6+-+Case+Study


 * 6. Case study of student [[image:case_study.jpg width="360" height="180" align="right" caption="photo credit http://edcatiitd.wordpress.com"]] **

To evaluate the effectiveness of an online course, including its strengths and weaknesses, a case study depicting a student's experience in a program can provide evidence of successes and failures in a course.

This case study involves an in-depth, longitudinal examination of a single student in my master teacher's class whom I will refer to as **Student K **. For the purposes of this case study, I evaluated Student K's performance during the first eight (8) weeks of the 15-week online course.


 * **Examine the nature of the student's participation. **

In weeks 1-8 of the class, Student K maintained a presence in the course by participating in all but one of the assignments. Her participation in the first five weeks of the course mirrored that of most of her peers: she read all the postings made by the instructor and her classmates, she submitted an original posting to each of the discussion topics each week, and she completed each week's journal assignment. Although she struggled to fulfill the required number of replies she was to make to classmates' postings (2-3, depending on the assignment), she did manage to respond each week to at least one classmate's original posting. In regards to her postings, Student K not only struggled to complete the required number of responses to her classmates' postings, but she also struggled with writing posts that were well-developed and which showed deeper, reflective analysis.Here is

Often her responses were surface analysis, and the course instructor consistently posted comments such as "//Somewhat weak analysis - need to elaborate/explain your ideas more thoroughly//" to her submitted work. For several of the assignments, students were asked to respond to questions that had multiple parts to them; in these instances, Student K would only address one of the questions, leaving the rest unanswered. There are many instances in which Student K did not complete all parts of an assignment. **Below is a typical Private Message sent to her instructor, explaining that she didn't finish the work and asking for more time** **:**




 * **Note changes in the student's participation. **

As mentioned above, during the first five weeks of the course, Student K was averaging about the same level of participation as the other enrolled students. During the sixth week, and again in the seventh, however, her participation dropped to half that of her peers (her 6 and 7 postings as compared to her peers' average of 12 and 13 postings during those two weeks, respectively). During week 8, her participation increased somewhat, to roughly 75% of the averaged participation of her peers, though it was not at the same level she showed during the first five weeks of the course. It was in this eighth week that a plagiarism issue regarding all of Student K's work from that week came to light.

During the eighth week, when I first started moving from mere observation of the discussions to actually starting to comment on students' postings, I noticed that Student K's response to the first assignment sounded very similar to another student's posting. When I went back to the second student's response to compare, I saw that Student K's response was actually a word-for-word replica, right down to the same misspellings of two different (common) words and the misuse of an apostrophe. When I logged on the next day, I saw the same situation with the second assignment for the week. I immediately emailed my Master Teacher to make her aware of the situation and ask her what her thoughts were on course of action. Our first few emails regarding the situation you can read [|here].

Student K's site coordinator was contacted, as well as her guidance counselor at her f2f school. Both educators had a meeting with Student K, who admitted to reading other students' postings first, before writing her own, but who insisted she had completed each assignment on her own and written each in her own words. In the end, all three agreed that it would be beneficial to have both educators look over Student K's work before she submitted it to her VHS course to make sure she had not unintentionally plagiarized any more work of her peers. While she did lose credit for all the assignments for the week, Student K still can be successful in the course and finish with a high average, provided she continues to complete all assignments and submit them in a timely manner.


 * **Note student dialog with other students and with the instructor. How do the learner and teacher interact? How does the learner interact with other learners? **

Student K is usually very brief in her conversations with other students in the course. She tends to not expand upon her ideas or give examples from the literature that explains or illustrates her thinking, or which supports her opinions. In the beginning of the course, she posted in the General Discussion area introducing herself, as was requested by the teacher. However, whereas other students have used the GD area to chat with one another - talking about their day, what movies they've seen, their plans for the weekend, etc., Student K does not contribute nor engage in these conversations. My initial impression is that Student K is one who wants to get the work done that she has to do, and no more - no elaboration, no explanation, no "hanging out" with her peers. **Here is an example of a typical response Student K would post to another student's original posting**:



This lack of interaction with her peers informally, combined with her brief, minimalist-type responses to each week's discussion board questions, have caused difficulty for her peers. One of the requirements of the course is that students respond to a minimal number of peers' postings, and to make sure they don't respond to the same students each week. Because Student K's postings are so brief and often lack inclusion of her opinion, her peers have had a hard time responding to her postings and offering her feedback.

With the instructor, the student's communications are also kept at a minimum. Again, after the initial "getting to know each other" contact posting, Student K has kept her communication brief. Mostly Student K will contact the instructor to let her know that work has been submitted, that she needs an extension on an assignment, or to ask a very basic question about one of the assignments.


 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">What types of thinking skills/information processing does the learner exhibit during their online discussions? **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">During the students' online discussions, Student K has, for the majority, exhibited very surface-level thinking and basic information processing skills. She rarely completes every part of every assignment, and the work she does complete displays low-level thinking skills. Examples of her work can be seen at the bottom of this page.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">There have, however, been a few times where she has asked a question about a topic which has led to a multi-threaded discussion among her and her peers. She often does not look over her work before submitting, as it is steeped in grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. While her instructor is very skilled in sending positive reinforcing feedback to her, she also always suggests areas for improvement. However, Student K has, as of yet, not taken these areas into consideration, as the same type of errors and surface-level analysis are present in her work halfway through the course that were present at the beginning. In addition, Student K does not support her work or complete the research required of the assignments, as evidenced by the feedback provided by her instructor here:




 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">How much time in relation to their peers did this student spend online? **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Student K did complete discussion postings as required for each week's lesson. However, her posting contributions were significantly less than what her classmates contributed. During the weeks pertaining to this case study, there were 577 postings in total from all the enrolled students. Of those 577, 61 were from Student K, which meant that Student K contributed to only 11% of the total postings, while the contributions from the other 5 students averaged at 15.8%.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Original Postings **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">While Student K did not post as prolifically as some of her classmates, it seems she was active in reading the discussion postings of her peers. Of the 6 active students in the class, five of the students, including Student K, read all 577 postings, while one student read 566 (98%) of the postings. Because the D2L system does not provide information about tool usage, it is unclear as to whether or not Student K actually read all of the postings, or if she simply used the tool "Mark all assignments as read" for each week's discussion postings. However, as some of the points made in Student K's postings do mirror those of her classmates, I feel she did read various classmates' postings each week.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Reading Postings **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Student K spent less time online than her classmates, //considerably// less time. In examining the data of the first eight weeks of the course, I looked at the average time spent online for all the students versus the average time spent online for Student K. Although there were some instances in which Student K spent much more time online than her peers for a particular topic or assignment, those instances were few and far between. The students as a whole averaged a total time of 18 minutes and 53 seconds online; conversely, Student K only averaged a total time of 2 minutes and 35 seconds online - 16 minutes and 18 seconds less than her classmates -- quite a difference!
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Time Spent Online **


 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">How familiar and competent is the student with technology? **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Student K seems to be familiar with and competent in the use of the basic technologies required of this course. She has posted no questions to the technical discussion board, nor has she sent any private messages to the instructor asking for assistance or clarification related to technology. She has been successful in navigating through the course and its materials, and in using the dropbox to submit her assignments. There have been no assignments which require the familiarization or use of other technologies (i.e. video, screencasts, podcasts, etc.), so I am unable to assess Student K's competence in these areas of technology.


 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">How successful academically is the student? **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Prior to week 8, which is when the plagiarism issue arose, Student K was moderately successful in the course. While her grade hovered on the lower end of the spectrum, Student K was completing all her work and maintaining, with minor difficulties here and there, to keep up with the pace of the course. At the course's halfway point, having received no credit for any of the work for week 8, Student K has a grade of 67%. The grades for the other five students range from a 54% to a 99%, with the average grade at this halfway point being an 84%. Even though Student K's grade is on the low side, her instructor feels that she could raise her average considerably by the end of the course if she submits original, quality work and completes all remaining assignments in a timely fashion.


 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Select artifacts that represent the student's achievement. **
 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Write reflective statements for each artifact, elaborating on why it was selected and its meaning and value in the portfolio. **



<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">In this example, Student K continues to exhibit poor grammar and editing skills. My impression that Student K rushes through her work was gathered from discussion postings like this one - her capitalization skills are poor, as is her subject/verb agreement skill.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">In spite of continuous messages like this one from her instructor, Student K continues to not proofread her work before submitting to the discussion board or to the dropbox for grading. Her response to this email was, "Oh, I didn't even see that," yet she continues to submit work riddled with typos and grammatical errors - most of them careless errors.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Here, Student K finally has written a post where she has taken a position and explained her opinion a bit. This posting of hers generated the most peer responses over the 8 weeks I evaluated her progress, most likely because her peers were able to ask her questions about her position and probe further, getting Student K to respond with deeper evaluation/explanation.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The mid-cours e assignment was a series of open-ended questions that related indirectly to one of their texts, Lost Names. I read each student's essay and, using Microsoft Word comment option, added my comments and feedback to their papers before submitting these back to them for review. Unfortunately, Student K did not complete the mid-course assignment, so I did not get a more "formal" opportunity to evaluate and provide her feedback on her writing and critical thinking skills.

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