Time for a numbers game?

Image: freeimages

Following on from my last blog post, I'm re-treading the sequence of reading from our Research Methods module to get my bearings again, and I'm coming back to the question of qualitative vs quantitative research. While I strongly identified with the Action Research methodology on my last project, it's worth deliberately opening up my mind to new possibilities, especially as there will be strong interest in some kind of numerical data from colleagues and external auditors if we are questioned on our approach.

So before I start to choose which quantitative disciplines I might wish to draw on, I'll look at the key aspects of quantitative research, consider those that appeal to me, and those I wish to avoid.


Concern with theory

Relating my findings to theory will be helpful to ensure some kind of tethers to related work, but there's a danger of getting obsessed with reproducibility and control here. When you're moving into the realm of on-demand learning, you can't guarantee learning outcomes, nor indeed that learners will even access the materials or activities that you produce for them. Newby (2010, p.96) acknowledge the limitations for educational researchers trying to identify pattern and control influences, as they are only able to view a small part of the overall education system. I would prefer to think in terms of Praxis (Wheeler, 2013), which requires practitioners to consider how closely their practice overlaps with the theories they identify with.

Concern with proof

Here lies one of the real problems for educational research - although I understand that establishing proof would give greater peace of mind, the complexity and ambiguity of the situation makes this extremely difficult:

• The situation I face will not be the same as another practitioner does, even if our verbal descriptions of it seem similar to the untrained eye
• The next situation that I (and the learners) face will not be the same as this one, even if it's 'just another e-marking system'
• The time needed to establish proof would be completely at odds with the time pressures for the project, where the learning is 'on-demand'.

The best that I can hope for is to show that using theories to guide my design leads to a dependable business outcome, and that particular methods or techniques are better suited to my situation.

Identification of variables

This is one of the key aspects of quantitative theory that I see as helpful. Although my control over most independent variables involved will be limited to say the least, it will definitely be helpful to at least make some systematic efforts to identify variables in the design of materials that may be having an effect, and to measure any dependent variables which are of interest. Our particular concerns would be the performance of examiners, and intention to continue based on their experiences. Attempting to correlate these with participation in the different aspects of the support might yield useful insights into which components have succeeded, but this would have to be linked to effective practice in design.

Simply saying that an approach should be abandoned because it doesn't seem to have an effect in this situation would be potentially misleading without some understanding as to why. Creswell (2009, p.49) refers to confounding variables (e.g. discriminatory attitudes) that can come into play, which I have had some experience of when trying to introduce online learning methods in the past. Participants who are negative about the use of the tools go to great lengths to discredit them when given the opportunity to do so, whilst the majority of participants actually acknowledge a positive effect.

Conclusion

This project will benefit from the use of some quantitative approaches to analysing data about examiner performance and intention to continue, but these will need to be paired effectively with qualitative methods to understand what dependent variables relating to the choice and design of approaches might be influencing the outcomes. My next blog post will focus on the type(s) of quantitative research methods might be useful, followed by a look at rational design approaches for the learning provision.

References:

• Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research Design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. (3rd edition) Sage.
• Newby, P. (2010). Research Methods for Education. Pearson Education Limited.
• Wheeler, S. (2013). Praxis makes perfect. Learning with e's [blog] 31 October. Available at: <http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/praxis-makes-perfect.html>