"If statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers." - Edward Tufte
That quote by Tufte has been fueling my work the past couple of weeks. Data collection has been many things, but it has seldom been boring. This process has had its fair share of twists and turns. This is the first time I have done such an in-depth research project and I did not know to anticipate many of the twists I have encountered.
I ended up with 18 students who completed the consent forms, differentiated instruction, and surveys for my study. This number was down considerably from my original sample population but some students never returned completed consent forms, opted out, or just never completed the work.
My work on this project has been similar to that of Grimes & Warschauer (2008) where they examined how differentiated instruction impacted student learning. In my study, students completed differentiated instruction using technology and I measured how their achievement changed via a pre and post-test. One of the most interesting things I found while collecting data was just how many students did not complete any of the differentiated work on their own. I was also interested in how their perceptions of differentiated instruction may shift by going through the process. I measured this via student surveys.
I received the pre and post-tests back from the math department this week and am working with the math teachers to score them (they are not all computational and feature a few short answer questions, plus I am not a whiz with math!). I will have the numbers crunched and analyzed in the next couple of days.
Grimes,
D., & Warschauer, M. (2008). Learning with Laptops: A Multi-Method Case
Study. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 38(3), 305–332.
