debbaff.com – Debbie Baff Open Education Practitioner and PhD Research Student

Educator

I’m a Subject Specialist in Digital Leadership and Culture at Jisc and consider myself to be an open education practitioner

Linked In Profile.

PhD Student

I’m a PhD Student at Lancaster University on the PhD E Research and Technology Enhanced Learning Programme

Open Badge Advocate

I have been an open digital badge advocate since 2014

Sketchnotes

I dabble with the occasional sketchnote and am using them to communicate findings from my PhD Research.

About me

My name is Debbie Baff and I’m an Educator based in Wales, UK.

This is my blog which I started back in 2014 as part of my MA in Online and Distance Education studies with the Open University. It has gone through multiple revamps and restarts including when I switched to Reclaim Hosting a couple of years ago. There may be some broken links hanging around in some of my earlier posts, in which case if you spot ’em please do let me know!

My PhD Research

Exploring educators’ lived experiences of social support in private social network sites and the impact on their wellbeing: A Heuristic Inquiry

two grey pebbles wearing glasses holding hands, they also have little feet to make them look like people — https://pixabay.com/photos/rock-craft-people-friends-support-1771913/

Social Support

Social support is a complex concept with several different interpretations. Online social support for educators is recognised as an increasing research area (Kelly 2019) I am exploring how educators experience different aspects of social support when participating in private social network sites (SNS)

phone, display, apps — https://pixabay.com/users/lobostudiohamburg-13838/

Private SNS

There have been many studies that have investigated social support in the public arena but much less is known about social support within SNS when used privately (Meng 2017). For the purposes of my research, I am interested in private online spaces where there an element of control in that you have to be invited into the group or ask to join.

surface, marble, flowers — https://pixabay.com/users/healthguru

Wellbeing

Wellbeing is another complex area. Social support gained through online channels has been found to contribute to wellbeing (Chiang 2016). There have been calls to examine how peer collaboration can support educator wellbeing (Falk et 2019). This has become even more important following the COVID19 Pandemic.

Heuristic Inquiry

Heuristic inquiry (Moustakas 1990) allows me to explore educators’ lived experiences from a holistic and in-depth perspective and incorporate my own experience.

Heuristic Inquiry is Social Constructivist and takes a first person approach. It is phenomenologically aligned and is imaginative and creative. I am using the work of Nevine Sultan (2019) as my guide in my journey through this process and incorporating my own created sketchnotes as a way of communicating findings from my research.