Don't Forget To Check Your Facts!

Today our lovely librarian, Nadine, visited class to give us some information about conducting research for our Mythbusters project. I was unfortunately recovering from an accident at work that sent me to the ER, three stitches in my hand later I am catching up with the rest of the class. Thankfully, conducting research in psychology, my major, is very similar to conducting research in the field of education. For example, researchers of psychology love nothing more than "peer-reviewed" articles. A peer reviewed article is an article that contains: an abstract, introduction, methods, data, conclusion, and discussion. All of this information helps the psychologist learn more about the experiment that was conducted, but the most essential part is the fact that the research was " reviewed" by at least three experts on the research topic. Peer-reviewed articles can take years to be published, because several fact checking are at hand in order to ensure accurate information. To retrieve these kinds of articles researchers use PsychInfo or ERIC. 

In regards to my project, I prefer to use data sources like PsychInfo and ERIC. I think that it would be useful to see the research that has been conducted on students that have had to complete the " online schooling graduation requirement" and how it has effected their overall high school education or even how the requirement impacts their college options/ university academic career. I think that ERIC will be especially helpful, because it specifically targets research done in the field of education. Additionally, ERIC allows me to specify research done in certain school distracts, which is essential since I am interested in the state of Florida and their school distracts. Maybe, I will even find some research conducted in my alma matar school distract ( shout out to Broward County Schools)! 

Though I am a big supporter of peer-reviewed articles, I also like to read just regular journal articles. Regular journal articles do not have to looked over by an academic and can appear even in magazines. I think that it will be important to use these kinds of articles because these articles offer more of an opinion, rather than scientific logic/data. In my opinion, I think it is important to gather different points of view in order best understand a subject. A good resource for gathering journal articles, is "Education Research Complete". Education Research Complete allows researcher to search for popular press articles in the field of education. Thus, this would be a viable resource if I was searching for a superintendent's statement about online schooling. 

All in all, I am very excited to start the research process and get to the bottom of this online schooling business! 

You Got Answers!

     Since my last blog post, I have shared with some of my favorite Florida educators my topic of research. Surprisingly, many of the educators I spoke with are not as opposed to the online graduation requirement as I am. They brought up how cost effective having classes online is, how convenient online coursework can be for some students, and most importantly how the option allows students to learn at their own pace.  Thus, these points raised some new areas that I would like to research under the umbrella of the new graduation requirement. 

    Ultimately, my research questions is " Why is taking a course online a graduation requirement?" Under this broad question I have several smaller research questions. The smaller research questions include;What are cost-effective benefits of this initiative,  Are these courses equipped to replace "in classroom" courses, How does this effect the state's collegiate level? 

    In order to conduct this research, I think it would be most effective to gather testimonials from students that have had to complete this requirement and are now in college. Though self-report methods can be biased, self-report is the best way to gain a lot of information that is not quantitatively based. Additionally, I think it would be interesting to see if any academic journals have been written about this topic; even, just online schooling in general. 

Florida Power On, Or No Diploma!

        It was not long ago that I was sitting in a high school classroom. I remember taking notes, taking tests, and turning in projects. All of these tasks had one thing in common, other than being school related of course, I did all of these things by hand and in front of my instructor. Four years have passed, and I am hearing all sorts of new thing going on at my alma matar. First, students have been given chrome-books to use during school through the " 1:1 Initiative" . Second, it is now a graduation requirement in the state of Florida for students to complete at-least one course online.  

My research question stems from this new graduation requirement. " Why is it mandatory requirement for students to complete at least one course online?" I am so interested in this question, mostly because I am so against online schooling. I think that it takes a certain kind of student to take an online course and I also think that not all subjects can be taught through a computer screen. I know myself as a student and I know that I am the kind of student that needs the face to face instruction of a traditional classroom. 

I have a theory about why Florida is instituting the online course requirement, which I could be totally wrong. I think that instituting the new high school online graduation requirement is a preparatory measure towards what students at the university level face.  Through my high school classmates, that chose to stay at a Florida state institution, I have gathered that many university students are forced to take a class online. I can't help but feel frustrated for my friends, nothing would make me more angry than taking a Chemistry class online while paying a hefty tuition fee. Thus, because of the large student populations at state universities, students are being forced to take courses online. 

In order to explore this more, I plan on looking at press releases from the school board and statistics from Florida's state universities. I think it would also be interesting to hear from students themselves, at the high school and college level. What do they think about taking courses online? Am I really the only one that needs that face to face interaction? 

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