IRB Approval--Finally!

I finally received approval of my IRB this week. I met with the district's computer teacher last week to share an online Internet Usage Survey that will be administered to all students in grades 6-8. This will be completed during their regular computer class and should take no longer than 10-15 minutes.

I met with the 7th grade teachers last week to provide an overview of the project. (Meetings with the 8th and 6th grade teachers are scheduled for today and tomorrow.)

Consent forms will be distributed to students on Feb 28th (following February vacation) and data collection will begin the first week of March. Looks like things are finally going to happen!

Final Thoughts from Initial Development Phase

There are several revisions that need to be made before this unit is ready for large-scale piloting. Once my IRB is approved, I will plan to pilot with several middle school students in January. My research project for the spring will begin in February and run for approximately 12 weeks. I hope to have all revisions and additional piloting completed by this time. This online instructional unit will be used in a pilot study for my dissertation at the middle school level. It will be a comparative study that looks at differences between an online instructional unit and direct teacher instruction for teaching search skills and strategies. I will continue to post progress to this blog and reflect on the project throughout my spring study.

http://www.education2.uconn.edu/lhenry/searching/tutorial.htm

Pilot II

The second pilot was conducted with my son, a junior in high school.
Again, I took notes during the process while piloting the unit.

1--I definitely have to reduce the amount of text for middle school level. This will be especially important for struggling readers. I may want to restructure the first few tasks to really focus on the most important elements for students to learn.

2--The companion worksheet for the search engine task needs to be modified. The space for recording your "focus word" needs to be changed to "keyword" to match the text in the task.

3--Again, the links to the various search engines need to open in a new window so the student can simply close this window when the search task is completed. At present, it is necessary to use the back button several times to return to the project screen.

4--Adding questions or a space for students to record the question for the final task will be necessary. It's too cumbersome the way it stands with the user having to refer back to previous screens for the question.

5--The user spent a total of 38 minutes completing the unit of instruction.

Pilot I

The first pilot of the unit was completed with my daughter, a senior in high school. I took notes as she moved through each task and identified several problems that will need to be addressed before using this with my study in the spring.

1--In the first task, the links to the content pages need to be setup to open in a new window. It currently opens in the same window causing the user to return to the tasks by using the back button. This would be much simpler if it opened in a new window that could then be closed and maintaining the project window to continue with the next task.

2--There may be too much text in the second and third steps of task 1. I should consider minimizing the text to include just the critical components relevant to the project. There are a few extraneous items that are not relevant to the purpose of this project.

3--The search engine worksheet should be modified to remove the "types of search engines" column. This information is not critical to learning how to search effectively. (The removal of this information from the unit is referenced in #2 above).

4--The Northern Light search engine needs to be removed from the search engine activity. This engine is no longer available for free. There is a membership fee to access its use.

5--Issues with the 10 question assessment continue. (Problems with linking and page format).

6--There is a grammatical error in the dialogue written in task 5. This needs to be corrected.

7--The final task should include a button bar on the left panel that includes links to the search engines presented in the previous task. These should be programmed to open in a new window. The user had difficulty remembering the question as she searched for the information and had to use the back button to get back to the question. (Also might consider writing the questions out on the companion worksheet for this final task.)

8--The user spent a total of 35 minutes completing the project. The timing seems to be adequate since most class periods at the middle school level are 40-45 minutes. If the text is reduced somewhat, this should reduce the time for completion, which will allow for a brief introduction and setup at the beginning of the class period.

Frustration

Frustration has set in. The assessment component in Flash still does not have all the kinks worked out. The 10 questions are functioning properly however the "finish" button that should move students onto the next task is not linked correctly. Also, the page design has not been edited to match the other pages. There's also some other linking problems that cause the user to have to use the back button several times to get back to the opening page to access the next task. At this point, I don't feel comfortable piloting it with middle school students until these problems have been resolved. I will pilot it with my own kids this week to complete the evaluation of the project.

Presentation

We're supposed to present our final project tonight, however we are not prepared to do so. The 10 question, multiple choice assessment that my partner developed in Flash is not working properly. We need more time to work out the kinks and upload it to the site again. It's been a frustrating few weeks waiting for this final component to be completed. Additionally, the webpage that the assessment is embedded in does not have the correct format and the links are not working to continue with the unit after taking the quiz. Hopefully all these bugs will be worked out soon.

Last Development Piece

My partner is still working on developing an assessment component that will be embedded into our unit on searching using Flash. This has not been completed yet so piloting is at a stand still at this point. Also still waiting for IRB approval to do a full-scale pilot of the project. I have access to a few middle school students thorugh a library media specialist ready to pilot. Also, I can have my own kids pilot the unit if necessary. Hopefully the development will move along quickly in the next few days so we have time for piloting next week.

Field Testing

Still waiting for IRB approval. This is not a problem up to this point as the project is still not ready for piloting. My partner is working on the completion of the assessment component that will need to be incorporated into the project before it is ready for field testing. Once this has been completed and all links are tested, I plan to pilot the project with my two children (high school age) while I wait for my IRB to come through. I hope to complete initial piloting by next week.

http://www.education2.uconn.edu/lhenry/searching/tutorial.htm