Tong Feng's ePortfolio
Action research
In ETEC 543, I learned about action research. Action research is any systematic research conducted by relevant personnel in education to gather information on how teachers teach and how students learn (Mills, 2011). The purpose of action research is to make decisions and to solve problems. There are two types of action research: participatory and practical. For data analysis, action research pays attention to practicality (Abao, 2017).
Action research has four stages and nine steps:
Planning
Acting
Developing
Reflecting
Identify and limit topic
Collecting data
Develop an action plan
Share and communicate the results
Gather information
Analyzing data
Reflect on the research process
Review literature
Develop a research plan
Source: Mertler, C. (2014). Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications.
Traditional research
Traditional research was conducted by researchers. Traditional research involves investigations or experiments aimed at discovering and interpreting situation. Usually, the finding can be inferred to other settings. Traditional research includes qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method (McMillan, 2016). The purpose of traditional research is to obtain conclusions. For data analysis, traditional research pays attention to statistical significance (Abao, 2017).
In ETEC 643, I learned about educational research. The process and structure of educational research are as follows:
Source: McMillan, J. H. (2016). Fundamentals of educational research (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Quantitative and qualitative research
Quantitative research is used to obtain some numerical data that can be transformed into usable statistics (DeFranzo, 2011). It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research. Quantitative data can be collected by surveys and tests.
Qualitative research is used to obtain some narrative data such as opinions and motivations. Qualitative data can be collected by focus groups, individual interviews, and observations.
Data collection techniques
Data analysis techniques
Qualitative
Quantitative
Qualitative
Quantitative
Observations
Surveys
Coding scheme
Descriptive Statistics:
central tendency, frequency
Interviews
Questionnaires
Inferential Statistics:
t test and chi-square test
Content analysis
Journals
Checklists
Existing documents
Tests
Evidence
In this project, we focused on the challenges of Asian International students in online courses. The purpose of this project is to investigate the main challenges for Asian International students in the online learning environment and to know their perception on online courses. The participants of this research are 30 Asian International students at CSUSB. We collected and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data, and we found language proficiency was one of the main challenges of Asian International students in online courses at CSUSB.
In this project, I focused on the perceptions of learners on using mobile applications to learn a second language. The purpose of this project is to investigate learners’ perceptions on using mobile applications to learn a second language at CSUSB and to know the difference between learners’ perceptions of using mobile applications to learn a second language in different age, gender, and academic status. The participants of this research are students who use mobile applications to learn a second language at CSUSB. The results of qualitative and quantitative data analysis showed that most of participants had positive attitudes toward using mobile applications to learn a second language and there was no statistically significant difference between learners’ perceptions of using mobile applications to learn a second language in different age, gender, and academic status.
Reflection
In ETEC 543, I obtained how to do action research. I acquired action research included nine steps. Also, this is my first research course, I learned a lot from the group project.
In ETEC 643, I followed the process of traditional education research to conduct a research. First, I chose a research topic and reviewed some literatures. Second, I proposed the research questions and decided to use mixed-method design to conduct the research. Third, I collected both quantitative data and qualitative data. Then, I analyzed the quantitative data by using Excel and qualitative data by coding scheme. After gaining the findings, I used member checking and peer review to improve the validity of my research. After that, I wrote the discussion and conclusion. Most importantly, I obtained the discussion part include summary and interpretations of results and the conclusion part include implications, recommendation and limitation.
References
Abao, J. (2017, Sep. 23). What is the difference between action research and traditional research? Retrieved
from: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-action-research-and-traditional-research
DeFranzo, S. E. (2011, Sep. 16). What's the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?
Retrieved from https://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/qualitative-vs-quantitative-research/
McMillan, J. H. (2016). Fundamentals of educational research (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Mertler, C. (2014). Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators (4th ed.). (pp. 1-324).
Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications.
Mills, G. (2011). Action research: A guide for the teacher researcher (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson