The effect of Twitter on college students engagement and grades (R. Junco, G. Heiberger, E. Loken)
Social media use in an educational background has long been known to be beneficial for both students and teachers, however very little empirical evidence is available to back up said presumption. Junco, Heiberger and Loken's paper provide an experimental quantitative study to determine the impact of Twitter use on the engagement an grades of a sample of american college students.
In this paper's case, the observable phenomenon that was quantified using scientific methods was the impact of Twitter use on engagement and grades improvement: by using 19 selected psychometric properties from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), an established instrument that was developed to measure engagement in school, the authors measure engagement qualitatively while assessing differences in engagement and grades by using a quantitative mixed effects analysis of variance (ANOVA) models with class sections nested within treatment groups. They also conducted content analyses of samples of Twitter exchanges.
The authors also calculated the Cronbach's alpha to their studies (0.75 for the pre-test and 0.81 for the post-test) to estimate the reliability of the psychometric test results administered to the students, and compared it to two other studies similar to theirs to further back their study up: this shows their paper is reliable and the use of the quantitative methods gives an empirical take on this very common assumption that social media in school gets the students more engaged and helps them improve their grades. I also think they could have done with a bigger sample.
While the measure of engagement and the impact of twitter on it and on grades is backed up by significant data and established quantitative methods, I'm not sure about the content analyses of samples of Twitter exchanges, on which they base a number of assumptions and conclusions related to the benefits in terms of skills Twitter gives student, because they don't get into details about the adopted quantitative method…
Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality : The body shapes the way we play (K. Kilteni, I. Bergstrom, M. Slater)
Immersive Virtual Reality is a subject that more and more people are becoming interested in, because they can envision its very important role in the future of many actual fields - be it video gaming or information sharing. Now in this paper, immersive virtual reality is used in a very different angle, as a means of demonstrating how the body can shape the way we play. Indeed, by enabling study participants to play drums in an immersive virtual reality where they had different avatar bodies, the authors underline that the way we perceive our bodies could impact our drumming technique.
The research is based on a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods : the quantitative methods were used to analyze the data collected through various sensors in a way that could be useful to the study, while the quantitative methods served to assess participants' personalities, as a background control that said personalities didn't impact on the drumming performance. I believe this mix is really efficient in making the study that much more reliable : quantitative methods use is compatible with data collection because it's, as data is, undeniable and objective. With the numbers and the scientific process applied to them, the results that come out are both satisfactory and reliable (if the data-collection is sufficiently spread on various samples), while qualititative method use is relevant in the case of personality analysis, because it's very often based on a questionnaire leveraged with a Likert scale: questions are much more adapted to personality assessment than any other data collection and process could ever be, because how are you supposed to effectively assess someone's character/personality based on nervous signals and numbers? In this sense, quantitative methods and qualitative methods each have their own specificities and ups/downs, that make each of them more relevant for a certain type of research and theory foundation.
It is interesting that you consider this week's theme as an eye-opener. Nonetheless, I still think that quantitive methods could be more objective and contain more “hard facts” if you will. Despite this, you probably find more value in a qualitative method of research. And I mean, qualitative are also quite important, but results form a quantitative research could seem to be more tangible.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that depending on the research project one undertakes, one can select a method that fits best with that specific research aim. But it worth mentioning that, sometimes a combination of both of the methods will yield better results.
I am glad you brought up the issue of objectivity and subjectivity, you are right. I mean, there is nothing as 100% object research endeavor, or anything for that matter. The mere fat that one select a specific drum could be somehow subjective. Despite this, I agree that the skill and the expertise of a researcher plays a major role in the credibility of his/her results.
You have written a detailed and quite impressive description of this week’s theme with its related issues. Good job!