|
Workshop Leader:
Damian Bebell
Educational measurement and evaluation can
play an important role in the development and
sustainability of any educational technology
initiative or school reform. Using examples from
numerous educational technology studies, this
session will provide a hands-on introduction for
the effective use of measurement, research, and
evaluation methods and tools for informing
day-to-day practices and demonstrating the
successes of your program.
First, this session will provide participants
strategies for framing their educational
technology agenda and setting expectations for
measurable results. Participants will learn
critical techniques for creating productive and
reasonable (i.e answerable) research questions
and avoid common pitfalls in establishing
research goals and outcomes. Specific examples
of research questions from past 1:1 computing
studies will further illustrate how the proper
establishment of questions and outcomes dictate
the later use of different methods and tools
required to show success. Participants will
learn basic steps for using different research
methods and be provided further resources for
more advanced investigations.
In this session, the speaker will demonstrate
how the formative use research tools can guide
and inform policies and practices within a
classroom, school, or larger educational
setting. Examples of data collection tools
commonly used in educational technology research
will be provided and discussed. Participants
will work with real world examples of student,
teacher, administrator, and parent surveys from
past studies, as well as classroom observation
rubrics, focus group scripts, and interview
protocols.
In addition, many of these same tools and
techniques are frequently applied to demonstrate
results and show outcomes for educational
technology investments and initiatives. A
concluding activity and discussion will examine
how educational technology research has
particularly struggled with identifying
appropriate outcome measures (especially the use
of standardized student assessments). Building
on participants own school goals and inputs,
this session will help attendees better
understand research processes used to help
schools maximize their ICT investments, better
plan and strategize, and evaluate the efficacy
and impact of their ICT investments and policy.
|
