Over the past seven blog posts, I have documented the process of my action research project which is part of the Masters in Educational Technology program at York College of Pennsylvania. Through the course of my study, I have researched and tested the concept of student choice as it relates to class assignments. I sought to prove that the inclusion of educational technology formats, such as EdPuzzle and WebQuest, in interactive personalized learning methods increased both student choice and engagement in how they learn. This final post will summarize my experience, my results, and how to proceed.
To provide some background into the context of my study, for the majority of 2020 the entirety of America has been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to this pandemic, my school district opened with distance learning, fully remote. Classes remained remote with the exception of the first two weeks of November. My school tried to bring students back to the building, but positive case numbers rose again causing classes to go back to remote. During those two weeks in November, being in-person allowed me to provide my students with better support and clarification. During distance learning, the main challenge I foresaw was student engagement. Students primarily worked asynchronously with remote synchronous classes twice a week. While distance learning did have an impact on student engagement, I was successful in engaging an adequate number of students from both the test and control groups to provide sufficient data for my study.
The data provided interesting insight into my students’ minds in regards to student choice and educational technology. After applying the t-test to my data samples, I discovered that there was no significant difference between the test and control groups. The difference between the mean scores of these groups was only 0.24, less than one. Additionally, there was the same level of participation with both groups for Activity #2, the Amendment Project. The lack of choice did not seem to have an effect on the control group. This may be due to those students having more intrinsic motivation versus those in the test group. Those intrinsically motivated are more likely to complete assignments.
When given a choice between edtech and the textbook, all students in the control group chose edtech, in this case, either EdPuzzle or Webquest. In contrast to this evidence, the survey data shows that 83% of students want to have both online and traditional options. This can be explained by the survey response that 53% of students still find edtech to be confusing. As I shared in a previous post, that confusion may be attributed to being thrown into remote learning last March without enough in-person training on edtech applications.
In conclusion, 82% of students said having the option to choose increases their interest in the assignment. Additionally, the majority of students agree that online resources increase their engagement, especially if it is beneficial to their future. That said, choice is still very new to students and the evidence suggests students are still picking and not choosing. The likelihood of students choosing over picking increases with the value of those options. Teachers can analyze how students associate feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness by tracking the assignments they choose. Other studies, as shared by Katz and Assor, found that choice did not necessarily promote engagement. However, when a choice was offered in a way that the students valued, it was found to enhance motivation and learning. What students perceive as being highly valuable is probably not the act of choosing, but the value of the options to their personal goals. Then the choice becomes motivating and increases engagement.
The importance of students learning how to handle choices goes beyond high school life. The key is to provide guidance and limitations when doing so. Teachers need to provide more scaffolding, starting with relatively simple choices. Already, students experience
choice when choosing partners, topics, resources, and seating. When modeling the decision making process, teachers should remind students of occasions
when they already used choice and demonstrate how to apply those techniques to assignments. This is then partnered with more instruction on how to use edtech resources.
While this study provided additional data on the impact of choice as it relates to the effectiveness of educational technology in the classroom and student engagement, there is still more to be learned. Future research includes conducting the survey again in the spring to compare the impact of time of year. It will also be beneficial to look across multiple years. I predict that as students become more acclimated to edtech, the survey results will shift. The pandemic definitely influenced the results of this study, so it may be advantageous to compare these results to a normal year. Lastly, this study was conducted in an urban school district. How might these results differ if this study is conducted in a rural and/or suburban district? Economic background and community setting could potentially have an influence on the comfort level of students with edtech.
Educational technology is not a fad to be replaced in the next five years. It is a pedagogy that will continue to evolve and improve. Personalized learning, of which student choice is one element, continues to gain popularity in the field of education. These two pedagogy practices combine to provide students with agency and empowerment as they proceed into their future in this twenty-first century.
Sources:
Assor, Avi & Katz, Idit. (2007). When choice motivates and when it does not. Educational
Psychology Review. (19)429. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/
Gehr, Lauren (February 11 2020). How to make student choice work. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-make-student-choice-work
Parker, F., Novak, J, & Bartell, T. (October 1 2017). To engage students, give them meaningful choices in the classroom. Phi Delta Kappan 99 (2), 37-41.
Wolpert-Gawron, H. (2017). Just ask us: Kids speak out on student engagement. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Excellent post Stacy. As we discussed it is not the job of a researcher or tech leader to find a positive result during an assessment. It is our job to find evidence that illuminates the reality of integrating technology. In this instance, the technology intervention you assessed, the use of tech-facilitated choice boards in instruction, did not lead to differences in the learning experiences for students. As you describe in your post, there are many factors that contributed to this. Yes, a longer duration study with a larger population could potentially yield different results. Yes as well, the suspension of face-to-face activity wrought by Covid decreased the amount of differences in the experiences of your two groups. That sa…