This is a research study for Instructional Technology 543 a course offered at California State University, San Bernardino. This course increases the students’ ability to locate, evaluate, use and conduct research. To meet this goal the instructor Dr. Newberry is guiding his class in developing a research study. This study is investigating new media in online learning. The following describes the participants involved in the study, the instrument used, and the procedure.
The participants were recruited through informal contacts by researcher through a variety of means. Some were recruited by email because this form is sometimes easier to contract busy people. People that are seen frequently were invited face-to-face. Another alternative was the use of phone calls to recruit. The participants were informed that they were taking a research survey for a course and that the survey only took 15 minutes of their time. To have a much tighter control on participant recruitment there were certain guide lines to follow. They had to be 18 years or older, but to have more control the adults needed to have a higher education.
This quantitative research used a survey as an instrument. The process to develop the instrument was to first gather questions regarding new media in online learning. The students were required to at least summit three questions then the instructor focused on the following three questions, 1) Is there a relationship between the amount of portable media (podcasts) a student consumes and their desire for portable media use in online learning? 2) What level of involvement in planning, organizing, and making media choices do adult online learners desire? 3) Is the use of collaboration to comment on other students’ work viewed as beneficial by online students? The survey contained many questions that would answer the three focused questions of the research.
The implementation was that the participants took an online survey. They given an URL to locate the survey and were informed that it would take 15 minutes or less to complete it. Since the survey was anonymous they were not required to give any information of themselves. The survey used a scaled questionnaire to measure the attitudes and beliefs of the participants. For this the choices or answers were reflecting varying degrees of intensity. This is an example used in the survey for the respondents to answer a question: 1 meaning that you do not like it at all and a 5 meaning that you like it a great deal. One negative aspect of online surveys is the difficulty of not knowing who has and who hasn’t completed the survey.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Assignment 10, Method Section
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4 comments:
Maria,
Your method section explains clearly the steps that were taken to evaluate and conduct the research for our class project. That is interesting that you contacted some of the volunteers by cell phone. That is something that I didn't think of. But it definitely would have work since all we needed to give them would be the URL for the site containing the survey.
James
I'm glad someone else contacted the volunteers via email. I found it was easier talking to people and explaining the process over the phone than via email. That way I was able to answer questions right away.
Your methods section was written well. I like how you got straight to the point and explained how you recruited participants to participate within the survey.
good luck on the final project.
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