1. Project Development
As detailed in Chapter 1 and 2, the necessity of homework is a hotly debated
topic. This researcher firmly believed in the value of homework. Research supported
the idea that homework reinforces and helps to cement curriculum introduced in the
classroom (Cooper, Robinson, and Patall 2006). While some suggest that students are
overwhelmed with too many hours of homework and was a waste of time and could lead
to major stress within families (Kohn), casual conversations with 8th grade students at
Martinez Junior High seem to reveal that little time was actually spent on homework or
test study. Instead, students were spending the majority of after school time on the
internet, or cell phone or computer. PEW study data supported this anecdotal data.
Recent PEW research indicated that there has been a sharp increase in cell phone
ownership and usage for middle school aged children. While only 45% of teens owned
cell phones in 2004, that number jumped to 71% in 2008 and can be expected to be even
higher today. In an effort to combine the needs of the teacher to have students do some
work at home to keep the classroom curriculum moving forward, and the desire of the
student to be using some form of technology for most of their after school hours, the
researcher set out to investigate the possibility of adapting routine weekly science
homework to the web. While many prior studies have been done on the effectiveness of
homework, few have investigated the results of offering the opportunity to do homework
through the internet. The major studies that have been reviewed primarily involved math
curriculums and mostly at the high school level and above.

2. Prior research studies on reasons students do not do homework have come to the
conclusions that students have difficulty working independently (Latto-Auld, 2005), that
they do not have adequate facilities at home to complete their work (Krovalec & Buell,
2001), the assigned work is inappropriate (Marzano & Pickering, 2007), or that the
student voice has not been heeded (Noguera, 2007). To better engage the current
students who are Digital Natives, combining the ability to complete and submit
homework with the power of the computer seemed necessary. This approach offered the
opportunity to teach using technology – not just teach about technology.
Last year students at Martinez Junior High School had a spotty history of
homework completion. Often the results were as high as 50% non-turn in. There was a
growing sense from teachers that more and more students at all grade levels were not
completing homework. The incidence of non-homework compliance was so high that the
school instituted an academic homework lunch for 8th grade science students. Students
who did not complete their routine weekly science homework were “invited” to spend
lunch with the principal every day until the work was completed. While the percentage of
students turning in their homework on time did not increase significantly, the school
scores on the science portion of the yearly CST exam did improve. Was there a
connection to student participation in the homework process and an improvement in their
test scores? Certainly it didn’t hurt. So given that it appeared there was a connection
between student achievement and homework, the research set out to investigate how to
get a higher number of students to engage in the homework process and attempt to
complete their homework on time. Since so many students showed an aversion to a

3. traditional pen-and-paper style of homework, was it possible to get them interested by
offering the same homework through the internet?
Components
Initially conceived as an action research project the intent was to assign Period 1
as a control group, periods 2 and 5 being offered only an opportunity to complete the
assignment on-line, and periods 3 and 6 being offered the opportunity to complete their
homework on the web. It quickly became apparent that this would be punitive to students
who did not have ready access to a computer and the internet. Even if students had access
to the internet there were issues of the necessary programs to support the assigned work.
It became necessary to redesign the research. All students were given instruction on
accessing the homework on-line, completing it, and sending the completed work back to
the teacher. Once these instructions were given, students were then asked to decide which
method of homework completion they would prefer.
Description of Project
The project took place over a 4 week period covering one chapter of their
textbook on the topic of Force and Motion. Each student is given a “consumable”
science notebook at the beginning of the school year. It serves as a method to guide
students to the important information to be gleaned from the chapter. There are typically
3 to 4 pages per lesson and 3 to 4 lessons per chapter. The routine assignment were the
pages for one lesson per week. Casual inquiry of the test subjects suggested that it took
most students 20 to 30 minutes to complete all the assigned pages for the week.
Occasionally there would also be additional homework in the form of completing lab

4. work or other supplemental worksheets. Students had been assigned a similar style of
homework over the prior 6 weeks to insure that they had a familiarity with the length and
style of a typical homework assignment. The study was restricted to homework pages
from the Science Notebook and Chapter Outline. Homework was assigned on Monday
and due on Thursday. The initial research proposed a pre-test prior to beginning the
research. Due to time constraints the research was modified to include a homework quiz
given the day after the homework was due and reviewed in class. This gave all students
an opportunity to review the assigned material even if they had not done the assignment.
In order to make the notebook pages easily accessible to students, links were
embedded in the school-maintained teacher web page. Students opened the web page and
downloaded the necessary Science Notebook pages to their own computers. Once
completed, they attached the completed pages to an email and sent them back to the
teacher. The teacher review of the completed work was emailed back to the student the
next day. Comments were attached along with the grade. This afforded the opportunity
to give feedback to the student in a more timely fashion. This was an important feature as
prior studies had indicated that getting information back to the student in a timely fashion
was instrumental in an improved comprehension of the material (Mendicino, Razza &
Heffernan, 2009).
Initially the researcher had hoped to use products already offered on-line by the
textbook publisher. These products proved to be unusable because the same work could
not be offered to students NOT doing their homework via the internet.

5. No control over their review of the feedback – no different than when papers are returned
to students with comments.
How to fit in the info on the math mall and the implications of read 180 etc.