· What perspectives did the 3 new research articles offer?
· How do they inform your study and methodology? · How do they relate to your driving question? This week I read three articles which contained studies by Bruce Lander and Elizabeth Cudney and Julie Ezell. Two of the three studies were carried out by Bruce Lander who based his research on Japanese students who were learning English. These articles were much more general than previous articles I have read, only two of the research studies contained Quizlet, and one of those was in combination with other programs/apps. The first study by Bruce Lander was carried out to see if adding a blended learning component would aid professional development and improve student ability. There were two groups who were following an identical syllabus. Group A worked in the computer lab for both semesters and Group B worked in a regular classroom for the first semester and then in the computer lab for the second semester. The study suggested that technology can enhance student test scores and raise teacher and student awareness of technology. Technology, according to this study, can change student opinion from a negative stance to a more positive one. It mentioned that there were issues with the study, such as how tech savy the learner is, and it also suggested that using the computers/technology may be too much for computer-illiterate students. This is not something that I had at all considered. When in class at school I think I probably take it for granted that my students know how to use Quizlet and know what its capabilities are, but maybe they don’t? I have never really sat down with them and explained all of the features on the app. Also it raised the issue of how many people actually have smartphones and so have the ability to use this app. At Justin-Siena each student is issued a school-IPAD so I know that they do have access to the app at least at school, but at home they may not, depending on their internet connection. The second study I read was also conducted by Bruce Lander, again with Japanese students. Again it compared 2 groups of students with no prior experience of Quizlet. Each student had to create word lists which they could autonomously use at home and were asked to use Quizlet for the entirety of their one year course. They were surveyed at the end of the year and asked if they felt that Quizlet was a useful learning tool. The majority of the comments were positive, and critical comments were very much in the minority. He used a program called Wordminer to help him define those positive and negative comments in Japanese. For both studies done by Bruce Lander, he used 2 groups of students, but I am not going to be doing that, so I am wondering if my study is now going to be less effective. Unfortunately, I don’t have two parallel groups to compare, my other classes are higher level. The reason I chose my French 1 class was because they have no real prior knowledge of French so I thought the results would be more true when learning new vocabulary. In my other classes I have native Spanish speakers who already know vocabulary prior to it being taught in class, and so I thought the study would be less effective. Another issue I hadn’t considered is the fact that students will use the Quizlet app with me in class, and then also they will use it autonomously at home to help them study. However, I will not know how long they are using the app at home, and how they are using it. Some students may use it very little, some may use it a lot. When the students take the test they may have studied for different amounts of time, and so depending on their abilities, they may do better or worse on the test. In my survey I do ask how much time they spend using Quizlet in a week, so maybe I can try and look at that when I analyze my test results. I haven’t included a question about general studying though, so I may look to re-write, or add a question to include this. The third study I looked at was by Elizabeth Cudney and Julie Ezell. It evaluated the impact of teaching methods on student motivation. 6 different types of teaching methods were used: face to face lectures, Ted-Ed videos, Quizlet, scoop, Group Projects and Homework assignments. The students were then given a survey at the end of the semester to analyze motivation. There were 28 questions in the survey – I only have 9 questions - also their questions were much more content-based re: the subject matter taught than mine are. It asked questions about their class material and if it challenged them and also if they could apply what they learned to future employment. My questions deal with student experiences with Quizlet, not learning a foreign language itself. I think that surveys are so subjective and it really depends on the spread of students that you get in your class, as to what kind of answers you might get. I have a broad range of abilities, but if I did this study with an honors class, would I get the same kind of results I wonder? I think it is really hard to measure motivation too, and it is such a personal thing. A part of my study was to evaluate how learning is enhanced with Quizlet, but as it is so subjective I am wondering if it may be difficult to gain clear results from just one class of students. I also feel that I need to become more equipped with how I am going to present the results of the data – charts, figures etc, as looking at all three of these studies, it is much so much more complex than I had imagined.
2 Comments
Catalina J Goldstein
10/28/2018 02:50:56 pm
I'm wondering if you can have students track their quizlet usage at home or if you can see if through the quizlet website. I'm not sure how that works.
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JP
10/29/2018 12:09:21 am
One thing that I am learning is that ( at least what I am learning from Happy and Roger ) it is okay if we are finding our question, and even the means at which we are gathering data could prove to be problematic - and that is okay! It is all part of the process! It willl give us stuff to write about! This all came to mind when you mentioned that you might not be able to track their usage of Quizlet at home.
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AuthorI am a French & Spanish teacher at Justin-Siena High School wanting to get new ideas to motivate my students. Archives
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