Research+Methods

=**Research Methods**= A mixed research approach utilizing quasi-experimental data and qualitative data will be used. The independent variable will be the method of instruction (direct teacher led vs. teacher created online modules). The dependent variables will be the quality of the digital story and student content knowledge and comprehension. A grading rubric will be used to assess the quality of the digital story on the following criteria: script, visuals, accuracy of content, narration, transitions and animations, and proper citation. Onlne pre- and post- tests, created in Google Docs, containing multiple choice and fill in questions will given to assess students' knowledge and comprehension of the social studies (or science) content.

The instructional unit will be collaboratively taught by the media specialist/researcher and the classroom teachers using a WebQuest. A minimum of two classes will be used. Since classes are not composed of randomly selected students there is no way to adequately control for student ability or prior content knowledge. To minimize this effect, if possible, classes that have comparable mixes of students of high to low academic ability will be selected. To assess the class mix, the researcher will ask the teacher to provide her with the details of her class composition that include the numbers of students in the following categories: ability levels based on receiving EIP services, in gifted program, or regular education; disabilities (hearing, speech, behavioral, autistic, etc.); and ESOL.  In addition, a pre-test will be done to assess students' prior content knowledge. One class will have teacher led instruction of how to conduct research of the social studies topic and of how to use MovieMaker. The other class will use a WebQuest with embedded online videos on how to conduct research and citation and screencasts to present instruction of MovieMaker. The vodcasts and screencasts will allow students to progress at their own pace and review as needed. (A screencast as defined by Brown, et al (2009) is the recording of the visual data on a computer screen augmented by audio content.)

The unit will be introduced by both the teacher and the media specialist explaining the essential question and goals. This will be followed by students being instructed to take an online pre-test. (Students will be informed that this assessment is not graded so as not to cause any undue anxiety.) It is expected that the unit will be taught over the course of at least four 1.5 hour sessions. At the end of which students will share their digital stories with the class and several of them will be hosted on their teacher's blog. To help establish inter-rater reliability the students’ digital stories will independently graded by both the homeroom teachers and the media specialist.

**Data Collection Instruments **
At this time I do not have the pre- and post-tests, I need to make arrangements for two teachers to collaborate with me on this. I will be doing this next week and hope to have the tests available by the end of next week (September 30).

Memoing will be used throughout the process to enable the researcher to reflect on, and develop themes, from the informal qualitative data collected from teacher-researcher, and researcher-student communications. Memoing will also be used to capture and analyze general observations as we work through the instructional unit. As Johnson & Christensen (2008) state, “Memoing is an important tool to use during a research project to record insights gained from reflecting on data.”

The online teacher survey (GoogleDoc) is visible below. (Under this is the student survey.)

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media type="custom" key="6987227" Student survey is at: [] media type="custom" key="6987581"

The pre-test scores of both control and experimental groups will be analyzed to ascertain whether the two groups are comparable to in their pre-experimental content knowledge. First the median and mean scores for each group will be determined. It is anticipated that if the two groups are demographically similar and there has no prior instruction in the topic then the pre-test scores should be comparable for both groups. Means and medians for the post-test scores for the two groups will be derived and used to see if there is significant difference in scores using t-tests. It is anticipated that there will be a significant difference with the experimental group scoring higher than the control group. The scored rubrics will also be compared in a similar fashion to see how well each group did in synthesizing the content to create an original work.

(The null hypothesis is that there will be no difference between the experimental and control groups. The alternative hypothesis is that there will be a significant difference between the two groups.)

The teacher and student surveys contain scaled data (qualitative data that has been quantified) and open-ended questions that will be coded categorized to identify themes and draw conclusions. (Johnson & Christensen, p. 554). The emerging themes from these analyses will help the researcher develop the end of project interviews of the two teachers and representative students. These interviews will be recorded using Audacity, then transcribed, coded, and analyzed per the steps identified by Johnson and Christensen (2008).