Learning for 18 Jun 08

Today Dr Quek gives us a surprise by inviting James, Her graduate students for her Master Programme to share on using internet IT tools for learnnig. He shared on capturing of videos on firefox.com, getting freeware on snapfiles.com and organisation of blogs using google reader. He also encouraged us to use wetpaint.com to create wiki page as sharing platform for projects. This information is very new to me, as I consider myself as IT suaku. I mentioned all these learning to my colleague in the office and he marvelled at how knowledgeable I had become. I had never felt so young and generation Y before!

In terms of assessment instruments, we drill deeper into the details of examining and modifying WIHIC and Learning Environment instruments. We had also attempted interpreting the learning environment report of School A, B and C.

The main takeaways for these activities are:
1. Shuffle the question items of each scale to reduce biasness and increase trustfulness of respondents.
2. Negative items could be used to reduce predictability. Remember to reverse code the scores for these items. Note that negative items are used less in recent survey developments.
3. Modify question items by contextualizing the statement or reduce the number of scales or items within the scales.
4. Use response scale of 1 to 4 or 5. Scale that is more than 5 is only suitable for psychometric test. Another consideration is to use Likert scale of strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly disagree. Other forms of response scale are open for different interpretation, will then need a description for the scale.
5. Use validated instruments and modify from there instead of re-inventing the wheel. This is because validated instruments had gone through factor analysis to ensure it measures what it intend to measure.
6. Survey only gives you a sense of learning environment, should use mixed approach of survey and focus group/interviews to get deeper insights into factors causing certain perception.

As mentioned in my reflection yesterday, survey is not just asking a few questions. The design requires more professional skills. The case studies discussed in class is relevant to me as I am reviewing the pre and post course survey for Air Force School. The case studies highlight the need for person to learning environment alignment; a performing or popular school may not be suitable for the child. Need to assess the school climate, leadership style and teachers' interaction. In addition, a cordial school climate may not be good all the time. An effective learning environment need to move the trainees out of comfort zone and to dis-stablise them.

I am looking forward to tomorrow's lesson on interpretation of collated data. Yoohoo for learning environment module!