I think the only way is to let them express their understanding in writing freely

Difficult question as groups of individuals tend to be as different as individuals by themselves. Normally you will find one or two 'leading' the group, and the rest following. So collaborative learning can also be a submissive social bonding, where the brightest or most active students lead a group and the followers are submissive and expect the leaders to provide strategy and guidance. In order to observe independent learning, you will have to have independent, student based probes that are not dependent on group response. If you want to do this on a continuous low level basis, one could have short 'test your knowledge' tests very regularly. I would say on a day to day basis. This will also stimulate the submissive participants into higher participation levels.

Thanks Dr. A bit challenging. At the moment ive prepared journals which they need to answer every each learning activities.

Dear Petra,

I apologize that I am not sufficiently familiar with ICT to give you a sufficient answer, Could you test them via short essay about what important facts or ideas they learned from this process?

I think the only way is to let them express their understanding in writing freely

Dear Fatimah,

I agree with Hatem. The best way is letting them write without any constraints.

If we take as good next summary:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ICT_in_Education/Definition_of_Terms

then you could target on:

1) use of internet acedemic sources

2) use of internet social media sources

ICT tends to be a bit individualistic and consuming at times, one of the categories I would look for is definitely team spirit and involvement of others within collaborative learning. Students can construct knowledge as they use ICT, but it important to share that knowledge with fellow learners in order to compare learning experiences.

Please look at these:

1) http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/reports/tech386.pdf

2) http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/guidebooks/APractical.pdf

3) http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/guidebooks/gbthree.pdf

4) http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/reports/r620.pdf

And search for other appropriate stuff at CRESST's web-portal :-)

Best regards!

Hi, it depends on what you are looking for. There is an interesting research topic on Information problem solving skills wirh ICT carried out by Saskia Brand-Gruwel and Iwan Wopereis (Open University of the Netherlands). They propose certain categories you could use for your research if you want to find out which skills and how students apply them to solve an information problem.

Thank you all. I will look up at the links. Your feedbacks help easing out the nervousness.

Dear Fatimah:

I recommend you view the chilean experience, about the measurement of ICT Skills:

http://dcc.puc.cl/system/files/MN54-ICT_skills.pdf

Regards,

Gonzalo.

Dear Madam,

i think the thing that you have to worry about as a first step is the management of observation; how you are going to observe your students. secondly, you have to take in your consideration the way students may use while interacting with each other, and their response to collaborative learning. thirdly, are the students skillfully enough to deal with technology in order to be used for educational purposes?.

Dear Fatimah Petra.

It has often baffled me the way people see such buzz words

like IT, ICT, R&D, etc. Irrespective of the mental tallness

people have built around these words, the bottom line is

simple: Do they offer solutions to any of life issues or

probable life issues. I will briefly explain using some

solutions to life issues your study might reveal.

Your question breaks down into the following filters:

1. What categories would you look for

2. observing students

3. independent learning

4. using ICT

Note on item 4.

---------------

Let me say that ICT reflects three different areas:

information, communication and technology. Always know that

civilization have exchanged information before technology

came, using such media as engravings on walls and tomb stones.

So, ICT is just a body of tools. It will be good not to impose

any tool on these students, just suggest. Remember, they are

15 - 16 years old. This is the age of rebellion in a child.

Note on item 2.

---------------

There are four distinct research methods:

* study - of past works (prone to bias)

* questionnaire - opinion poll (prone to bias)

* experiment - influenced for observation

* observation - shows the true story

The most powerful form of research is to observe without

letting the object of observation know that he/she/it is

being observed.

Dear Fatimah, this might be the starting point for your

study. So, what might your study be all about?

Note on item 3.

---------------

Your study might be about "independent learning". This is

about being self-initiative, less-supervision (good business

quality), self-motivation (collaboratively asking for others'

inputs). Observing these students might reveal some of the

followings: student interest; student depth of concern for

life issues as motivation for learning; student-ICT comfort;

student conservative nature and the readiness to adapt; also

very important is, the student respect for life.

So, what might you be intending to observe?

Note on item 1.

---------------

The categories you consider will depend on the features

you intend to observe. A surprising observation might a

student who does not intend to apply ICT. So, have an open

mind and tie the bases of your study to a life issue.

Please, consider all the above as suggestions.

gsosys.

Thanks again all.

Pencho, the Cresst resources are useful.

Eyhab, the third point is no problem. The students have been exposed to ICT at their primary years.

Gbenga, thank you for the suggestions - will take note. On note item 2 - the second and the fourth are included in the whole methodology.

I would be interested to observe how they use ICT and how they sift through learning resources available through ICT to find or pick is relevant to their learning.

Fine Fatimah,

As a teacher, because one has to see your research from a teacher’s stand point, to identify the categories you want to observe, I would start by defining a learning theory. The learning theory will give you possible patterns or categories you may want to “watch”. Each learning theory will give you a glimpse from a different angle. The easy part is the selection of the categories, because you can do that taking them out of the theory, and placing them in a table as dimensions, then finding what indicators are possible to be watched/observed. You may want to look at Brousseau and didactical transposition: which is the process of converting a body of knowledge as it exists in its own right into a body of material that can be taught. Or work with the theory of classroom discourse or Rhetorical devices.

The difficult part is: how can you watch so many students at the same time and write down your observations when they are working in different groups? While you observe one group, you may miss out something important in another group! You can use a video camera… but this will not register the discussions in each group. So this is what I suggest: use small mp4 to record what the students are saying, let the pm4 there always, and the first week of work with it there on the table of each group, don’t take into account, because the students will feel watched. Once they get used to seeing the mp4, they’ll forget that it is there and start to act “normal”. This is when your research really starts! The classroom discourse theory will help you “see” or observe how your students reason and how they interact. You can analyze the discussion as a group, or separate each individual interaction and observe if there is a pattern there.

When solving a problem as a group you may observe not only how the group reasons on the problem to solve it, you can also observe how each contribution reveals what the speaker is thinking, therefore you may see what independent learning may be going on.

Now your next question would be how can you analyze so much information? because you’ll overwhelm with so much information, you won’t know where to start! Use for this the program Atlas.ti, it is a qualitative data analysis software. With it you can go through you data using the categories you may have chosen, or just select specific words and discover patterns which may lead you to create your own theory about independent learning. You can even create your concept maps with the information; this also helps you to see patterns. Altas.ti also allows you to analyze different mode of data, be it written, graphics or audio. I have not only used it with written data.

Hope this has been useful for you.

I think it depends on what you want to measure. We cannot measure authentically the individual students at the same time. The methods that you can get the real data are follows:

1. Observe some students by categorizing the students' GPA.

2. Interview students for deep understanding. It takes much time.

3. Use some structured questionnaires to separate students.

4. Use percentage gain to see their development such as Hake's gain.

The data from learning using ICT, generally, are achievement, gain, corrected concepts and learning time. That's all.

Thank you hazel, marcel and somkiat.. thank u for the links aria.

@FP

You can make 4-5 groups, depending upon the number of students and give a task to each of the student groups.

Task is making a digital library of e-books available on internet.

Group-1. each student has to make a collection of 10 e-books in a subject area

and upload these e-book on a cloud. for sharing it for further action

Group-2. will down load these e-books, remove duplicates and classify them sub-subject area wise, assign a code and again upload it on to a cloud

Group-3 will search open source s/w for digital software, finalise one and install it on a server

Group-4 will down load all e-books, organise as per the software requirements

or sinply they can use adobe reader also to search a book and read it

Have you accessed the work of Lesley Shield of the Open University in UK?

Check out her profile for her areas of expertise and publications http://uk.linkedin.com/in/lesleyshield. There is masses of relevance to your question.