Meghan Mosher's ePORTFOLIO
Step 5—Analyzing Data
Although data analysis often brings to mind the use of complex statistical calculations, this is rarely the case for the action researcher. A number of relatively user-friendly procedures can help a practitioner identify the trends and patterns in action research data. During this portion of the seven-step process, teacher researchers will methodically sort, sift, rank, and examine their data to answer two generic questions:
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What is the story told by these data?
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Why did the story play itself out this way?
By answering these two questions, the teacher researcher can acquire a better understanding of the phenomenon under investigation and as a result can end up producing grounded theory regarding what might be done to improve the situation.
Findings
As expected, students who chose to make a website outscored students who chose to make posters. In Period 4, websites outscored posters 91.07% to 86.25%. In Period 6, websites outscored posters 89.29% to 86.94%. In Period 7, websites outscored posters 90.00% to 84.62%. Overall, websites outscored posters 90.12% to 85.94%.
Websites dramatically outscored posters in the graphics and content sections of the rubric. As seen in the student work, websites included many more graphics than posters, including pictures, graphs, tables, charts, and maps. Websites also included other media that posters simply can't, like videos and links to other content.
Finally, while analyzing the student questionnaire results, there are two main reasons why students chose posters over websites. The first being that in their opinion posters were easier, and secondly, several students didn't know how to make a website.
These findings tell me that when incorporating technology and digitally-based assignments in my classroom, I need to include more opportunities for scaffolding so that all of my students are able to create a digital product and can take advantage of the benefits that technology and digital platforms offer.
