CAL '07 Conference Abstract
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: I want you so bad (Heart)
Topic: Seminars
On Friday, submitted the CAL abstract and it is looking pretty good. James sent me some comments and did it up quite nicely, and got Rebecca and Gill to look at my abstract also (and in turn looked at theirs!). Now go to get the work done, so that I have something to present.

Remote Observation
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: I'm a Believer (The Monkees)
Topic: Methodology

My remote observation exercise/ pilot study has come to a full stop at the moment ... because I don't have any webcams or microphone.

Unfortunately, the week before when I asked IT for webcams they had lent it out and they said they will be expected some at the ending of last week - and as of today there is still no webcams.

I have ordered my own webcam through Amazon but it seems it won't arrive till next week also, so got to put off this pilot at least for a week until I get some equipment.

Just recruited someone from the internet to help me pilot the excel worksheet - so he will act as a distance student in the UK, and will get Amalia and Ritch to one also so, they will act as distance students in a developing country.

CAL '07 abstract
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Barbara Ann (The Beach Boys)
Topic: Seminars

I churned out an abstract for the CAL '07 conference - but not quite sure how good it is, sent it oft to James, Doug and John - so, far got a response from John - who said it looks alright - once it is tidied up.

At first didn't know what to submit, James and I have been contemplating it for awhile, but we couldn't find where exactly to put in the abstract since the abstracts calls for debating the use of CAL '07 (Title: Development, disruption and debate), and couldn't figure out how my present research fit into the themes (ICT & Learning - So what?, New directions, creative expression and learning, ICT for development) - as there seem to be more in the format of making an argument or debate that technology can have a disruptive effect.

However, what is quite surprising is that when I registered with the website, there outline for the abstract doesn't seem to imply there should be debate but rather present information from a study, as they suggest that it should have an introduction, methods, results and discussion.

Now I didn't read that before I put together my abstract (only saw it when I clicked the submit an abstract link which then ask you to register and then you get that information!), so don't have a results and discussion. Now, there is a very good reason why I don't have a results and discussion as yet - its because James suggested I write up my remote-observation study for it - and since that haven't quite started - I don't have any results and discussion - I guess I could probably pad a bit and say what my expected results and discussions might be (have a feeling that won't get me into the door - but could try). Ann thought that it might be a good opportunity to submit an abstract to such a conference - since some of the proceedings will be journal published - so why not give it a try?

New pilot
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Do Wah Diddy Diddy (Manfred Mann)
Topic: Data Collection

Well, I've decided to venture into a new phase of my pilot studies, to test out my remote observation methodology, so, to do this, I decided to create some problems for people to do, whilst I'm observing them.

I'm not sure what the problems are going to be as yet - but have made an excel file which calculates the expected values of lotteries in black-box, white-box and grey-box mode - just got to get the problems to see what happens (mostly using VBA - went to a VBA training workshop last week so using some of that knowledge!).

I don't want to write it here - because planning to use Gill, Rebecca and Cling to help me - so don't want to give them a head start - but going to create the problems elsewhere - and write about them after the study.

Meeting with Peter Galbraith
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Satrangi Re (Dil Se)
Topic: Meetings

After Peter contacted me through this blog (I knew this blog was good for something!) - I arranged to meet him in London on Friday. It was great meeting with him and chatting with him.  

He suggested a few papers that I could read including one by Ramsden on technology use by chemistry students (have it written down on my notepad but left my notes at home), also a literature paper by Michelle Artigue which summarizes their work in Paris on CAS and mathematics.

He also suggested looking at Diana Mackie's (??) work - there should be paper in the last ICTM. He indicated that I should contact Diana and also Chris Haines about a group on tertiary maths education that exists in the UK - so, I have to do that.

He also clarified how, he and Chris Haines created the mechanical, constructive and interpretive problems - which I thought was useful. I told him about the current work I'm doing using the maths-computing inventory and told him I would keep him and Pat informed.

It was a really good meeting all the way around. Enjoyed meeting and talking to him immensely.

Pilot Study yet again!
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Teahouse on the Tracks (Donald Fagen) - where do they get these titles from??
Topic: Data Analysis

So, back to my pilot study - still have no clue what my data is saying - got too much factors that's all I could figure ... getting more confused by the moment - at first thought to do covariate analysis but that has got me even more confused - I think I'm going to go simple and build from that.

 Wish me luck :D.

Feeling a bit on the slump
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Another Pot O' Tea (Anne Murray)
Topic: Data Analysis

I don't think I've made any real progress with my work thus far ... when it comes to my data analysis, John as suggested I ignore the non-normality (well not ignore exactly!) - and find literature that suggest that ANOVA's are robust against the non-normality and heterogeneity of variance assumptions (he suggested I read Box's paper) ... my problem - I'm not sure if you can actually mix both - so, what I'm going to do is pretend there is not a large violation of either, and continue with ANOVA's but might use Brown & Forsythe's F instead for the heterogeneity - since there are unequal sample size - oh well still deciding.

Anyway, got to decide quick since got to send in a report on this by next Friday!

 

Pilot Study: Data Analysis
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: Melody of You (Sixpence None the Richer)
Topic: Data Analysis

So, I have the data for my pilot study using the SPQ and the maths-computing inventory. I've begun to try an analyse it but seem to be hitting brick walls everytime I try!

Well, the first brickwall was when I realised that I had grouped Environmental Sciences and Biology together in the questionnaire, this meant I had a Hard-Applied-Life and a Hard-Pure-Life discipline in the same grouping - and I was stuck with how to separate out the students belonging to the Env. Sci. and Biology. Thankfully I had the students intended degree they wanted to complete from when they entered the OU and was able to pick out somewhat those who were from the Env. Sci.

The next problem (well more my fault!) - I had started doing analysis when I realised that for the maths-computing inventory I had negative-marked questions and I had forgot to account for those when I had calculated the scores for the scales - so had to go back and do those and then start back the analysis.

Well, after doing several ANOVAs etc. (again my fault!) - I then decided to check and see whether my data was normal and had homogeneous variances between the groups (the disciplines, gender and software) - well, whadya know ... they weren't!!! All the scores I had calculated from both the SPQ and the Maths-Computing Inventory were all non-normal (Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test) - that did got me frustrated because then tried to see if I can transform it into being normal (log, square, squareroot, arcsin, reciprocal - and various combinations of those) - but no go ... as the kurtosis and skewness were both less than 1, I guess that is why there were no improvement by transforming. Anyway, then proceeded to trim the samples, by taking out the outliers (well only did it for the surface approach score - haven't really tried the others) - and that didn't improve it one bit - same sort of results .... so, gave up on that and accepted that my data was non-normal.

Then came the other brickwall ... test of homogeneity of variance (Levene's test) - well some groups were homogeneous whilst others weren't - only gender was homogeneous between all scores. The rest were at least heterogeneous for one variable, for example in the Hard/Soft discipline group it was heterogeneous for the mathematics motivation scale. Well, I know I can apply Kruskal-Wallis Test for the non-normal data but has to have homogeneous variance - so have done that for gender - which I got most everything being not significant except computer confidence. What is interesting, was I wanted to check and see if that was influence by age (age was related to computer confidence as well - using spearman rank correlation coefficient) - now in normal parametric statistics you can control that variable (perhaps as a covariate) - but in nonparametric statistics wasn't certain, so decided to employ spearman rank correlation to test the correlation between age and computer confidence by controlling gender (i.e. just for males and then for females) - to see what will happen ... and there seems to be some correlation between age and computer confidence when gender is controlled (well for females there is a correlation - but for males no).

Anyway, I've moved away from the point, I now have data that is non-normal and heterogeneous variances - and don't know what tests I can use in SPSS for comparing across groups - I have looked up the stuff on the internet and it seems that there is a new statistic called MOM-H statistic  which uses Wilcox and Keselman MOM (Modified One-Step M-estimator) for deciding how much should be trimmed and then combining this with Schrader and Hettmansperger's H statistic (all of this developed by Othman et al, 2004) can be used for non-normal and heterogeneous variances - still got to look up the paper ... but my problem is that I'm wondering if I even want to venture into that realm of deep statistics - I mean, I'm not sure how important these pilot study results will be to my main study ... should I go through doing all that data analysis for nothing?? Can my simple descriptive statistics suffice? I've got to decide, because it will take me awhile to decipher what all the symbols mean etc. in those papers and how it relates to my data before I can even begin to use it and that might take up more time than I really have.

Trouche's paper
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: O Holy Night (Josh Groban) - Christmas music in July!
Topic: Analytical Frameworks
Well, I went and looked for Trouche's paper and found it - unfortunately it is in French! My high school french couldn't really do justice to the paper, but got Google to help me translate some stuff. I don't think there was anything too different what I got from Artigue's paper, except got all 5 of the profiles and how he categorised these students.

He did mention that these profiles are for the extreme cases of the students, and it is not likely you can peg students with one profile.

However, he was using the TI-82 and TI-92 calculators (one for symbolic representation and the other for graphical presentation) and he seemed more to deal with how students interact with the software such as the zooming function and the commands and switching between windows etc. i.e. things that were specific to these calculators rather than looking how students use technology to learn, I was hoping for something more like the exploration of numbers etc., but he tended to look at the time they used the calculator for a task and also when they did collaborative work with a partner or use pen and paper. Can't remember he mentioning much about the pen/paper (then again my french - il est terrible!) So, probably skipped it over somewhere.

Anyway, so don't think I'll be using those strategies.

I've tried to find the one by Goos et al, unfortunately we don't subscribe to that journal (Mathematics Education Research Journal its published in Australia)- so means I've got to order it - but will only order it if I think it is necessary, the information provided by Galbraith seems sufficient.

ICTM Conference
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Draw of the Cards (Kim Carnes)
Topic: Seminars
So, came back from Turkey yesterday (arrived home at 7pm) ... the conference in Istanbul was great ... met a lot of people who I was able to network with - particularly people from Australia from a range of universities - so that was good.

Hung out with some of the Turkish people as well and some people from the US (mainly from Tuscon!).

I'm not sure how great all the seminars were but was able to meet some of the researchers whose papers I've read, particularly Pat Cretchley and Leigh Wood. It just so nice to actually meet these people. Love these international conferences - because most of the work that is being done on CAS is occuring in Australia and you really don't meet much of these people in the UK.