Is “IT” Working? What Studies Could Help Make It Work Better?

NISE CL/1 Fellow;

Director, The Flashlight Program of The TLT Group

The assessment tutorial of the Learning Through Technology (LT²) web site is intended to help you learn how to gather the kinds of data that can improve the effectiveness of computer and Web use in courses. (I’ve created this section both as part of my Fellowship with the College/Level One Program at the National Institute for Science Education and also as part of my work as Director of the Flashlight Program. So you’ll find this tutorial salted with references to relevant NISE and Flashlight resources.)

There’s no one right way to do such a study, any more than there is a single best research tool or method in your discipline. That’s why this is a tutorial and not a cookbook. There’s no one right way to do things, no minimum (or maximum) set of skills, or money, or time needed. Our goal is to help you design an inquiry that you can handle and that’s worth your effort.

The good news is that it’s considerably easier to do a useful inquiry to improve your own course(s) than it is do learn how to do research in genetics or chip design.

The bad news (for me, as primary author of this section of the site) is that I don’t know much about who you are or what you need, so this will be a “one size fits all” tutorial.

I know that you could be:

Someone interested in just one course (which may be 5 students or 500), or a set of courses or experiences; or
Someone who’s motivated primarily by desire to help students learn, or someone whose immediate motivation is more external (accreditation self-study? Pressure from a department head? Desire for a publication? Need for data to help build a budget?); or
Someone who might work on this alone, or with a team; or
Someone with a budget for a study, or someone with no money; or
Someone whose institution already has a site license for Flashlight evaluation tools, or not; or
Someone whose institution can provide a little skilled help (e.g., in designing a survey, in doing data analysis) or who has to do everything alone; or
Someone who is interested just in outcomes (if they’ve mastered the ideas, I’ll be happy with the technology) or someone who is (also) interested in figuring out whether the use of hardware, software, or networking is itself working; or
Someone in any number of disciplines (probably in math, science, engineering, or technology, but not necessarily) and probably in higher education (but not necessarily), and probably from the United States (ditto).

More bad news for me: you don’t have much time to look at this Web site. So, I’ve designed the tutorial to give you choices along the way so you can find out as quickly as possible whether you need what I’m offering. If the site doesn’t work for you and you still want some advice, please send me e-mail at Ehrmann@tltgroup.org and I’ll see if there’s anything we can do to help.

You can look below to see a map of the site but, if you have any doubts about whether this is a good idea, we suggest you begin with Why Do a Study.

Map of The Evaluation Section of the LT2 Site

Next Section: Why Do a Study?