ED 690

 

Details for Week 2
Agenda

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  We'll begin by taking a tour of Love Library--an ever-changing facility that features a growing repository of both "traditional" and electronic information sources. We'll meet in class promptly at 7 pm ... and then head over as a group.
 

 

Prior to Monday's class, you'll want to review additional tips we've compiled for you for conducting a literature review.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We'll next attend to an overview of common research designs (experimental, descriptive, causal-comparative) -- as well as evaluation frameworks.

You might also want to review the interactive tree that grad student Brian Stumme created--for his article on inquiry featured in our department's Encyclopedia of Educational Technology.

More about Evaluation; More about Action Research

You'll see that:

Study designs and investigative issues are interconnected--not mutually exclusive. In other words, the particular issues in which you're interested help you to determine an appropriate/feasible study design.
 
That our need to adhere to specific guidelines ... and our own desire to act ethically ... factor into the design issues and investigate tactics on which we ultimately settle.
 
The investigative process features steps that are common to all research types -- although in practice, they unfold in different ways.
Thinking like an investigator helps us manage the burden of proof issues with which we must inevitably deal.
 
Variables are of many kinds/types. In general, a variable is a characteristic that can assume any one of several values. Common variables with which EdTec practitioners deal are instructional methods, individual characteristics, learning styles, media types, behaviors (on-task or engaged, for example), and instructional setting (distance or place-bound, for instance). The term variables as we define it relative to input into a stats program or Excel is a bit different--as you might imagine.
 

 

Imagine that we've been tasked with examining customer satisfaction at Southwest Airlines ... or the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In teams, we'll determine how our overarching research design is informed by our ability to operationalize this construct (customer satisfaction), identify the broad (and more refined) issues that interest us, and specify the individuals or groups to which the term customers applies.