Babel Volume 47 Number 2 | Page 35

research through personal interaction with my colleagues at my school( 45.5 %), read research articles( 42.4 %), and board is involved in research projects( 41.4 %).

Respondents were also asked to choose as many factors as they felt were impeding their use of research. The percentages for each statement reported in Table 2 are out of the total number of respondents. The quality of research being unknown was an impeding factor for 47.4 % of respondents while the availability of research articles was an impediment for 39.5 %. The least percentage of respondents( 21.1 %) indicated both the complexity of language of articles and datedness of articles got in the way of them using research.

In summary, the majority of the questionnaire respondents were inexperienced teachers / teacher candidates without a lot of primary research experience. The majority did not consult research directly nor was research presented to them by intermediaries within their associations or boards of education. The unknown quality of research and the lack of its availability were the most common reasons impeding research use.

MONITORING THE USE OF TOOLS

Website use

The website use was examined for the uptake of research by participating users by way of Google Analytics for the six week period it was available.

In addition to the 52 potential participants, four of the article authors also accessed the site directly with the three others providing contributions through me. One Webmaster also had access to the site during this time.

Table 3 shows the overall data for the metrics visits, visitors, page views, page views by visits, average time on site, bounce rate and the percent of new visits. The website was sent to 52 users which generated 1,089 visits to the site from 669 visitors to the site where there can be multiple visits by a visitor. The large number of visits to the site may come from visitors refreshing the pages, visiting from different IP addresses, or repeat visits by the same user at different times, counting the visitors as a new visit. Overall, the 1,089 visits to the site resulted in visitors viewing 2,926 pages in total( from the four pages), with the potential that some pages were viewed multiple times during a single visit. Visitors spent an average of 4:46 minutes on the site and bounced off the site( visited for less than 10 seconds) 47 % of the time. The average time on site of 4:46 minutes could be attributed to visitors viewing the videos on the resources page and the time they potentially spent formulating responses and contributing to the discussions on the Forum page. Across the site 35 % of the visits during the period of analysis were new visits to the site.

The overall data for each page are presented in Table 4: the homepage, the resource page( which housed the support guides, videos and articles), the questionnaire and the forum page. In particular, it shows the breakdown of each page’ s page views, the time that visitors to the pages spent on the page over the six weeks, and the visits to each page.

The homepage had the most page views and visits, but visitors spent more time overall on the resource page( over 14 hours).

This table shows that user engagement across the website varied according to page

Factors impeding use of research

Availability of research articles

Unknown quality of research

Complexity of language of articles

Inconsistency of results across articles

Lack of practical implications indicated in articles

Topics of irrelevance to my practice

% N

39.5 15

47.4 18

21.1 8

23.7 9

26.3 10

36.8 14

Datedness of articles 21.1 8

Lack of transferability to my context

31.6 12

Table 2: Identification of factors impeding the use of research

Visits 1089 Visitors 669 Page views 2926 Page views / Visit 2.7 Average Time on Site 04:46 Bounce Rate 47 % % New Visits 35 %

Table 3: Overall website data for six week period

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