[elearning] Query on iPad research ....

[Groves, Brett G]

That was a great response Ken, very thought provoking! I'm off to research the Hawthorne effect now! (As opposed to the Collingwood effect where one suffers from unrealistic optimism :))

Perhaps something that has been overlooked in this discussion, rather than relatively narrow measures of academic progress, is the affect on engagement and retention. I picked up one of my old Biology text books recently in a bookshelf clear out and was stunned by the lack of graphics and colour and the predominance of huge chunks of text. My immediate thought was how did I ever learn from this? I suspect this may well be analogous to what students from a digital generation feel when we ask them to use books as the primary  learning resource.

My greatest concern, and believe me there are days when I'm not a fan of 1:1, is that without reflecting what is occurring in the wider world school will simply lose its relevance to  adolescents completely at home with digital devices irrespective of whether we can demonstrate specific and measurable learning improvement. In some ways that broader imperative over arches the initial question. So rather than asking 'can we show a learning improvement by investing in those devices' it perhaps should be 'what can we do with the inevitable reality of these devices to maximise learning improvement.'

A little like arguing the relative utility of scrolls compared to a codex, it's irrelevant since the world has moved on from scrolls no matter what advantages over a book they may have been perceived to have enjoyed.

My 2 cents anyhow

Kind Regards,

Brett Groves
ICT Manager
Croydon Maroondah College
Croydon Campus

From: elearning-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:elearning-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of ken price
Sent: Wednesday, 5 September 2012 10:22 AM
To: elearning Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [elearning] Query on iPad research ....

Hi Kevork - a very interesting topic.

For a range of reasons it is not common for a pure experimental model (treatment and control group etc) to be used in educational settings. Plus, for almost anything involving new technology and students there is a massive Hawthorne effect - in broad terms students (and teachers) feel appreciated because they have been given some new toy and some other students haven't, and this affects their responses. Much of the derived effects have to be obtained from data obtained in real classrooms (with all the extraneous variables that involves) by removing other variables statistically. It's messy.

On top of this there is another question that needs to be considered (in my view anyway). As well as investigating "does this approach work?" we also need to consider "does this approach produce better outcomes than spending the equivalent amount in some other way?" ie an opportunity cost approach.

The question is not as simple as it looks. For example, a school could invest $1 000 000 a year in ICT or instead hire about 17 MORE teachers. Which would produce the best outcome? Could you convince your school of this?

The really interesting part is when you look at one of the approaches used in some Chicago and Washington(DC) public schools, where a different way to use the money was tried. It was, simply, to pay money directly to students based on their educational performance, the so-called "pay for grades" scheme. Improve your results, get extra money - waste your time, get nothing.  In some (but not all) settings this has worked remarkably well. See http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/story?id=6371073&page=1 and http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5635010&page=1  and http://www.cps.edu/News/Press_releases/2008/Pages/09_11_2008_PR1.aspx

Despite our personal views on the ethics of paying students to achieve, if we are talking about a significant investment in something like ICT and claiming it is an efficient way to improve learning, we need to be able to argue why it is better than (say) a "pay for grades" scheme. At some stage decisions like this fall into the hands of beancounters and (to be fair to them) they want to invest money in the best way.

Your other questions re what actual learning takes place is also very worthwhile, and is the sort of thing that invites personal experiences from teachers to build an overall picture (rather than a traditional research model)


Thanks for raising these important areas of discussion,

Ken
On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 8:13 AM, Kevork Krozian <kevork at edulists.com.au<mailto:kevork at edulists.com.au>> wrote:
Hi Folks,

Really interesting discussion. You make a great point Ziad.

The barometer I guess for many years has been John Hattie with his extensive work on "effect size" with 2 groups holding everything else as constant as possible except the one difference.
Quoting : The most prominent meta-meta-analyst in education is probably John Hattie<http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/staff/j.hattie>, whose work draws on "a total of about 800 meta-analyses, which encompassed 52,637 studies, and provided 146,142 effect sizes [...] these studies are based on many millions of students" (Hattie, 2009; 15) - http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/what_works.htm

Actually I recently compiled a long list of resources trying to separate digitization from eLearning - see http://delicious.com/kkrozian

I would be interested to hear further about what learning actually takes place rather than what application is used. The paper mentioned by Trudy is really worthwhile and I recommend people have a look at it as it does try to balance all the views.

I would also be very interested to hear from schools who have gone iPad 7 - 12 and how they have managed delivery of those studies that require more than what iPads have delivered to date such as VCE IT, media and existing web based flash based resources such as in LOTE, Maths, that have not been upgraded to date.
Are any schools using remote desktop from the student iPads to teach any of these classes ?


Kind Regards

Kevork Krozian
Edulists Creator Administrator
www.edulists.com.au<http://www.edulists.com.au>
tel: 0419 356 034

From: elearning-bounces at edulists.com.au<mailto:elearning-bounces at edulists.com.au> [mailto:elearning-bounces at edulists.com.au<mailto:elearning-bounces at edulists.com.au>] On Behalf Of Ziad Baroudi
Sent: Tuesday, 4 September 2012 10:51 PM

To: elearning Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [elearning] Query on iPad research ....

Many argue that validity in the sense used by scientists cannot exist in most areas of educational research. I once read something written by Seymour Papert in which he says that something such as  "using a computer" is not a single variable we can study while keeping all else constant. The whole point of using a computer is that it changes everything.

Even when iPads have been around for a long time and meta-research is available on their "effect", we will be looking at an average "effective size" that brings together all kinds of different uses of the device. Two studies, one hugely successful and one hugely unsuccessful, may result in an average effect size that is close to zero. It would be more useful to look into the details of the successful study to see what practices we can adopt.

Sincerely,
Ziad.
On 4 September 2012 21:33, Hutchison, Geoffrey G <hutchison.geoffrey.g at edumail.vic.gov.au<mailto:hutchison.geoffrey.g at edumail.vic.gov.au>> wrote:
Good luck Kevork on finding valid education research. Very little is valid
in the sense that double blind trials are almost non-existent and the use of
control groups rare.

Virtually all education research is anecdotal in terms of evidence, and thus
invalid in terms of true research.

Geoff Hutchison,
McGuire College


On 4/09/12 6:24 PM, "Kevork Krozian" <kevork at edulists.com.au<mailto:kevork at edulists.com.au>> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
>    If I may ask a very broad question, is anyone across recent research
> covering the impact of iPads and apps in learning
> achievement/improvement at any level ( primary, secondary, tertiary ) ?
>
> Specifically, I am wondering if there is a control group of any type such
> as alternate tablets, mobile devices,  netbooks, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro
> etc etc.
>
> Additionally I am wondering if a baseline is used in the study such as "
> Both groups, control and iPad users entered the study at VELS level x. At
> the end of the study the control group was at y and the iPad users were at
> z on the VELS or any other measurement used".
>
> Generalized findings such as students showed improvement in confidence
> with the use of technology or could read better ( than what ? not having
> any technology or having a laptop or working in labs ? ) will not be as
> useful IMHO.
>
> It is a topic that has come up in discussion and I am looking for both
> research as well as anecdotal evidence from schools on the iPad journey if
> I may please.
>
> Kind Regards
> Kevork
>
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