Portfolios, Dissertations, Defenses Oh My!

At present, I have not defended my portfolio. I plan to schedule it for the end of April or early May. I have had my website built since my first semester and have spent the last six to eight months adjusting the layout, adding the necessary components, and finetuning coursework to be publishable. I have benefited from guidance from peers who have completed their portfolio defenses and the guidance of my committee, especially my chair. The primary components I need to complete are my reflection and adding my publishable documents to my website. 

My dissertation plan is to use the Technology Proficiency Survey for Educators (TPSE) from the Institute for the Integration of Technology into Teaching and Learning (ITTL). This survey will be administered to students in the digital tools 8-week course taught by LTEC instructors. The students in this course are education majors. I was also given the idea to administer the survey to another digital tools course provided by another university. If I can accomplish this, I will ideally have this data catch by the conclusion of the Fall 2024 semester. In addition to the data catch, I also want to host a focus group with in-service educators who have at least 1 year of teaching experience. For convenience purposes, the focus group will be held via Zoom. This also gives me the added component of a transcript and recording to refer back to during analysis. The purpose of this focus group is to gather information about what technology tools are being used in the classroom currently, how prepared they feel they were for a technology-rich instruction environment, and what they wish they would have learned while in their pre-service program. My study will be a multi-method study incorporating the quantitative analysis of the survey and the qualitative analysis of the focus group. Ideally, I will host the focus group during the Fall 2024 semester. If I can accomplish this, I will have all of my raw data gathered for analysis by December 2024 and can spend the early part of Spring 2025 completing the analysis, writing, and defending the dissertation. My expected graduation date is May 2025 and I intend to hold to that date.