In Distance Education the topic I would like to research would be 'How much a students past experience with computers limit/enhance their ability to perform in Distance Ed courses'. Several steps would be needed to study it, but it would definitely involve a survey. That would be the best way to know their exposure to computers.
Questions would include things like: is there a computer in your home? How often do you use a computer at school/work? How often do you use email? chat rooms? Instant messaging?
Beyond this the survey would have to include demographic information about socio-economic level, urban/rural lifestyle and the like. Another useful set of questions might include how much they use a cell phone, text message, play video games, are involved in sports/groups, and how well they do in classes now. Success may be linked also to the use of technology in general.
After the survey, which would be of students preparing for an online class, the students would actually go through a Distance Ed course. At the end the teacher and student would both fill out an exit survey and the grade would also be used in the study.
The question is a simple one, but there are many possible things that could drive high performance in distance ed classes. That is why the post and exit surveys are important. Also this would have to be a sample set across demographics and geographic area. In the end the correlations of different answers and performance would be calculated. Hopefully some trends would emerge.
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Interesting topic for research. I think one would be able to see that limited experience makes online courses much more difficult. Using this class for example, at the beginning, I had no idea what to do. I had never created a blog, gator, etc and had no idea where to start. Now, I'm telling others how to use them. My limited experience made the assignment seem much more difficult even though it was not as challenging as I had expected.
It's the "bunny slope syndrome."
When novice skiers go to the top of the bunny slope for the first time and look down, the slope looks impossibly steep, the techniques are awkward and confusing, and they have to stop and rest several times before they get to the bottom - usually after falling (sometimes painfully).
But having made it to the bottom once, they look back up the hill and think, "that wasn't as steep as I thought" and they get back into the lift line.
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