Fall 2007
Monday 7:00 - 9:40 p.m.
North Education 273

Donn Ritchie
E-mail: dritchie@mail.sdsu.edu or (760) 291-3271

 

Purpose of Ed 690

EDUC 690, Procedures of Investigation and Report, is an introductory course that provides an introduction to educational research. This particular section focuses on educational research as it pertains to educational technology.

It is not the intention of this course to create statisticians. The purpose is to provide you with the knowledge and skills to understand what, when, how, and why educational research is conducted. To help contextualize the concept and skills needed for educational research, you will be asked to formulate a research plan to analyze a topic of your interest. This research plan and proposal could eventually be submitted to a school, corporation, or government agency for funding or running the study. More explicit competencies are listed below.

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Competencies

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Competencies

1. Demonstrate an ability to locate, examine, and analyze research literature;
   • Conduct library research using the ERIC and PAC systems,
   • Identify relevant article and write your interpretation, and
   • Critique research studies, identifying strengths and weaknesses.
2. Explain the differences between qualitative and quantitative research, and when each type is appropriate.
3. Describe the differences between a population and sample; identify characteristics of a sample which make it representative of a population. Describe the various sampling techniques acknowledging their advantages and limitations.
4. Describe how to create test for educational research and how to avoid mistakes. Define reliability and validity of test, identifying the major threats to validity.
5. Explain the differences between experimental, causal-comparative, correlational, and descriptive research, and describe when each of these research methodologies is appropriate.
6. Demonstrate your knowledge of experimental studies through the following activities;
   • Describe the typical steps in setting up experimental research,
   • Contrast quasi-experimental, pre-experimental, and experimental research,
   • Describe some of the typical research designs, and
   • Describe threats to internal and external validity to experimental research.
7. Establish protocol for formative evaluation and usability studies;
8. Describe common problems made when conducting educational research and describe how they can be avoided.
9. Demonstrate knowledge of basic statistical tests for educational research;
   • Identify the main types of statistical tests,
   • Describe when to use the different statistical tests and the assumptions which need to be made,
   • Demonstrate competence in statistical software (StatView, StatPac, or SPSS),
   • Describe how data is presented for various statistical tests, and
   • Demonstrate how to read and interpret statistical computations.
10. Describe how to establish and implement a research plan, including;
    • Identify a valid educational problem,
    • Conduct a literature review,
    • State a research hypothesis,
    • Describe how to select a representational sample,
    • Select an appropriate test to gather information from the sample,
    • Describe how to administer the test and collect data,
    • Describe the analysis of results with proper statistics, and
    • Report all findings.

 

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Competencies

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Grading

Component	Tentative Due Date	Percentage
Literature review	Week 08: October 15	20%
Research Plan	Week 12: November 12	20%
Final Report	Week 15: December 3	20%
Open note exam	Week 16: December 10	15%
Reading and self assessment	Weeks 1-16	10%
Participation	Weeks 1-16	15%

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Competencies

Grading

Resources

Schedule

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Resources

Course textbooks

• Leedy, P. D., & Ormrod, J. E. (2005). Practical Research. (8th ed.) Columbus, OH: Pearson Publishing.
• Salkind, N. J.(2004). Statistics for people who (think they) hate statistics. (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. [You can also buy the E-version of this book from the Aztec Bookstore but no sell-back.]

Assessment, Evaluation, Statistics, & Educational Research

• ERIC/AE Test Locator
• Search ERIC (RIE & CIJE)
• ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation
• Statistical resources on the Web
• Statistics every writer should know (contains very useful stats FAQ forum & review lessons)
• Statistical packages for the Macintosh
• A web based statistics course
• The Knowledge Base: An Online Rearch Methods Textbook
• MacStats Home page

Search Engines and libraries

• Altavista
• Infoseek Ultra
• HotBot
• Lycos
• Excite
• Choose the best engine for your purpose
• SDSU library
• UCSD libraries
• Search UCSD library catalog (ROGER)

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, Thesauri

• Bartlett's Quotations, 9th ed.
• 1901 Britannica Online
• Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
• Human Languages Page
• Hypertext Webster Interface
• Online Dictionaries
• Roget's Thesaurus (ARTFL Project)
• WWWebster Dictionary
• Translations to multiple languages

Style Manuals and Writing Aids

• Paradigm Online Writing Assistant
  How to conceive, organize, revise and edit a writing project including examples of different kinds of writing.
• Strunk's Elements of Style
• On-line guide to APA style and usage
• 541 Job aid on writing a literature review

Examples

• Literature review (No special formatting)
  • Holdner
  • Levy
  • Mandarano