Save Yourself Time and Energy

Your seminar paper is a micro-research project. Although it has value of its own, one of its main functions is to teach you how to structure your Final Project. That Final Project will be much larger and will also have a "practical product." That means that you will be investing much less time and energy in your seminar paper in comparison to the Final Project.

Although you may want to use more than one research instrument in your Final Project, I advise you to use only one research instrument in the seminar paper. The easiest one is the questionnaire. 

Nevertheless, a good questionnaire is difficult to construct. The first consideration is the length. If the questionnaire is too long, the respondents will lose interest and perhaps even sabotage their answers out of boredom or frustration. In general, try to keep questionnaires to students at 10 items or less. For adults, keep questionnaires under 20 items. Given these length limitations, you have to formulate the best questions possible.

• Make sure each question is comprehensible and only asks for ONE data point. Questions that ask two or more questions at the same time are worthless.

• Make sure the possible responses do not overlap. For example, options "1-10, 10-20, and 20-30" overlap!

• Make sure that there are no gaps between the possible responses. For example, options "1-10 and 20-30 have a gap!

• Make sure that the possible responses cover all possibilities.  For example, options "1-10, 11-20, and 21-30" probably also need "less than 1" and "more than 30"!

• Make sure that each question (with the exception of biographical items) actually helps answer the research question!

In your questionnaire, you have to get the logic correct as well as the grammar, spelling, and diction. Therefore, do not use a questionnaire before you get my approval. You want to avoid embarrassing situation of sending out a faulty questionnaire. Not only will such a faulty questionnaire present you in a less-than-perfect light, it will lead to gathering questionable data. Poorly designed questionnaires bring back poor (and often unusable) data.

Two Routes for Your Seminar Paper

You will be able to choose to get help with one or more sections of your seminar paper, or you can choose to do all the work yourself and then submit it for grading. Here are the two options: 

Option 1: Getting Help

I will give you iterative feedback (i.e., as much as you need or want) on the following sections:

The Literature Review**

The Methods Section

The Findings

The Discussion**

The Conclusions**

The Introduction **  (Yes, this comes towards the end.)

The Abstract** (Yes, this comes at the very end - but before the Table of Contents and the Title Page.)

You must run every section (that you submit for help) through the free version of Grammarly (or any other major grammar and spelling checker.) Use these tools to actually improve your work.  I do not want to waste time on correcting grammar and spelling.

** Following the policy of the Sha'anan English M.Ed. staff, you must run the sections marked with double asterisks (that you submit for help) through three of the following A.I. detectors:

1. Scribbr

https://www.scribbr.com/ai-detector/

2. Quillbot

https://quillbot.com/ai-content-detector

3. Zerogpt

https://www.zerogpt.com/

4. Gptzero

https://gptzero.me/

 The first time you submit a section for help, you must fill out the following form and submit it along with the text:

Option 2: Not Getting Help

You can choose to do all the work, individually, and then submit it for a grade. 

You must run the entire text through the free version of Grammarly (or any other major grammar and spelling checker.) Use these tools to actually improve your work.  

For BOTH Opiton 1 and Option 2:

Following the policy of the Sha'anan English M.Ed. staff, you must run your entire text through three of the A.I. detectors, listed in option 1, above. Fill out the form (above) and submit it with your final text. 

More to Come......

At this point, let's concentrate on the seminar paper proposal and the questionnaire. We will deal with the other steps along the seminar-paper process soon enough.  Nevertheless, if your curiosity is overwhelming you, read ahead in the two basic documents:

• "Instructions and Rubrics for Seminar Papers" and

•  "Doing a Seminar Paper with Dr. Backer." 

Homework:

You should spend your time working on the seminar paper proposal. If you have gotten that approved, then work on the questionnaire!

There is no work that has to be submitted to MOODLE this week.