This is the proposal for my dissertation at Oklahoma State University - proper design of asynchronous professional development courses.

1. RESEARCH PROPOSAL
CARYN SMITH LONG
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
• Pragmatic mixed methods research design
• Asks questions and uses multiple methods to answer those questions.
• Answers inform something – in this case construction of NASA’s Digital
Learning Network™ new NASA Virtual University – online asynchronous
professional development courses.

3. THEORIES
Study is grounded in the following theories:
• Richard Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning
• Alan Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory
• Alan Baddley’s Working Memory Theory
• John Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory
• Don Norman’s Emotional Design
• Albert Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory

4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• Will learners who use static text and video with audio gain more content
knowledge than those who have static text with static pictures or static text
and video only exposure?
• Will learners who use static text and video with audio have their efficacy
level increase over those than have used static text with static pictures or
static text and video only?
• Will better content knowledge correlate to higher self-efficacy?
• What themes will emerge from participants’ perceptions of how their PD
session affected their confidence level to teach science?

5. RESEARCH DESIGN
• Mixed Methods – including quantitative and qualitative measures
• Quantitative – pretest and posttest multiple choice that measures concept of
knowledge presented in the course and STEBI-B that quantitatively measures
efficacy levels for science teaching.
• Qualitative – interviews of 6-12 participants from the larger sampling post course
intervention. Qualitative measurements will be taken through a pre-established
set of interview questions that have been modified from a previous dissertation
study and used to gather information from a small selected group of the larger
participant gathering common themes about their feelings of efficacy after
completing their course.
• Goal of 90 middle school teachers (national definition grades 5-8)
• Will inform the design of NASA Virtual University courses

6. TEST METHODS
• Asynchronous Course – Physics Content
• 3 different set ups
• Standard textbook design – text and static pictures (control)
• Words and multimedia (text, moving pictures) (test condition 1)
• Words and multimedia (text, moving pictures and audio) (test condition 2)
--Will seek volunteers during August
--3 week 3 part course design for each test condition
--Pre test conducted before access to the material for content and base line self-
efficacy. Those with greater than 80% average on content test will be eliminated
from the research.
--3-4 participants from each of the test groups will be interviewed post intervention
to check for common themes of efficacy for each design.

7. • Content: Educator created content assessment using a variety of Bloom’s
Revised Taxonomy. The test will include twenty questions at the base level of
the taxonomy (five remember and five understand), ten questions at the
apply/analyze level, and five create/evaluate questions (Anderson, 2001).
• Self-Efficacy: The STEBI-B will be administered pre and post in order to
quantitatively measure PSTE and STOE. Results will be compared in order to
measure for changes that may be attributed to the course design. A pre-
established set of interview questions that have been modified from a
previous dissertation study will be used to gather information from the small
selected group of the larger participant gathering after the completion of
their course (Hopkins, 2007)
ASSESSMENT