In fact, Agostinho herself initially had little background in the type of Web-based technology used to conduct the class. In the second class, Agostinho presented herself as a peer, or assistant instructor, after being a student observer in the first class. Observations, interviews, and questionnaires were used to gain a sense of how the students perceived their educational experience. The first class was not regarded as a control; rather the entire project was called a 'collective' case study, as the first class was used to inform Agostinho's observations of the second, blended format of the online and non-online groups of students (Agostinho, 2004, p.4). The approach was naturalistic and 'positivist': the researcher strove to learn from the educational process and not to control or critique the students -- the classes were not constructed with the specific intention of proving or disproving a hypothesis, but were educational environments from which the researcher was learning along with the students. One of...

Yet despite her justification, her process of data-gathering seems fairly unsystematic and vague. True, her research question was primarily designed to simply understand the ways students use online technology in learning, not how specific pedagogical online approaches raised student test scores. It could be argued that her method was appropriate, given her open-ended research questions. But a lack of focus, even in fact-finding and exploration, can dilute the value of the results. Furthermore, given that so many institutions are turning to online technology as a way of dealing with overcrowding and the financial burden of college, the question as to whether students learn equally effectively in an online format seems worthy of greater and more systematic scrutiny, as the results could have serious repercussions for students…