Topic: What topic do you plan to focus your research design on for this project?
I plan to focus my research design on “how to provide education through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Open Education Resources (OER) with the incorporation of the new technology of instructions to those whose access to education is a challenge.
In order to create my research design, I first considered my priorities for the research. Although I would have preferred to obtain direct answers from the learner itself, I realized that contacting them would be a difficult task, as these are more than ten thousand of vulnerable people living in so many different countries and in so many different locations. As this was not practically feasible, I had to develop my questions to obtain the answers from a different perspective directing them to the UN officers through e-mail surveys. As at present there is a need to educate the vulnerable population in the camps, although there is an issue of how the technological issue is setup to facilitate this need. As an initial focus on this problem, I would proceed with a quantitative-based method to draw information.
What are your initial hypotheses and research questions?
My initial hypotheses are to find ways with the new technology of instructions to provide teaching and learning to the life of the learner who does not have access to education. Initially, I would go with the primary data collection (quantitative), obtaining original data through surveys directed to the UN offices. Next analyzing data through secondary research (Qualitative). Quantitative data measuring with a fixed variable will be used.
My research question was directed towards obtaining information by country and camp population into the organization the population represented (e.g. UNHCR, UNICEF), the geographic area (e.g. Africa, North America), the group that the population belongs (e.g. refugees, forced migrants), the description where the population is (e.g., Rural area, Refugee camps), the age, the gender, the language used, any disabilities noted in these population, education level, non-formal education, the rating of the present education setup, facilities provided at present (e.g. Wi-Fi, mobile, laptop, satellite, and solar power generated equipment), whether populations are interested in train-the-trainer facilities and what briefly explaining the present constraints for the education are some of my research questions.
Why do you feel this topic and questions lend themselves to quantitative/fixed methods research?
My objective is to measure variables, examine the relationship between these variables and determine the cause and effect between the variables as such I used a fixed design with a collection of data in standardizing form from a relatively large number of individual (Robson, McCartan, 2011) which represent a large group. This is summarized by the statistical method of descriptive characteristics that sorts the in-depth research and answers my questions of what and how. This can be represented by detail, organization, and graphical data which can then measure with mean and standard deviation, variance and coefficient of variation, and hypothesis testing.
What are the limits you face with designing tests, scales, and their usefulness?
My primary thoughts were to provide this questionnaire to the migrant’s refugee population in the USA through Catholic charities, researching through the internet I could not find questionnaires or examples.
I realized then that if my survey is directed to refugees already who have migrated to other counties, my survey answers would be on past information. While realizing this I change the questionnaires to forwarded to the organization to respond as the organizational responses would the most current. Also, if I cannot obtain the required survey responses, I could always obtain the information from a department/ report that has the current information.
In my survey, I used mostly closed-ended questions that are easier for the organizations to give a direct answer with the inclusion of scale. One question of open-ended was used as I would prefer to receive a brief description of the constraints presently encountered which will be useful to measure freedom of thought and expression.
Reference
Citron, J. (2016) Refugee learners’ needs: framework of questions
https://techfugees.com/all_news/refugee-learners-needs-framework-of-questions/
Robson, C., McCartan, K. (2011) Real world research – fourth edition
Warren, S. (n.d.) Scales and tests (PowerPoint presentation)
Blogs 