Jason and Daphne Initially Wished

¶ … Jason and Daphne initially wished to interview the host teachers as part of the evaluation. One can only surmise that during the interview the questions would have been qualitative in nature therefore ensuring that there was a mixed research design to the evaluation. When the director presented Jason and Daphne with the four overall objectives, the objectives seemed to be more quantitative in nature. Even when the director asked Jason and Daphne to concentrate on objectives three and four, it still seemed as if the objectives were looking to measure increases for which the evaluation design would be more quantitative rather than qualitative in nature. However, the candidate portfolios were definitely more qualitative in nature, so that a mixed research approach would likely yield the best results for this evaluation.

One of the reasons Jason and Daphne were looking to use a mixed research approach to this study is that by doing so it provided data concerning the thoughts, perceptions and beliefs of the candidates regarding their use of technology, mixed research at the same time provides hard numbers that are difficult to argue against. An example of the quantitative methodology would be in the checklist that

Jason and Daphne created. Their checklist provided a series of measurements that could be checked off when completed, thus creating quantitative measurements.

The purpose of the evaluation was to determine if the university was meeting all of the stated program objectives. The study determined that the university was in fact meeting those objectives.

The problem was determined to be that the university wished to ascertain at what level teacher candidates were integrating technology into the classroom, and to what extent such integration was affecting the actions of the host teachers as well. Because neither the host or student teachers were readily available to participate in the interview process, a more quantitative approach was used by Jason and Daphne, rather than the mixed research approach.

The data that was available to Jason and Daphne (for the most part) consisted of e-portfolios from current, and recent students. The e-portfolios documented students efforts to integrate technology into the classroom arena. Oftentimes, this would not be the primary method of data collection, however, circumstances forced Jason and Daphne to adapt. The creation of an assessment tool such as their checklist provided them the opportunity to quantitatively measure the actions of the student teachers.

Using a quantitative approach to this study would not normally be appropriate, but the fact that Jason

and Daphne were constrained from meeting with the participants forced them to use only quantitative measurements regarding qualitative data. The quantitative approach was appropriate in this case because it was the only reliable measurement based on the available data.

The ethical issues of a study conducted in such a manner is that the evaluators did not have a chance to talk to the participants in order to discern reasons why they integrated certain technology, why they did not integrate other technology and their thoughts and concerns about their actions or lack thereof.

Part Two:

Jason and Daphne did not use a qualitative approach to this evaluation. The assessment tool measured numbers, increases and decreases. The evaluators were evaluating evidence of certain events taking place, not the perceptions, thoughts, ideals, beliefs or values of why those events were happening, rather whether they were happening or not was more important than the reasons why.

Part Three: