October 13, 2023
Brief overview of research so far.
After researching into people’s varied subjective perspectives on the passage of time (Zimbardo et al., 2012) I settled upon and Action Research project of refining a time management tool to help neurodiverse students who I support as a specialist study skills tutor, to organise their study tasks more effectively
First I showed some people the Eisenhower matrix below, gaining very mixed feedback. I couldn’t get permission to include this original data collection from students, but it functioned as a research ‘trigger’ Based upon my reflections this feedback and related time management and ADHD literature, I asked myself: how can I develop the time management tool to help neurodiverse students organise study tasks more effectively? (research question).
Original Eisenhower Matrix:
(Medium, 2017)
I thought about the benefits of this Eisenhower tool above, but also its limitations, particularly as it was designed by a manager, for management. I thought about tailoring the tool, an intervention to improve it and become a good fit for neurodiverse students.
Data from literature, secondary research, indicated people with ADHD need support with judging how long tasks take (Fontes et al., 2016). This literature and the original feedback from students helped me refine the tool, to accommodate students’ difficulty in judging how long things take so I changed a category to time length, as below, to improve the tool and make it more relevant.
The development and change of the tool, the intervention, explored a new category of ‘length of time’ to do something, as well as considered reducing/merging catergories ‘important’ and ‘urgent’.
I got permision (ethics) to show my colleagues the new version below. I needed to evaluate the change/intervention somehow and I couldn’t get permission to use student feedback regarding the change/intervention, due to ethically related power dynamics in the study skills tutorials. I wanted to evaluate the change so far, take that evaluation feedback and make further refinement/changes.
| Important/urgent | Unimportant/non-urgent | |
| Takes a long time to do | ||
| Takes a short time to do |
I considered more developments: exploring including the word ‘me’ in the phrase ‘takes a long time to do’ and I wondered about coloursI designed a questionnaire for colleagues to gain feedback on 2 elements: colour design and language used in the developing tool.
Part of data collection tool of questionnaire for colleagues’ feedback: which phrase to use?
and, which colours to use? choose from 1 – 6
Data Analysis and Findings in the next blog
References
Fontes, R., Ribeiro, J., Gupta, D., S., Machado, D., Lopes-Júnior, F., Magalhães, F., Bastos, V., H., Rocha, K., Marinho, V., Lima, G.,
Velasques,5 B., Ribeiro, P., Orsini, M., Pessoa, B., Antonio, M., Leite, A., Teixeira, S. (2016) Time perception mechanisms
at central nervous system. In Neurology International; volume 8:5939
Medium (2017) Forget All Other Productivity Hacks — The Eisenhower Matrix Is All You Need! Available at: https://medium.com/swlh/forget-all-other-productivity-hacks-the-eisenhower-matrix-is-all-you-need-a9e993961b08 (accessed 12.01.2024)
Zimbardo, P., Sword, R., and Sword, R. (2012). The time cure: Overcoming PTSK with the new psychology of time perspective therapy. Jossey-Bass.