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Due to the conflict schedule and conference, we didn't meet at all in the March. I had an opportunity to attend the second part of Hien's presentation regarding assessing online discussions. I found “A Flowchart for the Typical Process of Content Analysis Research” and “Interaction Analysis Model for Examining Social Construction of Knowledge” given during the presentation are very useful when I need to do the qualitative analysis.
Another presentation was from Natalia in the topic of ANOVA and Regression. This topic was very new to me. However, Natalia's presentation had given me a jump start in terms of learning or researching more about this topic. Her presentation also brought everyone into the discussion of the significance value. I'm very sure that Natalia's presentation would help me in this program, especially in other Statistic courses that I have to take in the future.
Toward the end of April, I had a great opportunity of meeting in a small group with Eugeniu and Dr. Grabowski. Eugeniu had generously brought 2 excellent books regarding qualitative research / assessment. I found these books very interesting and would be very helpful in preparing for assessing / reviewing ASTRO's discussions. Those two books are:
(1) Creswell, J. W. (1997). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Traditions. Sage Publications, Inc.
(2) Gall, M. D., Gall, J. P., & Borg, W. R. (2006). Educational Research: An Introduction. Allyn & Bacon.
We had discussed what Rubric group was supposed to and would be doing in the summer. During the discussion, we reviewed our research questions as well as initial MARS models to decide on what we were looking for from the ASTRO discussion boards. In the conclusion, we came up with six items; (1) Students' Engagement, (2) Students' Attitude in Course, (3) Students' Attitude in Science and Astronomy, (4) Students' Knowledge Acquisition, (5) Students' Higher-order Thinking, and (6) Students' Lower-order Thinking. I learned that during the research process, it is very important to keep the research questions and the initial model in mind. By not following this, researchers might waste time reviewing unnecessary or unrelated information.
Finally, we, Rubric group, were interested in attending eLearning conference in November 2008. The topic that we are planning to present is “Unobtrusive Measure of Attitude in Online Discussion: Implication for Crafting Discussion Triggers.” I am very excited in being part of this presentation. I hope that I could contribute to the presentation as much as possible.
