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Analysis Process

The table below contains report excerpts (right column) accompanied by annotations (left column) identifying how the excerpts represent the Analysis Process Criteria.

Annotations Report Excerpts
 

Excerpt 1 [Developing a Technology Enhanced Guided Inquiry Workbook for Beneral Chemistry, Iowa State University]

Qualitative Analysis:
Decribes use of observation method

Two independent observers observed fourteen teaching assistants over an eight- week period. Each of the laboratory periods was a 3-hour sessions, enabling three 15 minute observations per laboratory period to occur. This resulted in sixty separate observations for each teaching assistants to be completed. The teaching assistants were then ranked in terms of their ability to successfully implement the inquiry strategies and dialogic processes required. The 14 teaching assistants were initially ranked as high or low implementation.

Using the Tukey Honestly Significance Difference procedure for testing hypothesis about all pairwise contrasts (Neter, Kutner, Nachtshem, Wasserman, 1996) a number of important results were obtained. These included:

  • Implementation of appropriate pedagogy was important for student success. On the ACS California Diagnostic test, at the beginning of the semester, there was no significant difference between students in sections taught by teaching assistants. On completion of the laboratory course there was a significant difference between sections taught by high implementing teaching assistants (M= 70.81, SD= 13.87) compared to low implementing teaching assistants (M= 64.38, SD= 19.72), t (236) = 2.953, p < .05. An effect size (CohenĘs d) of 0.38 was obtained.
  • The implementation of the SWH approach was of significant benefit for females and was able to close the gender gap. At the beginning of the course, there was a significant difference in favor of males (males M= 62.73, SD= 15.27, females M= 56.47, SD= 12.10) t (285) = -3.812, p < .05. At the completion of the semester, there was no significant difference between males and females on the ACS End of Semester 1 test. The effect size due to gender was reduced from 0.45 to 0.04 from the start to the end of the semester.
  • The gap between high-achievers, in the top half of the student population on ACS California Diagnostic test, and low-achievers with bottom half of student population on ACS California Diagnostic test, was greatly reduced using the SWH approach. While there was a significant difference between these two groups on both the pre (high achievers M= 74.20, SD= 9.05, low achievers M= 50.86 SD= 8.21) t (285) = -22.50, p < .05 and post- test (high achievers M= 76.15, SD= 16.77, low achievers M= 64.51 SD= 15.01) t (217) = -5.20, p < .05 there was a reduction in the effect size. The effect size due to ability on the pre-test was 2.70. On the post-test the effect due to ability had been reduced to 0.74; that is, the SWH approach had helped to reduce the gap between the low and high achievers.
Using an improvement score (IS) calculation (Hake, 2003) [IS= gain / potential gain = (Post-test score- pre-test score)/ (1- pre-test score)] we were able to determine where the benefits of the SWH approach had occurred. Two important interactions are described below:
  • The interaction between gender and level of achievement indicated that in terms of Improvement Score high- and low-achieving females and low-achieving males had similar scores while high-achieving males did not improve.