Chapter 3 only
- 1. Project Development As detailed in Chapter 1 and 2, the necessity of homework is a hotly debated topic. This researcher firmly believed in the value of homework. Research supported the idea that homework reinforces and helps to cement curriculum introduced in the classroom (Cooper, Robinson, and Patall 2006). While some suggest that students are overwhelmed with too many hours of homework and was a waste of time and could lead to major stress within families (Kohn), casual conversations with 8th grade students at Martinez Junior High seem to reveal that little time was actually spent on homework or test study. Instead, students were spending the majority of after school time on the internet, or cell phone or computer. PEW study data supported this anecdotal data. Recent PEW research indicated that there has been a sharp increase in cell phone ownership and usage for middle school aged children. While only 45% of teens owned cell phones in 2004, that number jumped to 71% in 2008 and can be expected to be even higher today. In an effort to combine the needs of the teacher to have students do some work at home to keep the classroom curriculum moving forward, and the desire of the student to be using some form of technology for most of their after school hours, the researcher set out to investigate the possibility of adapting routine weekly science homework to the web. While many prior studies have been done on the effectiveness of homework, few have investigated the results of offering the opportunity to do homework through the internet. The major studies that have been reviewed primarily involved math curriculums and mostly at the high school level and above.
- 2. Prior research studies on reasons students do not do homework have come to the conclusions that students have difficulty working independently (Latto-Auld, 2005), that they do not have adequate facilities at home to complete their work (Krovalec & Buell, 2001), the assigned work is inappropriate (Marzano & Pickering, 2007), or that the student voice has not been heeded (Noguera, 2007). To better engage the current students who are Digital Natives, combining the ability to complete and submit homework with the power of the computer seemed necessary. This approach offered the opportunity to teach using technology – not just teach about technology. Last year students at Martinez Junior High School had a spotty history of homework completion. Often the results were as high as 50% non-turn in. There was a growing sense from teachers that more and more students at all grade levels were not completing homework. The incidence of non-homework compliance was so high that the school instituted an academic homework lunch for 8th grade science students. Students who did not complete their routine weekly science homework were “invited” to spend lunch with the principal every day until the work was completed. While the percentage of students turning in their homework on time did not increase significantly, the school scores on the science portion of the yearly CST exam did improve. Was there a connection to student participation in the homework process and an improvement in their test scores? Certainly it didn’t hurt. So given that it appeared there was a connection between student achievement and homework, the research set out to investigate how to get a higher number of students to engage in the homework process and attempt to complete their homework on time. Since so many students showed an aversion to a
- 3. traditional pen-and-paper style of homework, was it possible to get them interested by offering the same homework through the internet? Components Initially conceived as an action research project the intent was to assign Period 1 as a control group, periods 2 and 5 being offered only an opportunity to complete the assignment on-line, and periods 3 and 6 being offered the opportunity to complete their homework on the web. It quickly became apparent that this would be punitive to students who did not have ready access to a computer and the internet. Even if students had access to the internet there were issues of the necessary programs to support the assigned work. It became necessary to redesign the research. All students were given instruction on accessing the homework on-line, completing it, and sending the completed work back to the teacher. Once these instructions were given, students were then asked to decide which method of homework completion they would prefer. Description of Project The project took place over a 4 week period covering one chapter of their textbook on the topic of Force and Motion. Each student is given a “consumable” science notebook at the beginning of the school year. It serves as a method to guide students to the important information to be gleaned from the chapter. There are typically 3 to 4 pages per lesson and 3 to 4 lessons per chapter. The routine assignment were the pages for one lesson per week. Casual inquiry of the test subjects suggested that it took most students 20 to 30 minutes to complete all the assigned pages for the week. Occasionally there would also be additional homework in the form of completing lab
- 4. work or other supplemental worksheets. Students had been assigned a similar style of homework over the prior 6 weeks to insure that they had a familiarity with the length and style of a typical homework assignment. The study was restricted to homework pages from the Science Notebook and Chapter Outline. Homework was assigned on Monday and due on Thursday. The initial research proposed a pre-test prior to beginning the research. Due to time constraints the research was modified to include a homework quiz given the day after the homework was due and reviewed in class. This gave all students an opportunity to review the assigned material even if they had not done the assignment. In order to make the notebook pages easily accessible to students, links were embedded in the school-maintained teacher web page. Students opened the web page and downloaded the necessary Science Notebook pages to their own computers. Once completed, they attached the completed pages to an email and sent them back to the teacher. The teacher review of the completed work was emailed back to the student the next day. Comments were attached along with the grade. This afforded the opportunity to give feedback to the student in a more timely fashion. This was an important feature as prior studies had indicated that getting information back to the student in a timely fashion was instrumental in an improved comprehension of the material (Mendicino, Razza & Heffernan, 2009). Initially the researcher had hoped to use products already offered on-line by the textbook publisher. These products proved to be unusable because the same work could not be offered to students NOT doing their homework via the internet.
- 5. No control over their review of the feedback – no different than when papers are returned to students with comments. How to fit in the info on the math mall and the implications of read 180 etc.