This case study provides an opportunity to apply the strategies you just have learned.

Read the following case study. Then answer questions about it in the spaces provided. Click "View the Answers of Your Peers" if you want to compare your answers with those of other users of OERL. Click "View the Expert's Answers" if you want to compare your answers with those of experts.

Keep in mind that because evaluations are complex tasks, the expert's analyses are not the only plausible ones that can be made.

Technology Mentoring Project

A university is completing the fifth year of a peer-mentoring project in which faculty members who want to use technology in their classes are mentored by more technologically experienced faculty. The primary goal of the project is to encourage faculty to use more technology in their classrooms, a change in instructional practice that hopefully will bring about increases in student learning and motivation.

Trainees attend a two-week summer institute, followed by one year of monthly classroom observations and debriefing sessions conducted by their mentor.

Focus group interviews with selected trainee faculty participants during the middle of the academic year revealed that there is variability in the way the trainee faculty members implement the project. The variances have to do with:

• How many computers and types of software are available to each trainee faculty member.
• Whether the computers are available in a lab or in a classroom setting.
• What instructional methods the trainee faculty members use.

The evaluation will track the following indicators:

• How satisfied they are with the project.
• How they implemented technology in their classes.
• How their students benefited motivationally and academically from the increased use of technology.
• Background information about how long they have been teaching, how much they use computers outside the classroom, and how many courses they took during their own postsecondary education about either technology or curriculum development.

Will a questionnaire be an appropriate tool for collecting information on these questions? In the following pages you will consider each criterion that must be met in order to use a questionnaire.