Week 3 Discussion Outlines

• a description of the context or setting of your study.
The description of the study is 2 fold, with the primary focus on item 1, but the secondary question being one that could continue the research into the future;
1.) How would increasing the amount and type of technology into core class environments influence/impact student achievement?
if 1 proves positive, then leads to the following;

2.)Would it benefit student achievement to provide course opportunities that are 100% technology based in their delivery and application and what affect would this have on students and the overall educational experience?

• an operational definition of your target population.
It would be next to impossible to survey all students throughout the building, and to provide the technology to a large enough group of students would be difficult; however, our campus recently was selected to work with a laptop and technology project with our 11th grade US History students. This project, provided a new laptop computer to all 11th grade students enrolled in US History (94% of the 11th grade population of over 800 students). Based on this, and the supporting curriculum that was developed, the 11th grade student population (enrolled in US History) will be the primary target population for large amounts of data. The 11th grade data group represents all subgroups, which will provide for greater analysis of data based on all factors that weigh in the overall accountability and will provide accurate representation of the benefits to all student populations.

• how you will select your sample.
As stated above, the sample will be the 11th grade student population enrolled in US History at our HS, as it provides a large enough target group and all students have the same technology at their hands, functioning on similar curriculum. The comparison group will be our 11th grade student groups performance data from the prior year; the current years seniors.

• brief rationale for your sample size.
The sample size provides a large enough group of students that represents at least 1/4th of the total student population on the campus. Likewise, it provides a breakdown of all student populations and special populations, which will give us a strong cross-section of data and allow us to look deeper in the data on the benefits for students in each sub-group. Selecting a smaller population may not have provided representation to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the program on all student populations.

• a brief description of how you will conduct your research.
Numerous items will be considered, including, but not limited to; student and staff surveys on technology and amount of time used, grade distribution in core classes as compared to prior years group, performance on state and district testing, wireless internet connectivity and bandwidth usage during school hours will all be factored in conducting research. We will also look at a baseline level the performance of our 11th graders on state and district testing against similar campuses with demographics and sub-populations that match ours in order to see the potential effectiveness of the program against those not utilizing it at other campuses. The process is going to take at a minimum of 1 year, and potentially 2, as it would then give us a strong set of data and adequate research in regards to the integration of technology since the entire US History group is following a technology rich curriculum specifically developed to research the above topic.