The area of interest I have chosen is motivation in the classroom. Specifically, I would like to look at the motivation of high school students in classrooms actively using technology versus the motivation of high school students in a traditional classroom. To define the classrooms, I would say that a classroom with technology is one where students are actively participating with the technology. One without technology, would be one where students are given a regular lecture type of lesson, this would be including a lecture given via powerpoint, since the students are not actually using the technology, only viewing the instructor's lesson on the powerpoint. The decision on how to test this variable would determine the outcome of the type of study, quantitative or qualitative.
If I were to look at qualitative, I would observe the exact same class on two different days, one with technology, and the next day without. I would ask the teacher how well he or she thought the students participated in each lesson. I would also ask the students how willing were they to participate? How willing were they to do their assignments? As well, I would ask which lesson sparked their curiosity more, the first day or the second day? As well, I would ask the teacher about the grades on any assignments connected to lessons. This way I would be able to tell which lessons students were able to retain more information from.
If I decided to go with quantitative for this study, I would ask the teacher to give the exact same lesson to two classes again, one with technology, one without. Then after each lesson, I would have the students fill out a survey about one they felt about their motivation for doing their work in class. I would have the answers be on a scale of 1 being not motivated at all to 5 being completely immersed in the lesson. With these answers, I would be able to come up with an average of the motivation for each lesson. And then have an outcome of whether or not technology can make a difference in the motivation of high school students.
The difference between these two types of study lie mostly in the methods. Qualitative studies tend to lean toward open ended questions and the responses of the participants. Where as quantitative studies go more toward number crunching and what the average response is. Qualitative studies looks more deeply about each response. A quantitative study is more about telling you what the average response of the participants would be. As well, in a qualitative study you would be able to see more of the differences between each participant do to their responses, not just the average, or who got the top spot, but how far away were the participants in the anwser. Or sometimes, participants when being interviewed can tell you more than just a yes or no and give you more valuable information.
I am not sure which method I would choose if going with this area of interest. Both ways seem very viable to me. I like that quantitative gives you the "hard facts", but I also like that qualitative lets you see whats going on in between those facts.
This is a great start. Here are a couple of thoughts I had while reading.
ReplyDelete1 - You might want to make your qualitative approach less about direct comparisons of the effect of two lessons, and more open-ended and exploratory. I think the list of questions you have is good, but just make them more general. How do teachers perceive the use of technology in their classes? How do students experience it? This will leave open the possibility for more unexpected findings, something that qualitative methods are especially good at.
2 - With your quantitative approach, measuring one lesson versus another lesson given by the same teacher is one way of answering your question. Try thinking about multiple ways of designing this. More teachers, more lessons, over time, etc. Every approach is going to have advantages and disadvantages. Your goal is to pick the best one that can be feasibly implemented.
See you Monday.