Academic+Writing

Academic Writing
Throughout my graduate degree program, I was involved in researching and writing in the field of educational technology. What follows are the areas of interest I chose to pursue. The resulting submitted papers can be read by clicking on the links.


 * [|Literature Review-]** This literature review, conducted in the fall of 2010, represents a review of recent research studies showing the effectiveness of different methods of **preparation for pre-service teachers on how to plan for inclusive learning environments** . Although the studies cited involve special needs students as learners, I broaden the application of this research to include most teaching and learning environments since methods and strategies that are effective for a group of learners with special needs being served in a regular classroom can be equally effective with a group of learners who are not identified as special needs. From a UDL perspective, every group of learners has a diverse set of needs that can be accommodated by designing instructional materials more universally. This review showed that the strongest gains made among pre-service teachers learning to teach in academically diverse settings involved those teachers having experiences with a wide variety of learners during their degree programs, and seeing universally designed instruction modeled for them in the instruction they were receiving as learners.

SITE Proposal- Together with two colleagues, I'll be presenting a short paper at the SITE conference in Austin, TX in March 2012. We are presenting the development and impact of the faculty professional development lab and virtual spaces at Towson University.

[|Final proposal.docx]
My research proposal proposes a study in which 3 groups of college students are taught the same course material using 3 slightly different methods. The purpose of the study would be** to determine which method of instruction yielded the most learning gains from students **. Group A receives instruction using the methods traditionally used by the instructor for the course. The course would be defined as "web-assisted" since the instructor typically uses Blackboard to post assignment information, grades, syllabus and discussion board forum topics. Group B has the same instructor for the same class and has access to all of the same course components as Group A. Group B, however, participates in 4, 45 minute online essay writing assessments during the 2nd, 6th, 9th and 12th weeks of class while Group A completes paper/ pencil versions of the same prompts. Group B receives immediate feedback from the assessment program while Group A receives instructor feedback 1 week later. Group C receives all of the same instruction and resources as Groups A and B except that in addition to immediate feedback from the assessment program, these students are also required to complete short online training modules that correspond with the weakness areas that were identified by the assessment. The same training modules are available to Groups A and B and Groups A and B are encouraged to use them, but they are not assigned. The null hypothesis is that because all learners are being assessed on the same content, and because all resources and materials are available to all learners, there will be no difference in their final achievement. IRB application is attached below. [|IRB APP.doc]


 * [|Unit Design]**- This instructional design project involved designing a unit of instruction and then implementing some aspect of the designed instruction. I chose to ** design a unit of instruction for a faculty member who wanted to learn how to use the Promethean Board ** in her instruction. My unit spans the ADDIE process, analyzing the faculty member's instructional need, designing a plan for instructing her, developing materials that we could use, implementing the instruction and evaluating the effectiveness of the design.