Assignment 7, Research Ideas

In my current position of Math Curriculum Specialist for the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, I work with students that are in Alternative Education and Juvenile Court School settings. Recently, we have adopted a program called Acellus, which involve online videotaped math instruction in all subject from basic math through Calculus. My research interest is to determine if this program can positively impact student learning in math and student achievement.

The questions I would ask in forming the research is as follows:

1. How do we select students to participate in the research (experimental group)?
2. How do we define and/or measure student progress?
3. How much time do students access the program?
4. What type of demographics do we collect on students?
5. How long do we conduct the study?
6. How do we ensure that teachers involved are trained and continue to have access to technology to conduct research.

Possible research model:

Based on the annotated bibliography provided in Assignment 6, I would first select teachers that would volunteer to become familiar with the Acellus program and would have access to the necessary technology for students to participate in the online program. Students would have to be randomly selected for the control and the experimental group. The control group would receive math instruction face to face. The experimental group would receive Acellus online instruction. For the research, we may have to provide both forms of instruction, depending on what parents asked for - this is a potential limitation of the research model.

Within our school system, we currently use Star Math and Star Reading to determine the grade level that each student functions at. This test is administered when a student first arrives and every 40 days they remain with us. The test is norm-referenced and could serve as a measure to determine academic progress in math. The testing could be performed over the course of one year to determine its effectiveness - given that students only come to us if they have been either expelled or arrested, this is another potential limitation to the research model.

The type of demographics to be collected on students would include age, ethnicity, sex, and also grade level, as well as reading and math level. Correlations could be determined to exist between age (due to maturity), and reading level - research indicates that illiteracy inhibits math acquisition. Other correlations may be considered as further questioning about the research evolves.

A survey could also be used to determine what students liked or disliked about the Acellus online program, to determine the possible components of the program that were effective or ineffective in helping students learn. Such information would be very useful to determine what qualities of online education programs were effective with the population of students so accustomed to failing in the traditional settings.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated from the bloggers in the audience.