Locke, Spirduso & Silverman, 1993

Locke, L. F., Spirduso, W. W., & Silverman, S. J. (1993). Proposals that work: A guide for planning dissertations and grant proposals, 3rd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Chapter 1: The function of the proposal

• Introducing the study
• Stating the question
• Providing a rationale
• Formulating questions or hypotheses
• Delimitations and limitations
• Providing definitions
• Discussing the background of the problem
• Explaining procedures
• Providing supplementary materials

Specimen Proposal 3:

Introduction
What reading is
Not all people read

Purpose of Study
To examine an intervention for reading
Without reading interventions

Rationale for Study, Supports Purpose
Importance of reading
Importance of reading improvement

Need for Study
Societal examples of reading interventions
Interventions seem to work
Little known of effectiveness of reading interventions
Assessing effectiveness lies in certain behaviors

Background of Study
History of assessments and their reliability
Assessments improved
Background to the proposed assessment

Lit Review

Statement of Problem
Situation that needs intervention
Theory-based intervention
Intervention stable enough to ask following questions:
Can students with adequate vocab skills be trained to generate good questions?
Will improvement in question-asking result in improved reading comprehension and reading recall when told to use intervention?
Description of intervention
Previous research on this intervention
Critique of those studies
Evidence that supports current design of proposed intervention
Justifying a research design choice

Restate Question
State Hypotheses
Method
Overview of Research Design
etc..

Locke, Silverman & Spirduso, 1998

Locke, L. F., Silverman, S. J., & Spirduso, W. W. (1998). Reading and
understanding research. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.

From chapter 7
5 basic questions
What is the report about?
How does the study fit into what is already known?
How was the study done?
What was found?
What do the results mean?

Pedometer II

M 0.78
T 2.33
W 1.33
R 1.76
F 2.32
S 1.48

M 1.96
T 1.76
W 0.80
R 1.32
F 3.51
S 1.18
S 0.60
M 1.89 1.30.2006

This Old House & Product Research

They visit a bathroom products company. In making toilets, they spend
time first in design, then once created measure reliability and
performance. This is the playbook that education should steal from.

Behind the Scenes: GOInquire Skypecast

Here's the equipment that we're using.
Teleforum conference phone
Actiontec internet phone wizard
Sony st-10 digital recorder
(Camcorder only used as a stand)

Citation Index Idea

The goal is to create a sharable platform for publishing citation notes. Using Blogger, I post one entry per citation. The subject, or post title, is the shortened in-text APA citation. The first paragraph is the full citation. The next paragraph are short notes. More extensive notes can be accomplished by linking to a word document.

Advantages of this platform, are global sharing and interoperability. The latter point meaning many different types of communication tools can post to the same platform. Most of my entries were posted via Sidekick, a smartphone that is set up for mobile blogging. Entries can also be posted via email, web browser, even telephone -though wouldn't follow structure. Once established, the published pages can be syndicated via del.icio.us RSS, a kind of user-generated citation index channel.

Pintrich, Mckeachie, Yu & Hofer, 1995

The role of motivation and self-regulated learning in math and science
classroom. Earli, nijmegen.

Landis & Pirro, 1977

Landis, L. M. & Pirro, E. B. (1977). Required/elective student differences in course evaluations. Teaching Political Science, 4, 405-422.

Should laboratory instructors be judged by the same measures as lecturers or field experiences?

Structural variables that might operate to promote differential perceptions.

In college, courses are populated by students fulfilling a requirement and freely choosing as elective.

This was an evaluation study at one university, over 16 courses, 444 responses, in spring and summer sessions. % required students varied from 13.3 to 100.

Variables included student perceptions of clarity of objectives, organization of course, professor's knowledge, range of interest, classroom technique, clarity of assignments, ability to interest students, professor skills, mannerisms and willingness to help, fairness in grading, attention to student product, recognition of limitations, clarity of speech, overall estimate of professor, of course. 14 of 16 factors showed that the elective higher score differences above required courses were statistically significance and beyond random chance.

Mauch & Park, 2003

Mauch, J. E., & Park, N. (2003). Guide to the successful thesis and dissertation: A handbook for students and faculty, 5th ed. New York: Marcel Dekker.

From Chapter 4: Preparation of the Proposal
1. Tentative title (What do you call what you want to do?)
Secondary science teachers' goals and tasks assigned in required versus elective courses.
2. Why do you want to do it? What will you be able to say or do when you are through?
I would like to say that school-level structural variables can influence the nature of goals-setting and task complexity. If true, antecedant factors can create a condition of resistant to science reform.
3. What steps will you have to take?
Identify previous studies in relation to the concept of goal-setting for teachers. Identify relevant instruments, if any. Create survey instrument. Access relevant sample. Administer instrument.
4. What kinds of help will you need?
Need help with the writing of all aspects of the research proposal. Need help with all aspects of instrument creation and validity. Need help accessing relevant sample. Need help with statistical analysis.
5. Will the project involve people other than yourself?
See #4 above.
6. What would a particular day be like at the beginning, partway through, at the end?
Beginning: HSRB, getting list of teachers, working on instrument, reviewing literature. Partway through, administering instrument, prepare database for analysis. Towards end, running statistical analysis, writing discussion.
7. How could you prove it to someone else?
Because little work has been done in this area, the argument and results need to be clear and consistent.

I. Introduction
1 or 2 pages. Describe study and why it is important.
II. The problem
A. Rationale, significance, or need of study
Link to Intro. Then 3 or 4 sentences about purpose, chief reason, potential value, and urgency.
B. Theoretical framework for the proposed study
It should be made clear whether framework is pragmatic, eclectic or focused on single theory.
Framework should be stated with references to primary sources.
C. Statement of the problem
State your concept of the problem. Build on the intro to provide info on reasons why study is
proposed, what it should accomplish, and the anticipated outcomes. Problem statement
follows the purpose statement. Expressed as question or statement. Give essential info about
scope of the study, and suggests how study will be carried out.
D. Hypotheses, theories, research questions to be investigated
E. Delimitations, limitations
Limit may affect study but not under researcher control. Delimit usually size or nature of
group.
F. Definition of terms
G. Summary
III. Review of the literature
A. Historical overview of theory and research literature
B. Theory and research literature specific to dissertation topic
C. Research in cognate areas relevant to topic
D. Critique of validity of appropriate theory and research lit
E. Summary of what is known and unknown about topic
F. The contributions this study will make to the lit
IV. Research procedures
A. Methodology
B. Specific procedures
C. Population and Sampling
D. Instrumentation
E. Pilot work
F. Data collection
G. Treatment of data
H. Summary

Spade, Columba & Vanfossen, 1997

Spade, J. Z., Columba, L., & Vanfossen, B. E. (1997). Tracking in mathematics and science: Courses and course-selection procedures. Sociology of Education, 70, 108-127

Looking at 6 high schools matched across SES and average versus improved in scores. Found richer or excelling schools offered more higher level courses versus their matched counterparts. Advanced levels courses developed for "above average in ability, interest, and motivation" not getting what they need at the testing level. One department head, while carrying high standards, replied that no students were prepared for physics (presumably at 11th). Teachers, when involved, either assigned students to next course, or discussed with students. Though not usually involved.

Recommendations: More demanding courses, recruiting students into elective 11th grade courses. Offering choice at 9th grade, when it's usually required.

Farenga & Joyce, 1998

Farenga, S. J., & Joyce, B. A. (1998). Science-related attitudes and science course selection: A study of high-ability boys and girls. Roeper Report, 20, 247-251.

of those 111 Upper-elementary and middle school aged students there was a strong correlation between total number of courses selected and the factors of Enjoyment, Interest and Career in Science. Told to pick 5 courses out of 24 which they wanted to study next year.

Zuniga, Olson, & Winter, 2005

Zuniga, K., Olson, J. K. & Winter, M. (2005). Science education for rural Latino/a students: Course placement and success in science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42, 376-402.

Looked at tracking policies in science education at one high school in Iowa. No state standards for K-12. Tracking is extreme form of ability grouping. In this case, language. Students required to take 2 science courses. Of those sampled(N=101) 71.2% of Whites and 35.5% of Latinos took one or more science beyond requirements.

Among recommendations: Course placement should match career and college goals. Employ ESL science instructional strategies. Allow more time to complete courses, beyond 4 years.

Coley, 1999

Coley, R.J. (1999). Opporunity offered-Opporunity taken: Course-taking in American high schools. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Landis & Pirro, 1977

Landis, L.M., & Pirro, E.B. (1977). Required, elective student
differences in course evaluations. Teaching Poilitical Science, 4,
405�422.

Reynolds, 1991

Reynolds AJ. The middle schooling process: influences on science and
mathematics achievement from the longitudinal study of American youth.
Adolescence. 1991 Spring;26(101):133-58.

Motivation was weakly measured (2 questions) as "try harder in light of bad grades" and "try to do my best". Saw weak, but statistically significant, correlation with science achievement/readiness for future achievement. Classroom context was also weakly measured.

Feldman, 1978

Knneth A. Feldman September 1978 Course characteristics and college
students'' ratings of their teachers: What we know and what we don't.

Research in Higher Education Volume 9, Number 3 199 - 242

Course characteristics, like course size, course level, subject matter, time of day, and electivity seem to play a weak role discriminating student ratings of instructors. Interesting thought they raise is whether preexisting conditions about a teachers may be why they are assigned a course, and/or does the nature of the course influence teachers instructional decisions. Cases point that the latter does happen, while not necessarily true all the time.

Armour, Caffarella, Fuhrmann, & Wergin, 1987

Armour, R. A., Caffarella, R. S., Fuhrmann, B. S., & Wergin, J. F. (1987). Academic burnout: Faculty responsibility and institutional climate. In Peter Seldin, (Ed). Coping with faculty stress, pp. 3-12. New directions for teaching and learning, 29. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Recommendation include course reductions, unusual teaching assignments,
chance to teach a specialized group of students, e.g. Alumni, elderly,
high school students.

Zimmerman, 2001

Bj. Theories of self-regulated learning and academic achievment: an
overview and analysis. In bj zimmerman and dh schunk. Self-regulated
learning and academic achievement: theoretical perspectives, 2nd ed.
1-38. Mahwah, nj: lea.

Motivation to self-regulate: self-efficacy and goals, 2 cognitive
sources.

Alderman, 1999

Mk. Motivation for achievement: possibilities for teaching and learning.
Mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates.

Motivational effects of goal setting.
Directs attention.
Mobilizes effort.
Promotes persistence.
Promote development of plans and strats
Provide reference point.
See gaa

Brophy & Evertson, 1981

Je, cm. Longman, new york. Student characteristics and teaching.

Teacher behavior as a mediator of expectancy effects.

Kaplan, Middleton, Urdan, & Midgley, 2002

Kaplan, A., Middleton, M. J., Urdan, T., & Midgley, C. (2002) Achievement goals and goal structures. In C. Midgley (Ed.), Goals, goal structures, and patterns of adaptive learning (pp. 21-54). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

School level goal structures, environmental goal structures associated with motivational outcomes.

Svinicki, 2004

Md. Learning and motivation in the postsecondary classroom. Bolton, ma:
anker.

7 strats for enhancing student motivation.
Be a good role model.
Choose learning tasks with utility, challenge and interest value
Encourage self efficacy
Evaluate on progress or absolute to get mastery goal orientation
Attribute success to effort
Provide choice and control
High expectations.

Other models
Keller, 1999
Theall and franklin, 1999

Urdan, 2004.

T. Can achievement goal theory guide school reform? In pintrich and
maehr, motivating students, improving schools. Advances in motivation
and achievement, vol 13, 361-392.

Evidence that goal structures influence motivation and performance
directly. This evidence seems to be quite mixed.

Gilbert, 2002.

I. Essential motivation in the classroom. London, routledgefalmer.

Effective goal setting personal, present tense, positive. What do you
want? When do you want it? Start. Check and recheck. Enjoy the journey.
How can I motivate these kids?

Stipek, 2002

D. Motivation to learn: integrating theory and practice, 4th ed. Boston:
allyn and bacon.

Maximizing intrinsic motivation thru tasks, evaluation, control, and
classroom climate.
Student understand that reasoning behind task.
Challenging tasks.
Own pace. Include all levels of task difficulty.
Include Authentic intellectual problem solving.
Multidimensional tasks.
Require active participation, exploration, and experimentation.
Include complex, novel or surprise in tasks.
Tasks are link to student interests.
Allow choice.
Opportunity to collaborate.
Vary tasks.

Deemphasize external, grades, summative.
Emphasize effort, improvement, and standards rather than relative
performance.
Emphasize info inside grades.
Grades are claer and fair.
Substantive, informative feedback.

Allow as much as they can handle.
Design own tasks.
Choice in how tasks are completed.
Choice in difficulty level.
Choice in standard of completion.
Personal goal setting.
Monitor understanding not behavior.
Give help to facilitate student autonomy.
Hold students accountable.

Treat errors as part of learning.
Model enthusiasm.
Community of learners.

Gurtner, Monnard, & Genoud, 2001

Gurtner, J., Monnard, I., & Genoud, P. A. (2001). Towards a multilayer model of context and its impact on motivation. In S. Volet & S. Jarvela (Eds.), Motivation in learning contexts: Theoretical advances and methodological implications (pp. 189-208). Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science.

Levels of context. Micro-lesson, meso-classroom, exo-school, macro-world.

Smith & Spurling, 2001

Smith, J., & Spurling, A. (2001). Understanding motivation for lifelong
learning. London, UK: Campaign for Learning.

Towards a long term motivational strategy.
Supply side. Sustaining learners' motivation during the learning process
and its coping and reflective stages, improving learning products and
supporting services, and matching them close to motivations.
Free-standing information and guidance providers would also have a
larger role in assisting clients with their rpoject goals and their
longer term learning strategies through an ongoing supportive
relationship.

Wiseman & Hunt, 2001

Wiseman, D.G., Hunt, G.H. (2001). Best practice in motivation and management in the classroom. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas.

Teacher's goals can have a specific impact on a student's motivation.
Teacher should remember that they frequently identify goals for their
students that their students do not identify for themselves. To the
degree that students accept these goals as their own and see them as
being achievable and important.

Teacher expectation, what teachers think their students will be able to
accomplish.

Wlodkowski, 1999

Wlodkowski, R.J. (1999). Enhancing adult motivation to learn: A comprehensive guide for teaching all adults, Revised ed. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass

Table 8.1 summary of motivational strategies.

Without the motivation to learn, there is no learning.

Quick Sift

The books on the left were not relevant. The turned down books yielded
something on relevance. Now comes the hard work.

Gappa, 1987

The stress-producing working conditions of part-time faculty.

Upset about last preference in work load and assignment. Gappa, 1984a
they largely teach high-enrollment, lower division courses. Their
personal high standards of teaching cause anxiety, and insufficient time
of prep, individualization, and course material and syllabi development
time.

ASP.NET 2.0 Changes Everything for TOA

I'm going to document the things I'm implementing, experimenting, designing, coding to the underbelly of TOA. Hopefully people will notice nothing, as I've implemented these changes in such a way as to recreate the current interface.

List of Features

• Send Email using System.Net.Mail
• This took me a week to figure out and get working. 2.0 deprecated (made obsolete) the use of System.Web.Mail class to send mail. While the code still works, it is longer supported, less secure and less feature rich. The test were conducted in a folder called mailtest on TOADev. The web form originally had the script included in the page. Once I got it working, I converted it to a code-behind class. The mailform.aspx page is just the web form now. If you look at the VBscript, you can see it simply opens up a mail message object. Then I fill in basic part of the message, the From, To, Subject and Body from the web form. Originally, I had these hard coded. Then I create a new object to open up the smtp connection. You can see that the server settings are not hard coded here. They use the default settings, which I set in the web.config file. Then send it. In the near future I want to add Attachment capabilities. Also add validity checks to this code, like an invalid or missing email address.
  
• SMTP Services, open relay services, watch out for McAfee
• Early in the above testing process, I was getting a lot of exceptions (errors). The error messages are vague and have to be mapped to settings and thus there is a certain about of interpretation on what they might mean. Early errors were that the code was incorrect. Next I got socket connection errors. This is because SMTP/IIS was not installed on my local machine. Once installed (this is what took a week) using the XP Service Pack 2 CD, it totally worked. Problems occurred when I tried it on the Itdev server. Error checking means I have to wait until Ray is around to log me in to play with the configurations. Since I had a similar set up on my machine, I knew what to look for. But it still didn't work. I was getting a different exception error: software on machine is closing connection. Some googling later, I figured out that McAfee was running on the server, and had closed port 25 because of some mass mailing setting.
  
• MasterPages with .net2
• These are basically server-side templates. I tested this with the Intro Module. Using this structure helped me to see clearly the structure of the site, and keep things much cleaner. All files associated with the MasterPage template are in one folder. The content reside inside tags called ContentPlaceHolders. It may seem overly complicated, but with 11,000 web pages, this more tractable.
  
• Nested MasterPages with .n2
• But then I had a problem, some pages have menus and a back navigation link, while others don't Trying to avoid redundancy is to whole point of doing this. It turns out that Master Pages can be nested, a "sub" master can call a master while a content can call the master directly. This is what I needed, index pages call the master, whereas module pages call the ModulePage master, which in turns call the Master. In this module page is when I add the menus and the BackNav. I still need to see if this is going to work with the rest of the site at different level of folder hierarchy. Since this is more of an object-oriented model, the path dependencies should matter much less.
  
• User Controls with .n2
• These are .net version of server side includes, in other words code snippets of html markup pasted when the page is called. This was the first thing I adopted from 2.0. I had Xin convert some of the courses using an elaborate use of User Controls. While these were a marginal advance over previous designs, we had to make a different control for each level of the hierarchy. It was not a scalable solution. When I learned about MasterPage, I adopted it quickly.
  
• Code Behind
  
• I'm still learning how to do this. Basically what this allows me to do is to have the VB script code in a separate file from the HTML markup. This in theory should allow for reusable set of code. Code Behind structure is more complicated that inline code, it still you have to structure the code inside namespaces and class, and label classes and subroutines as public, protected or private. I'm hoping we can apply to especially to Charlie's data management consoles.
  
• CSS Dropdown menus (Sons of Suckerfish, HTML Dog)
• We had been using Milonix freeware Javascript menus. The code worked well, but was ccumbersome in linking to external js files. 'Paths are my enemy.' They had to go, plus I read that css driven menus were lighter in code weight and markup. I use the popular Sons of Suckerfish code. It's modified in that I had to get the menu to "float" over the banner bar. The use of position:absolute broke some of the logic. But I managed to get a functional equivalent working. One benefit is that the menu content file is human-readable, it's just an unordered list. My implemenation is less stylish. There are no drop shadows. Also the menu feels more like buttons than light floating menus. Oh well, I don't think people will notice too much. By the way, IE behaves quite differently from Firefox. The hover.js file is minimal but necessary.
  

Digital Signatures

Have you been asked to sign a document with a digital signature? Don't know how to do it? Here's the rundown. The built-in signatures in Word and Acrobat don't have any identity information. You must use a third-party for verification, like Verisign. If you're asked to have a digital copy of your signature, then you might as well just fax it. If someone verifies your identity via signature, this is just transferring paper-based authentication to digital forms, without digital authentication. Just because you scan your signature, and then paste into a document, just means that someone else can copy it and steal your identity!

Using Adobe Acrobat (full version, not Reader) you can digitally secure pdf documents.

1. First download the Verisign plug-in for Acrobat.
2. Open Acrobat, in the Tools menu you should see Verisign Document Signer.
3. Click on Create Digital ID. It takes you to their web site.
4. You but a Digital ID, for $20 for the year.

I didn't buy it yet, so I'm just speculating on what happens next.

Then select that ID. You send the document. And then it somehow is authenticated via Verisign.

NARST Itinerary

Tuesday, 4/4/06, 4:15-6:15pm: Erin's Roundtable Presentation, Session 6B, Strand 4B.

Things to I want to see and do in San Fran
Parrots of Telegraph Hill (How Lucky! Right next to the Hyatt Embarcadero where NARST is held)
Hot Chocolate at Ghirardelli Square (1 mile northwest, walk along Columbus Ave)
De Young Museum (Located within Golden Gate Park, 5 miles west)
Palace of Fine Arts (located next to Exploratorium, site of NARST event)

Experience/Expectation Gap

Adam Richardson provides an insightful use of the iPod case, beyond the integration of innovation factors, the net effect of these innovations led to a profound jump in user experience that matched expectation. However, he goes further in saying that "existence proof" of innovation provides Apple an untenable position. They've laid out the product blueprint for optimal experience for digital music users.

Now apply this to Science Education. Certainly our expectations are much greater than our experiences, seen from the outside, and probably from the trenches, too. Standards and testing have raised expectation, and certainly have decreased satisfaction of the experience of learning science in the classrom. We seek an iPod like solution, that bundles a product design factors in such a seemless way of meeting expectations, that we "love it". Which is a bit funny to me in that by having experiences that simply meet expectation, we can have such a positive emotional response.

So do products or solutions exist that can possibly meet expectations and provide a wonderful experience? First, we need to look at the experience of the user, in this case teachers and students. We see sporadic reports of excellence. But not systematic results. Plus solutions are rarely tenable in bureacracies that crush innovation and creativity.

Pedometer Update

Thursday, 4.29
Friday, 4.81

I suspected these measurements were really off, having walked around 2 miles per day. Over the weekend, I drove mostly so I didn't bother measuring. Less than a mile per day is a safe guess. This morning, I checked the step distance, it was 3.7 instead of the 1.4 I had been using. That's why my measurements were overblown. The pedometer's step distance button protrudes out, so I must knock into it all the time. Lesson, check step distance occasionally. Except, when I press the button to change the display, it increments the distance by one. This is the best I can get for $10?

Web/Blog based Logistical Planning

What time works for you on Mondays to meet?
What day would you like to start?

Please, use the "comments" area to respond.

Experimenting with more open, scalable information flow. It's a simple task easily accomplished over email, I know.

UPDATE 1/16/2006: Ok, Meetings start this Monday, Jan 23 @ 4:30pm. Though I haven't heard back from everyone. Other dates to be scheduled,

• Final meeting, May 22nd?
• Advisory Board meeting.
• End of year party?
  

Mondays without Meetings,

• Feb 20, 2006. Brenda & I will be in Denmark for NeuroMathEd conference.
• April 3 & 10, 2006. Most of team will be in San Francisco for NARST & AERA.
• Other dates?
  

Pedometer measurements

Last fri, 1.8
Sat, .33
Sun, .42
Mon, 1.78
Tues, 1.54
Wed, 1.84

How much do you walk per day?

UPDATE: It's Thurs, and I learned a lesson. The pedometer has to be horizontal to work. I attached it to a belt loop and got zero reading.

Welcome to the National Aquarium

Housed in the dept of commerce building. It costs $5 to get in. There
is a feed show @ 2pm each day, which I didn't see.

Murals on entrance way

Alligator

Alligator mississipiensis
In spanish, el lagarto which means lizard.

Yellow rat snake

Elaphe obsoleta
Non-venomous

Eastern river cooter

And you thought they were just turtles.

Coral reef

They grow at a rate of 1/8 to 8 inches a year.

Loggerhead sea turtle

Caretta caretta

All 8 species of sea turtles are threatened or endangered.

Axolotyl

Ambystoma mexicanum

Fish with legs!

Chihuahua chub

Endangered species due to levee construction to control flood waters.

Goinquire project questions

Does goinquire support transfer to higher order geospatial tech
applications, like gis?
Goinquire teaches conceptual understanding through geospatial
application conventions.
Do mobile inquiry teaches conceptual understanding through location
based conventions.

Bridge at a low point

Waypoint 110

Elevation: 323ft

N: 38^o51'39.0"

W: 77^o07'12.3"

Why make a bridge out of concrete?

Next