 So, good morning to all of you and welcome to this next session on ISTE workshop on research methods and educational technology. Before we proceed, let us just do a quick status check. This is what we have 6357 participants who registered, but only some 4900 who submitted the first assignment. That 4900 has now come down to 2054 as this number of submissions for the current assignment which is the idea proposal submission. And subsequently we expect that many of you will continue to be there in the workshop and just get a quick feel of what are the exit points. The key exit point is submission of the study planning submission assignment which is one week from today about a week from today and that is the point where certification is possible and it is important to remember that not doing these intermediate assignments and directly submitting something for the study planning assignment is not good enough to earn a certificate. Okay, so with that let us move on to quickly recap what have we done so far. So, this workshop as we saw in the first session is about ET research and the workshop is about how you solve some teaching learning problem in your class. So, that is what the idea proposal and idea planning templates that you have been working with are. Okay, so quickly to recap what is educational technology, there are two aspects. One is the technology for education and the other is the technology of education and right now we are focusing more on the technology of education rather than building new technologies for education. And this workshop is a journey from being an ET practitioner who teaches students and facilitates their learning to becoming an ET researcher who conducts systematic studies to get data about whether the ideas are working and what route are we taking, recall that we said that there are no fast lanes or shortcuts, we cannot simply listen to lectures, we have to do the activities and finally we have to challenge ourselves to go beyond the obvious ideas. So, some of you may recall our mentioning the theories that are underlying this workshop because now you also have to start thinking in terms of the theories that are underlying your own work. So, the theories that are underlying are one is spiral curriculum which basically means that we will be revisiting the same idea in greater and greater depth throughout the workshop as we proceed along with the workshop. So, as a pre-workshop submission you submitted beginning of an idea as your idea proposal submission you have worked it out in more detail as your study planning template you are going to work it out in further detail and that same idea is going to go ahead and become your full-fledged paper. So, that is the spiral curriculum and the other one is active learning which is basically saying that we have to do the activities and that is when you can get the actual benefit. So, coming to our journey at a glance this slide may not be visible to most of you. Nevertheless we have thought it would be a good idea to just put it so that you can get to see all the stuff in one go. So, it will be posted on Moodle and each of these rectangular boxes are the items that you are creating and these ovals are the items that we are doing in the workshop or on Moodle. So, Feb 2nd workshop these are the guidelines that were given to you these are the in workshop activities that you did and these are the Moodle resources that were posted and as a result of which on Feb 2nd the main activity that you did was evaluating your own assignment for strong paper features. Similarly, today you will be starting to fill out the study planning template proposal of your idea and again there will be guidelines and in workshop activities and Moodle resources which are posted to help you with the same. So, this is a slightly more detailed summary of what happened on Feb 2nd. Once again I am not going to read this out it is just for reference for you later on when you go back and look at what did you learn in this workshop and all that. So, we did talk about what is a research paper how to evaluate a research paper for strength and weaknesses and we did talk about how to evaluate your own idea. So, workshop slides were posted on Moodle and the videos about reading research papers and doing literature survey was also posted on Moodle. Similarly, there is a slide for what we are expecting to do today. Once again you do not need to read this this is there mostly for information for ease of recall later on beyond the workshop ok. So, coming to stuff that you need to pay attention to. So, the key thing is what are referees looking for. So, we saw that referees are looking for these 4 or 5 items novelty positioning soundness evidence and so on. So, we looked at novelty and positioning in detail in the first session on Feb 2nd and there have been subsequent queries on this on Moodle also what is novelty, how do I do positioning, how do I find out if there is prior work and all that. So, we will take that up very briefly today before proceeding. So, what exactly is meant by novelty? So, if you look into the dictionary the definition is the quality of being new, unique, original, innovative or unusual. So, your paper or your idea has to qualify for one of these adjectives ok. So, what has to be novel or what has to be new or what has to be unique about what you are doing. So, there are 3 options that you can follow one is either your problem has to be new in which case you are asking an entirely new research question. So, one example of this could be that there is some new technology which has been invented and you are the first to carry out a study on that on its effectiveness use in the classroom ok. So, some of the cutting edge research work falls in this category. The other next category is the novelty in your solution. So, in this case the problem may be known, but your solution strategy is novel. So, you are solving the problem in a different way from the prior work and in the third case your domain could be new. So, both the problem and the solution are known and have been tried in some other domains and you are adapting that solution to your own context. For example, good example of this is the technique called peer discussion which we are using in this workshop. So, it was invented in a different domain in physics education research and we have been adapting it in various other disciplines have been adapting that same idea and trying to see how effective is that idea in their domain. So, the key point to remember here is that this is the degree of strength to weakness of your novelty. So, it is strongest if you are able to find a novel problem and it is weak if your novelty is in the fact that ok nobody has done it for this particular topic and I am going to do it for that topic ok. So, this actually leads to one of your Moodle queries which is can a non-innovative strategy be developed into a strong research paper. So, the answer to that is yes, but there is a big provided there and it is provided your idea is positioned well ok. So, that leads us to this question of what exactly is meant by positioning. So, now if you look at the dictionary meaning of positioning it states that it is a situation in relation with respect to others. So, how do you stand with respect to others? So, there are two things that you want to keep in mind when you do positioning you have to do both of these. One is you have to show analysis of related prior work to bring out the gaps. So, you have to find papers that have addressed a problem similar to yours, you have to find papers that have a solution similar to yours. And you have to show that there is a gap which these papers have not yet addressed and also show that your solution addresses any some of these gaps ok. So, once again the point to remember here is as the novelty of your problem or your solution decreases the accuracy of your positioning must increase ok. So, if you do not have high degree of novelty there and you do not have accurate positioning then the chances of getting accepted is very low ok. So, how do we ensure accuracy of positioning, how to do accuracy of positioning? So, that brings us to this recall from what we saw in the previous session you want to be able to explain the relation to other work clearly ok. So, these were the various categories and these were the examples that we saw of what is awful positioning to what is good positioning to what is desirable positioning ok. So, we should aim to fall in either the good at least the good if not the better category of positioning our work ok. So, we should be able to compare with existing prior work and to be able to say what is it slightly different that we are doing and how much improvement we are getting in our results what is it that that work is not able to do that our work can do and all those comparisons have to be explained in the positioning part of your work ok. So, let us come back to a one line summary of what is a referees job. So, as I mentioned in the previous session the referees job is not to find reasons to accept your paper or to say that you have done a great job or pat you on the back the referees job is to find reasons to reject your paper. So, not doing all the parts required for a paper that is novelty positioning soundness and evidence means that it is wasted time and effort for both of you both you and the referee mean you may have done three out of these which would have taken up 75 percent of your time not doing the additional 20 percent is going to prove expensive both to you and to the referee ok. The second thing to remember is that this order is important. So, even if your work is sound it can get rejected if it is not positioned properly ok. So, this is a very common pitfall that most beginners fall into especially at PhDs to stage we feel that we have done a lot of work have done this experiment we have ran there collected that data and we have spent an entire night analyzing the data and all of that and we get completely carried away and grossed in what work we are doing. So, the work may turn out to be very sound, but it may be work that others have done before it may you may finally find a known result. So, it could get rejected if you are not positioned the work properly. So, here is a picture to help you remember this. So, what is the referees job papers are submitted in this funnel set of conical filters and the referees job is to first see whether it passes the filter of novelty in the problem or in the solution ok. So, if your paper does not pass that filter it goes into the trash and subsequently the next thing the referee is going to look at is does it pass the positioning with respect to related work and once again those which do not pass are going to exit. Then only the referee comes to looking at soundness of procedure and even the soundness of procedure is not enough after the procedure is sound you have to also provide the evidence which is the soundness of your evaluation. So, only when all these four pieces are there and in this order will the referee be likely to recommend your paper for acceptance and here is something to keep in mind that the typical acceptance ratio for any good or decent conference will be around 15 to 20 percent ok. So, we have to put in the effort to make it into this 15 to 20 percent and that is what this workshop is all about this workshop is about taking your idea and working with you to get you to this 15 to 20 percent rather than have your effort getting wasted by having to be taking one of these exits. So, I will just give you a pause to catch your breath and then we will move ahead with today's session and what is going to come later. Basically the entire effort is towards paper acceptance now towards conducting a study rigorously and writing the paper in a way that the referees has no option, but to accept your paper. So, the first activity for today is a pair activity and this is called peer review of the idea proposal assignment. So, all of you have submitted the idea proposal assignment and I hope many of you have brought hard copies of the assignment of your own assignment. So, what you want to do is first form pairs and exchange your idea proposal assignment submission with your partner ok. Now, in case you have not brought you probably will have to explain to your partner what is it that you did ideally you should have a hard copy and what you are supposed to do with your partner submission is read your partner's answer to question 3. Question 3 was the brief description of the idea ok what you are going to do what your students are going to do ok and the partner is to answer these two questions yes or no. Are you able to understand the idea which the other guy has written in his or her proposal and second question is does the idea sound exciting to you ok. Once you have got past this step 2 then you move on to reading the answer to question 5 and see whether the gap that your partner has brought out in that answer is it clear to you is it making sense is it coming out clearly. Once again you do a yes or no and only after that you start talking. So, keep in mind that you do not want to discuss anything with your partner while you are doing steps 2 and 3. Once you have finished and got your answers to these questions then you start discussing where you explain to your partner what aspects of the answers are not coming out clearly. So the time is now 9.50 close to 9.50 so you have up to 10 o clock to do this ok. So most of you should have been done with the activity by now. So as the others are finishing let me make one announcement first there are many queries about not being able to upload the idea proposal assignment. So due to whatever technical problem as they call it. So what we will do is we will extend the deadline for those of you who had these technical problems and maybe by a day or two not more than that because the next submission is also due soon enough ok. So then moving on for those of you who have completed the activity start thinking about this how many of you felt that ok there are immediately 2, 3 queries which say extend up to Monday night that is really not on I think. That means you have not worked on the idea submission assignment ok. So ok we will think about that I am not going to take any more requests regarding extension of the deadline right now let us come back to the activity that we are doing now. So how many of you felt that you have explained your idea well but your partner still did not understand either your idea or your gap analysis then you are sort of getting frustrated why this fellow is not understanding ok. So the coordinators can quickly poll and send the response by chat know how many people feel that your partner did not understand ok. I am getting 60 percent from somewhere else somewhere else everybody understood 30 participants clear with the idea 75, 65 percent, 64 percent, 70 percent, 40 percent, 55 percent, 20 percent, 100 percent. So 100 percent actually is whether people understood or did not understand it does not matter. So yeah so I will just give you half a minute 99 percent, 20 percent ok. So we can stop sending the poll results and move on to the next point which is what is the value of peer review ok. So the value of peer review is that it is always our responsibility to write our paper in such a way that the reader can understand and follow it easily ok. So typically we have a tendency to blame the reader saying that that fellow is not smart enough to understand what I am saying ok and that is the most common pitfall for early researchers ok. So the point to keep in mind is if your friend or colleague is having difficulty somebody who is friendly towards you is having difficulty in following your paper what do you think the referee is going to do with your paper. So that is the thing that you want to keep in mind. So whenever somebody is telling you giving you feedback saying that some aspect of your work is not clear you must take that feedback seriously and see how to improve that ok. So that is the value to writers every peer reviewer comment tells you what part of your paper you need to improve upon ok. What is the payoff for the person who is giving the comments ok. The payoff is every paper that you peer review is going to improve many things ok. One is it might improve your knowledge of the domain. Second it might give you clues to prior work or related work that you are not aware of ok. And third and most important it will improve your own analytical skills of being able to spot the gap being able to see whether there is novelty being able to examine an idea for soundness and that improvement in your own analytical skill will pay off when you write your own paper. So that is the value of peer review. So moving on now we will continue with the activity. So this is a slightly longer one it is for 20 minutes on the same idea now you want to read your partner's answer to question 6 ok which is the detailed description of the procedure and the data being collected and you want to imagine that you now have to replicate the study. So some study somebody else has described and it is your job to replicate the study means use that data or use that description to carry out the study in your own class ok. So what you want to look at is do you think the procedure is described in sufficient detail for you to be able to replicate? Do you think that the data being collected can give evidence that the idea works ok. So once again after you have gone through it take 5 minutes to go through it in detail and then explain to your partner what additional information you require to replicate the procedure of the study and explain to your partner what additional data you think is required ok. So I am guessing that many of you are going to feel that the answer is no ok. So that is why the other two items are explain to your partner what additional information is required and explain to your partner what additional data is required ok. So this activity is for 20 minutes starting at 10 we will go up to 10 20 ok we will reconvene at 10 20 now.