Theme 3

This week, I read two papers, which provided me a new sight to scrutiny theories.

The first one ‘Mixed Research and Online Learning: Strategies for Improvement’ shares a mixed research method to the public. Instead of that, people firstly used comparison studies that imitate online learning from traditional face-to-face learning. However, people cannot analysis new theories that did not exist in traditional learning and comparison studies render the decrease of research quality. Later, people would like to use content analysis, which is based on frequency of participation of online data, but it still cannot cover all researches such as the designed one.

In case of enhancing rigor of the research results, researchers adopted mixed research with complex process into researches in online learning. Mixed research is a combination of Quantitative and Qualitative research. Following chart shows the difference between Quantitative and Qualitative research.

	Quantitative research	Qualitative research
Definition	It aims to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior.	It aims to develop and employ mathematical models, theories and/or hypotheses pertaining to phenomena.
Central Question	The effect of different variables	What and how the research question happens
Worldview	Positivist, who would like to base theory on fact.	Constructivist, who would like to base theory on different relationships.
Disadvantage	Reductionistic	Subjective and Unreliable
Analysis method	Data analysis	Constant comparison analysis, domain analysis, taxonomic analysis, etc.

However, mixed research is more complicated than simply convergence. When adopting the method of research, people should following specific steps, which can be easily found in the essay. In major steps, people should pay more attention to this special method of researching. The research questions are required to contain both Quantitative and Qualitative research content. To make it more precise, various variables should be taken into account in solution of these questions. At the meanwhile, the researchers should also find ways to define the research subject and how it happens. What’s more, it should be concurrently, sequentially, or iteratively. In Research Design chains, people should used different degree of mixed researching method. Similarly, sampling is different in mixed research. Sample schemes should follow Onwuegbuzie and Collins’ guideline and sample size should be above the minimum according to experience. According to Data Analysis Techniques, the researchers should provide appropriate analyses in different perspective.

Personally, I did not like this paper, because it does not give out enough explanation as well as analysis of theories inside of it.

The second essay, I think, it an example of mixed analysis. The research question is about the effect of emotion presence in online learning, and it was measured in two phase: Phase I is about whether emotions exist in the online learning environment, which I recognized it as the part of qualitative research. Phase II is about reconsideration of the role of emotion in the conceptual model of online learning, which should be the quantitative research.

In the background part, the author described the effect of emotion on both learning and online learning. The research on learning is based on several former researches. The author described it in time sequence and divided all kinds of emotion into two groups that are the positive and the negative to show audients the effects. In terms of the effect on online learning, author introduce a measurement of model named Community of Inquiry framework as a quantitative research, and gave out three important objectives, namely social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence. The research questions in this quantitative research are the effect of positive and negative emotions related to online learning.

After providing the definitions on questions and objectives, the author begun to utilize quantitative research methodology. Firstly, he listed his samples that covered people on widely range of age, of both two genders and in various major. Then, precise collecting data processes are described by two steps: 1. providing access to conference discussion transcripts. 2. completing a survey of questions regarding his/her online experience. Oblimin rotation is applied in analysis. I can find that data is listed next, and analysis is provided later. Finally, the author discuss other factors on validation of the data.