MED 858 In A Nutshell ;-P

Summary Notes

(1) What makes up the Learning Environment?
- Many aspects make it up, ranging from the physical aspects, to students' emotions, cultural background, psychosocial dimension, school culture, school climate, etc
- Because it is made up of many facets, it is dynamic, complex, and subjected to many changes, especially with the prevalent use of technologies and changes brought about by them.

(2) Why Study The Learning Environment?
- Because pupils' and teachers' perceptions of the learning environments differ and if there is no congruence between the two, then, teachers may not be aware of issues that need to be addressed and this will be detrimental to pupils' learning processes
- To evaluate educational outcomes, eg: to see if there is a link between pupil's perceptions of the environment with their academic achievements, which has been widely researched on and findings support the fact that pupils are very influenced by their environment
- Evaluation of educational innovations eg: surveys can be administered to find out if using Online Learning enhances or hampers one's learning

(3) How to do a research on the Learning Environment?
- Pick a validated/ well-established intrument - which is usually a survey
- Administer the survey to respondents, make sure that the questions suit their level, are well spread out, are not too lengthy and contain a 4 pt Liker scale (some points to note when administering a survey)
- Collate the results using Excel, then transfer the raw data to SPSS
- Make sure that the transfer to the raw data is done carefully and properly
- Make use of the statistical functions in SPSS, eg: Cronbach's Alpha Reliabiltiy and Paired Sample T-tests to churn out results
- Save the figures properly as HTML files so that you can view them easily at home
- Pick out relevant figures to write your report - Especially on reliability figures, eg: items with reliability coefficient values of more than 0.7 are considered reliable, and look for significant levels that are below the preset, eg: 0.05, because these items reflect issues which need to be addressed
- Write your report using the basic layout given eg: 1) Abstract2) Introduction3) Literature Review 4) Rationale 5) Research Questions 6) Methodology - Sample, Procedures, Data Analysis (please put in tables and graph) 7) Findings and discussions 8) Conclusions - recommendations