Instructional Designers use research to decide how to design material. Sometimes this takes the form of qualitative, quantitative, or action research.
Quantitative research takes a problem and is looked at numerically and analyzed accordingly. It can be turned into percentages, pie charts, and graphs.
Qualitative research is used to understand a problem. This can be done in the form surveys or personal observation by the researcher. The information comes directly from the people being studied and the answers aren’t skewed or manipulated.
Action research is a form of research used to solve a problem. It is always conducted by the person taking the action and often times this is used by teachers in their classrooms to help improve a certain aspect of their student's learning. Instructional designers also use action research and with this they use the steps: 1. Select a focus 2. Clarify theories 3. Identify research questions 4. Collect data 5. Analyze data 6. Report results 7. Take informed action
Work Samples ETEC 543 Research Report- Two colleagues and myself conducted a research project to determine why disadvantaged high school students had a skewed perception of college readiness. Parts of this project were the literature review, the data collection, and the interpretation of results. We created a questionnaire, in order to collect qualitative data, to give the students and after receiving the results we analyzed them. We found out that most of the students would like to attend college, but had no means to pay and therefore felt discouraged.
ETEC 614 Needs Assessment - A colleague and I conducted an action research project to hep improve the parent and volunteer satisfaction of the Joshua Tree Soccer Program. We held interviews and collected and analyzed our data and lastly recommended improvements for the program. It was clear before we administered the questionnaire, that the parents and workers had two very different perceptions of how the program was ran. Our results from the parents helped provide helpful recommendations that we provided to the director of the soccer program. This project is considered action research because we knew there was a problem and conducted research in order to improve or eliminate it.