Assignment 10, Method Section

Online degrees have become vital in the pursuit of higher education for many individuals. The pressures of home, work, and personnel lives limit the possibly for several people to attend classes in the regular classroom environment. Online courses have the flexibility that many individuals need to complete their degrees. The effectiveness of online learning has to be examined and we have develop a research study in this course that explores the many avenues of online learning and their effectiveness. The methods implemented to explore the topic of new media in online learning will be explain in this paper. The recruitment process, instrument development, procedures used for data collection will be explored.

Participation:

The recruitment process for the participants in this study was anonymous and targeted individuals with higher education. I send out an email explaining that the survey was for one of the courses that I was enrolled in, and included the hyperlink for the survey. I send out the email to two groups. The first group included the teachers on assignment in the technology department that I am employed with. One of teachers has completed the Masters in Instructional Technology and this group would offer the best input. Their role in the department is to train an assist teachers in the district to incorporate new technologies in the classroom. The second group that I emailed the hyperlink included the director, programmers and other employees who are currently in school pursuing a masters or doctorate degree.

Instrument:

The instrument development of the final research questions was an involved process that utilize input from the students in ETEC 543. The students were asked to submit numerous potential research questions on the topic of new media in online learning, and adult learning. Several of the questions were formed by the Dr. Newberry’s own interest and background experiences with new media and education. These questions were collected and categorized and split into two categories of "media choice, adoptions, and use" and "andragogy and online learning". The first category had 12 questions and the second five questions.

A survey consisting of 56 questions using a 5 point Likert Scale was administer to answer the 4 research questions posed by the study.

Research Question 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?

Research Question 2: What level of involvement in planning, organizing, and making media choices do adult online learners desire?

Research Question 3: Is the use of collaboration to comment on other students’ work viewed as beneficial by online students?

Research Question 4: What media types do students express a preference for using for a variety of activities related to instructor-student interaction, student-student interaction, and student-content interaction?

Data Collection:

The procedures used for data collection was to revise and reduce the number of questions in the two categories. In the first category nine of the questions were eliminated, and in the second category three of the questions were eliminated and a question was added. From the final six questions two were eliminated leaving only four questions as the final research questions. An online survey was used to gather data. Each student in the course selected individuals to participate in the survey by emailing the link and the results were received by Dr. Newberry. One of the issues encountered with administering this anonymous online survey was that it was impossible to know who had completed the survey. Luckily my participants emailed me after completing the survey. I prefer this method of online survey over a paper survey. I an able to send the survey to large groups at the same time without having two explain to every individual the purpose of the survey. Its efficient and saves a great deal of time.



Appendix:

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this class study about online learning being conducted as part of a class project in ETEC 543 under the direction of Dr. Brian Newberry (newberry@csusb.edu). We are interested to know more about how students view a variety of technologies used for online learning and how online courses may be organized.

The survey you are about to answer will ask about a variety of technologies that may be used in online classes. Please read through the following description of these technologies and their characteristics. In some cases you may not know very much about a particular technology. That is ok. Use your best judgement about the technology and its suitability for the described activities. Some of the technologies that this survey will ask about are:

• Email - Text based asynchronous communication.
  
• Video Conference - Video based synchronous conversation.
  
• Blog - Student ‘owned’ webspace for posting text, graphics and documents.
  
• Podcast - Audio file that is downloaded and played on a portable media player (iPod) or computer.
  
• Podcast Enhanced with Graphics - Audio and visual file that is downloaded and played on a portable media player (iPod) or computer.
  
• Threaded Discussion or Bulletin Board - Text based asynchronous communication that stores threads or posts for everyone to view and respond to.
  
• Voice Over Internet - Synchronous audio conversation, similar to a phone call but using the Internet and computers instead of phones. For example, Skype.
  

This survey is voluntary and completely anonymous. No attempt will be made to connect you to your responses and you may choose to withdraw from this study at any time. This survey should take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.
By continuing on to the survey you are agreeing to participate in this study and you are stipulating that you are over the age of 18. Again, thank you for your participation.

Survey Link:

http://briannewberry.com/phpstuff/etec543study/