PCI #5 - Designing an experiment within an humanistic paradigm

My previous problem proposition (as a reminder: “What is the impact for both the community and the company of community management when advertising an IT product on Twitter?) is in my opinion not a suitable problem to set an experiment. This issue needs to be researched in an everyday life context and not in an environment I would design and set up myself. Of course this is debatable, but to gain some time I’ll examine another problem. This new problem is actually related to a situation I experienced during my studies:

How does the usage of videoconferencing affect the process of learning of master’s students in comparison with a physical classroom in the context of academic lectures?

First here is a short justification for the choices made. In order to have a bigger influence some Universities tend to merge together and thus can have several campuses with similar lectures being given simultaneously in different locations (e.g. the University of Eastern Finland with 3 campuses in a 150km radius), videoconferencing is a good way to merge these distant lectures into one. I would study master students as they still have academic lectures but are rather autonomous, which will probably lead to a more nuanced outcome than with bachelor students.

To study this problem I propose an experiment. This experiment would last for a whole semester in order to cope with the possibility of a significant adaptation time from the students. It would involve 3 groups of approximately 20 students (a normal sized class), speaking the same language (in order not to add any problems related to the language barrier or cultural adaptation to the equation) and from similar backgrounds.

I would study 3 different situations:

Classical lecture: The teacher gives the lecture in the classroom where the first group of students is situated.

Video transmitted lecture: The classical lectures would be transmitted live to the second group of students in a regular classroom situated elsewhere with a video and audio feedback to the primary lecture theoretically allowing conversation between the two groups.

Totally decentralized lecture: a second teacher would broadcast live lectures from his office with the same content to the 3^rd group of students through a software such as Adobe Connect. The 3^rd group of students can be wherever they want provided that they have access to a computer and an internet connection. The lecture would be both audio and video with the possibility to display and edit slides live, the feedback from students could be only written on a common chatroom.

Throughout the semester a researcher would be present in both classrooms and in the 2^nd teacher’s office and would keep a journal about the way they perceive the reactions from the participants and keep record of the unavoidable technical incidents. At the end of each lecture, each student would have a really short questionnaire about their feeling about the lecture. At the end of the semester each researcher would conduct individual semi-structured interviews with the students from their group. Some quantitative data about the success rate of the different groups of students on a common final exam could also be used but with caution as it is in my opinion more relevant to focus on the process itself than on the raw outcome in order to improve it. The semi structured interview would focus on the way students handled their difficulties, the quality of interactions within the class, and their opinion on the medium used.

This should give some quality data to study to answer the problem, but I would also include the quality of students’ feedback in their assessment for the lecture in order to motivate them to give valuable outcome.

To finish, I have to admit that my experiment isn’t perfect. Some ethical aspects of it could really be discussed as the very foundations of this experiment is to study the differences between three mediums of teaching and thus consider de facto that they don’t give the same chances to students. Also acquiring some data on students’ performances on exams is could be criticized, as well as taking their participation into account in their final assessment. 

In order to appreciate the outcome of this experiment it would be necessary to find some previous studies on the subject. I didn't took the time to research further on the subject, but some case studies about the usage of video conferencing for teaching an learning are available here : http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/ltdi/vcstudies/vcstudies-all.pdf (Videoconferencing for teaching and learning, 1999). It's important to note that the technics have greatly evolved since then and thus, these case studies are probably more relevant to compare with the study findings about the second group of students than the third one who would be using a more complex technology. It could also be interesting to compare the results between the second and the third groups of students in the light of Q. Zhang and C. P. Fulford's article about the effects of having a one way video connection between the students and teachers compared to a two way video connection (Two-way and one-way video: when is 'no difference' significant in distance education? , 1996), even though, once again, due to the age of the study, the setup in their experiment was probably quite archaic in comparison with what's available today.