Call for participation – online secondary science education – student and teacher perspectives

Investigators at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Hartley University are looking for virtual school teachers and students to participate in a study called “The Experience of Online Secondary Science Education from the Perspectives of Teachers and Students.” They’re looking for schools who offer online secondary science courses. Virtual schools across the country are being recruited for this study in order to gain a holistic understanding from the viewpoints of the teachers and students who teach and learn in this environment.This study will use phenomenographic interviews, the analysis of which will provide a structural awareness of what is different about these experiences and what is the same about these experiences. This will allow meaning to be developed as to what it is to teach and learn in an online secondary science course.If your students and teachers participate in this study, they will be asked to complete online demographic surveys. The purpose of these survey is to ensure a variety of experience among participants and should take no more than 15 minutes of their time. There will also be two Skype interviews. The first will be a quick, 15 minute, “get to know you” type chat. The second Skype interview will be a more in-depth interview where their experiences of online secondary science teaching and learning are discussed. Experience in this sense is more investigatory as to what teaching and learning online secondary science means, not a list of specific experiences that may have occurred. This interview will take between 30 to 45 minutes. Finally, after the interviews have been transcribed, member checks will be conducted to ensure the transcriptions represent what the participants intended to say.For this research, it is important to have student/teacher pairs in order to develop the overall view of the course. The researchers will choose students to be selected based on their responses to the demographic surveys. The investigators are looking for experience differences, not demographic differences. Types of online science courses taken, the number of online courses taken, and grade level will be the determining factors for student selection. Of course, students’ parents would be contacted first to obtain their permission.All of the data obtained from these interviews will be kept confidential and no names will be used in any of the articles developed from the data. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact Cynthia Clark at clarkc@unlv.nevada.edu or by phone at 702-518-9081. Thank you for your consideration.

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“The Experience of Online Secondary Science Education from the Perspectives of Teachers and Students” Principal Investigator: Dr. Kendall, Hartley University Student Investigator: Cynthia Clark, Doctoral Candidate, UNLV