Literacy intervention research tests our best ideas about instruction and forges a pathway forward toward deeper and more nuanced understandings of how children think, communicate, and learn. This chapter describes the components of the development of literacy interventions, explaining how to construct and evaluate each component in sequence to…

The aim of this case study is to highlight the importance of piloting or pre-testing the research design (in this case, semi-structured interviews and narratives). Most textbooks offer minimal guidance about pre-testing the research design, and published reports rarely report whether the research was piloted and, if so, what were the results.…

Momentary time sampling (MTS), whole interval recording (WIR), and partial interval recording (PIR) are commonly used in applied research. We discuss potential difficulties with analyzing data when these systems are used and present results from a pilot simulation study designed to determine the extent to which these issues are likely to be…

This paper reports on the design of a pilot doctoral study into the online support of pre-service teachers. It highlights the significance of a consequential, rather than deontological, perspective in guiding the development of a study's design. The study initially aimed to explore pre-service teachers' perceptions and use of social media on their…

Design solutions have become increasingly complex and based on a rapidly growing body of knowledge. In order to articulate a design solution to a client, the graphic use of the design narrative can effectively communicate complex ideas. Two case study interventions were conducted in an interior design program in which students were introduced to…

This article discusses the objectives and outcomes of a project to enhance digital humanities training at the undergraduate level in a Hong Kong university. The co-investigators re-designed a multi-source data-set as an example and then taught a multi-step curriculum about gathering, organizing, and presenting original data to an introductory…

Open courses have received a lot of attention in the last two years; however, the question of whether they serve learners has yet to be determined. This paper explores the challenges and potential in assessing the impact of open educational initiatives, particularly those that produce and share Open Educational Resources (OER). We use a…

The field of Social Research Methods is shared not only by the social sciences, but by many other disciplines. There is therefore enormous scope for the creation and re-use of open educational resources (OERs) in this area. However, our work with social scientists on a number of recent projects suggests that barriers exist to OER creation and use…

In this article we illustrate how the piloting process has influenced two widely different studies within the educational sciences. These studies differ in design but have as a common denominator that they used piloting methods in their preparatory process. They are also similar in the intention of the main researchers of conducting research with…

In this article, the author tells the story of a continuing body of work that she began in 2001, titled "Navigate." The author relates that she sees this extended project as a case study of her working habits and ideas bridging the moment when she began to think of her practice as research. Through the story telling and writing this…

Purpose: This paper aims to compare the ways in which a range of quality frameworks have been validated and to identify a number of factors that have an impact on validation processes. Design/methodology/approach: Seven examples of published quality frameworks applicable to the field of e-learning are described and the methods used to validate…

Worldwide there seems to be an interest in enhancing the student learning experience through particularly interactive learning, which is an educational philosophy that places the student at the centre of the learning process. Such an approach acknowledges the educational contexts from which students come. What is even more important is the fact…

Training health professionals within university environments has traditionally focused on face-to-face methods. Practitioners working within the UK National Health Service (NHS) have found it difficult to gain leave from work to attend for study due to the demands of the NHS and staff shortages. In response, the authors developed a distance…

A preliminary case study used repertory grid and stimulated recall techniques to examine how teachers make sense of the impact of microcomputers on their work. Emphasis was on how teachers construe their classroom influence in relation to the actual use of microcomputers and to idealizations of their use. A version of the Kelly (1955) repgrid was…

After a brief introduction indicating the value of the first Follow Through evaluation, this document offers ideas about how a new wave of Follow Through approaches should be evaluated. The discussion is based on the premise that the form of an evaluation must be derived from the questions for which answers are sought, the audience(s) to whom the…