 |
Edited by Dr. David J. Ayersman, Mary
Washington College, and Dr. W. Michael Reed, New York University |
formerly Journal of Research on Computing in Education
Teacher Interaction
Motivating At-Risk Students in Web-Based High School Courses, Part
II
Stephen Lehman, Douglas F. Kauffman, Mary Jane White, Christy A.
Horn, Roger H. Bruning
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Setting The Course
A Writing Roadtrip, an introductory high school composition course
produced by the CLASS project, was selected because it provided an
opportunity for teachers and students to communicate at a personal
level. The course was designed to teach basic composition skills to
students with limited writing background. Divided into seven sections
(Figure 1)—each focusing on different genres such as short
stories, essays, and speech writing—the course provided multiple
writing opportunities and required a number of revisions for completion
of the course.
Figure 1. Splash screen of the beginning composition course A
Writing Roadtrip. Used with permission. Copyright © 1998,
University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Board of Regents.
All communication between students and the online teacher was
completed by e-mail, including assignments, revisions, questions, and
feedback from the teacher. Additionally, students could interact with
other students through chat rooms, electronic bulletin boards, and
e-mail. Because the course was not yet available for course credit,
students were paid for their participation.
The Setting
Students completed all work in a computer laboratory configured by
the research team to simulate a naturalistic setting such as a library
or community center. The lab contained eight computer stations equipped
with 200MHz and 300MHz PC computers loaded with the software necessary
to complete the course. Students needed to simply turn on their computer
and log onto the course.
The Teacher
The teacher assigned to teach the composition course had five years
of experience teaching high school special education in a local high
school but no prior experience teaching Web-based courses. The research
team trained the teacher to interact with students in a prescribed
manner by providing the theoretical rationale as well as multiple
examples of motivation-building and personal-investment enhancements.
The teacher was instructed to interact with students following the
parameters laid out in the training session. Because scripted responses
could not be used in this naturalistic setting, messages were reviewed
for fidelity to treatment. Fidelity to treatment analysis indicated that
the teacher’s interaction with students reliably represented the
appropriate condition. This analysis is discussed in greater detail in
the Procedures subsection.
Lab Monitors
Four graduate assistants acted as computer lab monitors. At least one
monitor was present at all times to assist participants with
technology-related questions and to observe participants’
interaction in the course. Lab monitors recorded behavioral observations
of each participant and daily reflections. Information regarding each
student’s experimental condition was available to lab monitors if
they chose to access it. To ensure that the online teacher was the
primary source of interaction, lab monitors were instructed to restrict
their interaction with the students as much as possible because of the
potential impact of their relationship with the student on engagement.
When students requested help from the lab monitors, lab monitors
instructed the student to call the technology help line or e-mail their
teacher. In two notable cases, lab monitors did intervene when a student
became excessively frustrated.
Procedures
Students worked a total of seven weeks in the course, four weeks in
their respective experimental condition and the final three weeks in
which all students were moved to the motivating and personally invested
condition. This functionally divided the experiment into two phases, an
experimental (data gathering) phase and a postexperimental phase. Prior
to the experimental phase students were oriented to the courses and to
the expectations of participation in the experiment. Students’
overall understanding was that their role was to provide information
regarding the course functionality to course developers. The orientation
consisted of a one-hour meeting in which students were introduced to the
lab monitors. They were told that their commitment was for approximately
50 hours of work over the summer. Additionally, they were informed that
they would be paid at the end of the experiment, but were free to leave
at any time with their pay prorated based on the number of hours they
worked.
Students were told that the researchers were more interested in their
best work than in their completion of the course. These instructions
were given to minimize possible influences related to time constraints.
Students were asked to schedule two-hour shifts each day of the week,
though some minor adjustments were made throughout the summer, students
for the most part kept their initially scheduled hours. On arrival each
day, students completed a timesheet and logged on to their course.
During the experimental phase, students worked through the writing
course at their own pace and received messages from the teacher
consistent with the experimental condition to which they were assigned.
All e-mail correspondence was gathered and stored in a relational
database for organizing, sorting, and storing.
To ensure that students received messages consistent with their
condition, a fidelity to treatment analysis was conducted to confirm
that the teacher had in fact delivered e-mails consistent with the
students’ experimental condition. After reviewing the teacher
training materials, two independent raters blind to the experimental
condition of the students rated a random sample of 72 teacher-to-student
e-mails. Using a 3-point Likert scale, they judged the messages on two
dimensions:
- the extent to which the message could be characterized as a
motivation-building interaction and/or
- as a caring/personally invested interaction.
Reliabilities were r = .42 for ratings on the
motivation-building dimension and r = .71 for ratings on the
caring/personal-investment dimension. Results showed that the
teacher’s e-mails were consistent with the condition in which the
students were placed (Figure 2). Messages from the motivation-building
conditions received higher motivation-building ratings, F(1, 68)
= 17.31, p <.01, while messages from the personal-investment
conditions received higher personal-investment ratings F(1, 68) =
26.44, p<.01. Additionally an interaction was observed between
motivation building and personal investment. Specifically, e-mails high
in motivation-building content were rated as more invested/caring than
those low in motivation-building content. In addition to ratings of
personal investment and motivation building, teacher messages were also
rated on the dimensions of content-related feedback and procedural
feedback. Motivation-building e-mails contained more content-related
feedback than personal-investment e-mails, F(1, 68) = 6.50,
p = .01.
Figure 2. Ratings of motivation-building and
personal-investment content of teacher e-mails to students.
After experiencing four weeks of teacher–student communication
consistent with the experimental conditions, all students were shifted
to the motivating and personally invested professional condition
where they stayed for the remainder of the experiment. Based on our
observations that there were in fact positive effects for both
motivation-building and personal-investment statements, we provided both
types of interaction to ensure that all students had as positive an
experience as possible.
Students were debriefed on their final day of working in the course
and completed a survey designed to elicit information regarding their
experiences in the course and perceptions of the teacher. Regarding the
course, students were asked to rate how much they learned, whether the
material was important to them, and how much they liked the course.
Questions regarding the teacher probed student perceptions of how
motivating and caring they believed the teacher to be.
Read
more...
Back
to Page 1
Copyright © 2001, ISTE (International Society for Technology
in Education). All rights reserved.
|
