Assignment 10, Method Section

ETEC-543 Research Project Method

This study was devised by the instructor of our ETEC-543 in “Instructional Technology” at Cal State San Bernardino, which itself was designed to familiarize post-graduate students with the ways and means of doing research, educational or otherwise.
The instructor, Dr. Brian Newberry, designed a research project that would develop the investigative prowess of his students in a “meta-research” project. During this project, each student researched all of the other students’ reports on their sources to synthesize a summary of all of those articles.
The method is itself was comprised of the instruments and the implementation of the survey distribution to the participants.

Participants

The participants included one quasi-random group of students in the ETEC-543 class, which, by having those students elicit the responses of their contacts, which was also likely to be quasi-random, was further randomized to a more acceptable level.
I feel that the andragogical aspect may not have been fully developed, since the sample excluded many of those in the age group needed to be studied, as well as those more resistant to learning than those found in this class, or among their friends and contacts.
Although I feel that all ages were fairly well represented, it might not be sufficient to draw pedagogical and andragogical distinctions without the inclusion of much younger student, i.e. : K-12, M-12 or at least High School ?

Method

This was a quantitative study with regard to surveying the kinds of technology participants may own, or to which they may have access. The ease of access, frequency of use of that technology, their perceptions of the benefits they derived as a result, and other subjective (i.e.; ‘qualitative’) elements, were quantified through use of a Likert scale or similar instrument. This would make it easier to analyze the results mathematically for statistically significant averages and variances, in a spreadsheet or database, which may otherwise be too subjective to analyze accurately.

Instruments

The study was initially implemented online by the instructor, plus using survey questions developed by the students, and then having those students administer the questionnaires to their subjects through a variety of means, from personally presenting the questions, or by phone (‘old school’ methods), or by email (which is probably no longer considered a ‘new technology’ !), or using a ‘new technology’ of their own that we are studying, such as blogs or text messages. (Hence my use of the term “meta-research.”)

Implementation

Subjects were given a survey to distribute online, and were to inform those participants that it would take 15 minutes of their time to complete.
The results would also aggregated to produce summarized results, and that the specific personal data would be 'lost' in th eprocess, and would therefore preserve their anonymity.
Students were then used to analyze each others’ findings to synthesize the categories of andragogy, social presence, and the specific ‘new technologies’ that were found to be used by the participants.