Oct. 20: Research Essay - 12 Components

What we are doing today, Monday, Oct. 20th (if you miss this class, do these steps at home. IMPORTANT! You'll get left behind if you don't.):

1) find the 12 components of a Research Essay, and create a Word document with these headlines. Email it to yourself.

2) download the 3 sample essays from last semester, and email them to yourself.

3) read 1 of the 3 sample essays together in class, and look at the corresponding survey and report sheet to see how the student from last semester has integrated his/her data. HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 22: Read the other two, so you get a good idea of what you are expected to do!

4) Find 3 research articles (or 4, for the 400 level) that deal with your topic and contain information you want to either confirm or contradict with your own survey results. NOTE: You are ONLY allowed to use published research essays from JSTOR, ERIC, or Google Scholar. No others are accepted; especially not websites and Wikipedia (those are not scientific and can contain many errors).

5) Create an Annotated Bibliography of these 3 or 4 articles.

HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 22: Email me ONE entry for your Annotated Bibliography.
HOMEWORK for Friday, Oct. 24th: Email me the TWO (or three) other entries for your Annotated Bibliography.

When I have graded and approved your entries for your Annotated Bibliography, copy and paste them into your Word document that is going to be your research essay under the corresponding heading.
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A research essay has 12 main components which are easy to detect: look at the headlines!

TASK 1:
Take 5 min. to briefly look over the following three sample research essays from the Internet (all are a little different, but their main components are always the same), and let's find out in class discussion what the components are (in the right order!!!).
1. article: Genetic Determinants of Bone Mass in Adults
2. article: Exploring the Role of Distance Education....
3. article: about Decision Making Styles

Tell me the components, so I can put them on the blog. You are going to open a Word document, and type those 12 headings in there. This is the beginning of your research essay. Save it on your desktop, and email it to yourself, so you always have access to it, since we are going to work on it in class during the following four weeks.

12 components of Research Essay:

1. Title
2. Your name and institution
3. Abstract
4. Keywords
5. Introduction
6. Literature review
7. Purpose
8. Participants
9. Methods
10. Results
11. a) Discussion (or: Conclusion)
11. b) Limitations
12. Annotated Bibliography (usually: "references," but we do a bit more than that)

As 13., you are going to attach your annex (pdf file of your SurveyMonkey result sheet. If you had open-ended text box questions on your survey, you need to attach the separate Word doc. sheets for the text answers of your subjects, too, since those won't print on your pdf report sheet. You have to click on VIEW on your SurveyMonkey results page, and print them out separately for each question where you had an open-ended text box!)


TASK 2:
Go to the website linked below, and save the three sample essays on your desktop as Word documents. Email them to yourself, so you will always have access to them. They show what last semester's students have done with their survey - they've created a research essay using their own data pool, creating graphs from their results using their SurveyMonkey Report Sheet, and integrating current research about their topic in their literature review, analyzing it in their Annotated Bibliography. The latter will be done in APA format. Use this link to see what your Annotated Bibliography has to look like.

NOTE: If you take this course at a 300 level, you need 3 published and peer-reviewed research essay from scientific journals for your Annotated Bibliography.

If you take this course at a 400 level, you need 5 published and peer-reviewed research essays from scientific journals for your Annotated Bibliography.

NOTE: While all three essays were A's, the students have made some minor mistakes, for example with citing correctly in the text in APA style, or regarding the academic format, etc. Do not take over uncritically everything they did, but use their papers as examples only.

Here are three sample Research Essays that some of my ENGL300 students wrote this Spring.
The first one deals with autism (Report Sheet included). Here's the corresponding survey.
The second one deals with AAE (Report Sheet included). Here's the corresponding survey.
The third one deals with Twins. (Report Sheet included.) Here's the corresponding survey.

In-Class Task:

Browse the Internet for 3 (respectively, 4) research articles about your topic. Use the links on top of this blog to search in the ERIC and JSTOR databases, and Google Scholar. No unscientific essays, please!!!

When you've found a title that sounds like it might be usable for your paper, read over it; and if you find good quotations you want to use (either confirming or contradicting what you want to find out with your own survey), create an Annotated Bibliography entry for it, and type it into your Word document. Your homework for Wednesday is to email me one annotation. An annotation in APA consists of the citation line, a very brief and concise summary of 2-3 sentences, and a personal statement of 2-3 sentences. See example of an annotation as linked at the top of this blog. See also this example I wrote for another class:

Hudson, R. F., Lane, H. B., & Pullen, P.C. (2005). Reading fluency assessment and instruction: What, why, and how? The reading teacher, 58 (8), 702-714.

After defining fluency as accurate oral rendering of connected text at conversational rate with suitable prosody, and its importance with regard to the automaticity needed for textual comprehension, Hudson et al. explain different correlations, such as between reading accuracy and proficiency, reading rate and reading proficiency, and prosody and reading proficiency. They provide research-based information on the assessment of reading fluency and accuracy, explaining different measuring instruments for contextual oral reading, e.g. time readings, AIMSweb, DIBELS, GORT-4, NEEP, Reading Fluency Monitor, as well as observations and Zutell & Rasinski’s scale for prosody. Finally, they list evidence-based instructional fluency-development methods, such as (timed) repeated readings, and connected programs (Carbo Recorded Books, Great Leaps Reading, etc.), and answer some common instructional questions.

As a future reading specialist, I want to get to know as many fluency-development methods and forms of assessment as possible (including the “fads”), to find out which practices work best in my classrooms or tutoring sessions, always keeping in mind that a fast reading pace is NOT always a signal for textual comprehension: some children are good at sounding out words fast and show phonemic awareness without understanding what they read, because they are “glued to the print” focusing on the letters instead of prior knowledge, content, context, and inferences. Those children are also in danger of not being able to “read between the lines” and understand what is not explicit, for example humor / sarcasm / irony. To detect the problems of such students (which often go unnoticed due to said fluency) is a major challenge for reading teachers.

Some Hints: how to Edit AFTER Publishing (in class, 17th)

How to go back to EDIT what you've typed into your survey AFTER it has already been opened to the public:

You cannot change the wording or order of your survey questions while people are still answering it and typing into your form - logically, that doesn't work, because what would they see??? Therefore, you must CLOSE your survey to the public BEFORE you EDIT it again according to your peer feedback received.

This is how we do it:


Go to our LABEL, find your survey, click on COLLECT RESPONSES, and click on the little parcel symbol which says OPEN

and CLOSE it.



When you've CLOSED your survey, that means nobody can type in any answers while you are changing your wording. When you've finished repairing your survey, OPEN it again for your audience to answer!

Homework for Monday, Oct. 20th:

1. Finish survey, repair it according to peer feedback (IF our gmail accounts work again; if not, you'll get more time for the final proofreading),

2. Finish your letter of introduction (with a nice attention catcher, and a link to your final survey. Don't put the whole long URL in there, that doesn't look good; instead, hyperlink the word "survey" or "link" in your sentence, "Please click on the following LINK to take my survey." Email me your letter of introduction for approval.

3. Email me the pdf file of the REPORT SHEET you created with some peer answers. In case nobody answered to your survey because it wasn't finished or for some other reason, take your survey yourself (or have some friends take it), so you can create and email me the REPORT SHEET. The answers are all fake, anyway. However, you will need some feedback and GRADING SHEETS from your peers; if you didn't get any by Monday, Oct. 20th, let me know, and I'll assign someone for extra credit to take your survey.

4. Start collecting 20 emails from your audience.

ATTENTION: This morning, all our grammar300.com emails did not work (nobody could read the inbox, or compose).

You can email me your pdf file and letter (and email your peers their feedback and grading sheets) from any private or siu email account you have, in case our gmail class accounts still don't work!!! Just send them to my grammar300.com email, because I can read it ;-) Also, send your peer feedback to the usual address; we suppose gmail will start working soon again. If not, you get a different deadline for reading and incorporating your peers' feedback.

How to find Results, and create Report Sheet

1. Today, Friday 17th, we are test-taking 5 (or more, if you want extra credit) surveys in class. Email the Survey Grading Sheet to the authors of the surveys, and to me in copy, and include some comment sentences.

Distribute your responses evenly, so that everybody gets some!!! I'll take all surveys, too.

If we have time, we'll do task 2-4 in class - if not, this will be your homework for Monday, Oct. 20th!


2. Then, we're going to look at our RESULTS. Go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/

Open the LABEL of our class, find your survey, but don't open it - just click on the button "ANALYZE," and it will give you a data sheet with blue bars on which you can see the answers of your test takers.

If you want to see what EACH SURVEY TAKER has answered, click on the left menu button "BROWSE RESPONSES," and it will show you a forward and a backward button that leads you to survey taker no. 1, no. 2., no. 5 - whichever you want to see. This might be important for your evaluation. This way, you can also see that the first survey taker was male and African American, the second one female and Caucasian, etc.....

P.S. I am taking your surveys, too, and I am typing my comments into your text boxes, so if you want to see what I had to say read your RESULTS ;-) If there are no comments, I didn't find any big mistakes. I didn't comment on missing parts, like your introductions, just on some very obvious spelling mistakes and/or malfunctioning matrices/buttons. I didn't correct everything, for that's your peers' job. I will fill in your Survey Grading Sheet after you've incorporated your peer feedback, so you'll get a better grade.


3. We will practice to create the pdf file (= REPORT SHEET) that has to be attached as an annex to your research essay later, when you got the real answers from your audience.

To create the REPORT SHEET, click on the left menu button "DOWNLOAD RESPONSES," choose "SUMMARY REPORT," and put the little black dot in the circle for "PDF FORMAT." Then, it will create one for you, and you just need to open it and save it, so you can email it to yourself and print it out.

Only AFTER you've created your pdf REPORT SHEET and have emailed it to yourself for printing, you can proceed with clearing out your responses account, so it will be fresh and empty when your real audience takes your survey.

To CLEAR out your peers' responses, go to the LABEL of our class, find your survey, don't open it, but click on the symbol of the little eraser that says CLEAR, and all your answers will be gone!


4. Create LETTER OF INTRODUCTION (basically the same as the intro on your survey, just a bit more elaborate, with a nice attention catcher in the beginning, such as: Do you believe that twins have language learning development as compared to singletons??? Some current research purports this. In the following survey (LINK of your repaired survey after incorporating your peer and teacher comments) I want to find out whether this is really true. I am a student of...... bla bla bla.)


HOMEWORK for Monday, Oct. 20th, will be to print out your peers' feedback on your REPORT SHEET so I know you all know where to find it, and how to print it. If you don't want to waste paper, you can also email me your report sheet as a pdf file (you don't need to hand in a paper copy).

If you haven't finished sending out the feedback, do so by the deadline of Saturday, Oct. 18th, 8 p.m. that we agreed on in class. That gives the people time from 8 p.m. to noon on Monday, Oct. 20th, to repair and finalize their surveys. The finished final versions of the surveys are due on Monday, Oct. 20th, in class!

Homework is also to finish up the LETTER OF INTRODUCTION we will begin in class today, and to email it to me by midnight on Friday, Oct. 17th, so I can grade it for Monday and give you the permission to email it out.

Also, please read the blog entry from last Monday's class again, because all the dates have changed due to the postponement of the presentations!!!

How to Create URL

To create a URL for your finished survey,

log into www.surveymonkey.com, find your survey under the label "grammarians300-2,Fall2008," and open your survey.

Then, click on the button "collect responses" on the horizontal menu list on top of your screen.

Then, put the little black bullet in the circle where it says, "create a link to send in your own email message..."

Copy the http://...... link that you get by right-clicking on it, open an email, paste this link with a right-click, and send it to me!

I will put your URL out on the blog on Thursday, Oct. 17th, 10:00 a.m. (deadline), so that everybody can access your survey on Friday morning at class time.

In case you don't manage to create the URL for whatever technological reason, just have your survey completely finished, and we'll create the link in class/after class in my office or the computer lab really quickly.

If your survey is not finished on Friday at class time, your grade for the survey will be lowered by one grade.

Survey Links

ATTENTION, the DATES have changed!!!
Presentations are postponed to Friday, 24th (Jeffrey) and Monday, 27th (Creighton), mini lessons are therefore earlier (Wednesday, 22nd), and surveys can be emailed out earlier (Wednesday, 22nd, after my approval).
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On Wednesday, Oct. 15th, we will have a workshop to finish up our surveys.

We agreed on a deadline for your audience to submit answers to your surveys: Wednesday, November 12th.

Then, we'll finish the surveys. Since it is a WORKSHOP, you will be required to figure the technology out through "learning by doing," and you are also welcome to discuss with your peers and exchange ideas. Remember that there are sample surveys out there, if you don't know how a matrix has to look like, for example.

Each person needs 20 questions, at least 2 of which must be matrices, and the rest varied (single choice answers, multiple answers possible, open-ended text line, open-ended text box, etc.). 4 questions must be demographic (data about subjects, such as age, gender, years of experience, income, years of study, place of living (important if you survey about dialects and slang), etc.). 16 questions are content-based (e.g., "How many minutes of grammar do you teach per lesson?")

When you make up a Likert scale (such as: strongly disagree - disagree - neutral - agree - strongly agree), remember that it is always of advantage to have five items, not four, because some people tend to choose the middle.

Make sure all your button choices make sense, and that there are few spelling mistakes in your survey.

Also, make certain that all your survey questions lead to your purpose (your research question; what you want to find out in your essay, e.g. whether Ebonics should be considered a foreign language or not. For example, to find this out, you probably won't need to ask in the demographics, "what is your monthly income" - unless you want to prove that lower income families would support/reject instruction in Ebonics. Thus, work towards your goal, and avoid useless questions. If, on the other hand, you want to find out whether female high school teachers teach more grammar in English classes than male high school teachers, you MUST ask for their gender, and analyze their answers accordingly.)

However, you WON'T USE all of your questions in your final research essay, in which you analyze the results -- you'll pick the most important ones, or the ones that had the best results. (In case you made a button mistake, your result for this question will be screwed up since the interviewees answered wrongly; DON'T USE screwed-up questions, just forget about them. You will have to make THREE GRAPHS in the end; they will focus on three specific questions important to your research purpose. You won't make a graph out of EVERY question. Some questions are just for your background knowledge, not for graphs, such as the demographics, which you will use in the part of your research essay that deals with PARTICIPANTS. This is what the section PARTICIPANTS might look like: "The participants of this study were 20 elementary school teachers, 12 females, and 8 males, ranging in age from 25-59 years. 15 were English teachers, 1 was a biology teacher, 3 were social studies teachers, and 1 was a history teacher. 80% had more than 5 years of teaching experience, 10% had 2-5 years of teaching experience, and 10% less than one year.... bla bla bla.")

TASK 1: Email me your survey URL
When you've finished your survey, create a hyperlink for it (I will model this), and email me your URL and your topic, so I can put it out on this blog. In case you don't finish your survey in class today, email it to me after class (deadline: Thursday, Oct. 16th, 10 a.m.), so that I can put it out for Friday, Oct. 17th. It does not need to be perfect yet, because we will test your survey and give you feedback on it.

TASK 2: Testing 5 peer surveys, using this Survey Grading Sheet.
Each student needs to take at least five surveys of his/her peers for testing. You can do more if you wish. Try to spread it evenly; don't all test the first five surveys that are published, but also the last ones that come in at the deadline (Thursday, 10 a.m.). Everybody needs feedback! I will take some randomly, too. Just go to the links that will be published here, and take the surveys. Fill in the Survey Grading Sheet for the surveys you test-take, and email this sheet together with some comments written in text to the author of the survey, and to me in copy to get your points for it.

EXTRA CREDIT opportunity: Some of you might have missed a piece of homework (blog entry) after the mid-term grade has been announced. If you want to make up for something missed, let me know and take an additional survey - when you email me the copy of your feedback for this survey, write in it "make up for: ______," so that I can give you a grade for this instead.) You cannot make up for assignments missed BEFORE the mid-term grade, because those grades are submitted and won't change any more.

If you missed a day AFTER the mid-term grade: an unexcused day is worth 5 extra surveys taken! Email me those 5 feedback comments, and type in, "make up for: ..... (date missed)."


TASK 3: Feedback email to 5 peers
As soon as you notice that something does not work, there is a spelling error, something is missing, the order of the question could be better, or you have a good question he/she could add, etc., email the person whose survey you took (you know the name; it's on the survey) and tell him/her what you noticed! In the end, you need to have sent FIVE EMAILS to the authors of the FIVE surveys you had to take. EMAIL ME A COPY of your feedback comments - even if you did not find any mistake - in this case, you tell the person what you liked about his/her survey. Deadline for emailing the feedback to your peers (with a copy to me) is Monday, Oct. 20th, at class time. If you haven't done your 5 feedback emails by then, you will miss points.

P.S. For those of you who abbreviate your first name - don't do it on the survey, or your peers won't be able to email you any feedback, since I created all grammar300.com emails with your long first name!!!



Preview of TENTATIVE SCHEDULE (might be subject to change, depending on how good/fast we are/I can grade ;-) ):

ATTENTION, date change for 2 presentations (a week later, so we'll email out the surveys earlier!!!):
On Friday, Oct. 24th, we will hear a presentation in LiveText by Jeffrey Ryden.
On Monday, Oct. 27th, we will hear a presentation by Creighton Jackson.

On Friday, Oct. 17th, we will:

1. test-take 5 surveys in class, filling in the Survey Grading Sheet, and emailing both with some comments in text format to the author of the surveys, and to me in copy (if you get done before class is over, you can take more for extra credit, or proceed with the "Letter of Introduction." This letter is mainly the same thing you wrote into the header of your survey (the part with the blood samples...), only a bit more elaborate, in a nice tone to address our audience, and if possible with an attention catcher in the first line, such as: "Do you believe that twin children have a disadvantage learning language??? At least, this is what some current research purports. I have created a survey to find out whether there is any truth in such previous observations. I'm a student of........ I would like you to take the survey you can find at this LINK, to help me find out more about this topic from experts and people who are directly concerned...... The deadline for taking this survey is..... bla bla bla." This letter will be typed into the email that contains our URL, which we will email out after I've approved of both. Don't send anything out before approval, because last year I got some complaints from the survey takers about buttons not working, mistakes, etc. We'll give our audience "simply the best" ;-)

2. repair our surveys according to our peer/teacher feedback that we got, and email me your final URL. Deadline for submitting the repaired URL to me by email is today, Friday, Oct. 17th, midnight. I'll give you the OK on Monday, Oct. 20th. Some of you might still need to make changes then, if I found a mistake. I will TAKE ALL SURVEY URL's off the blog when they are good to go, so that no strange people from the Internet are looking on our blog and taking your surveys, messing up the validity of your data!!! Or, I'll block all other Internet users from seeing our blog. You alone will keep your real URL, and email it out as soon as I give permission.).

3. Search the Internet for potential email addresses for our audience (such as from self-help groups of children with disabilities, or other SIU students, or public school teachers, etc.), and add them to our list of at least 20 (!) interviewees.

If you received 5 or more feedback emails already, you may proceed with "emptying your results" which I will model. See below. MAKE SURE your "results account" is completely empty from our fake test-taking before you email your survey out to your audience!!!


On Monday, Oct. 20th, we will

2. empty our "results" in http://www.surveymonkey.com/, because your peers' feedback is not from your intended audience; thus, we will delete it after having repaired/improved our surveys, to make the results account empty for the new answers of our real audience. (I will model it.)

If I have approved your letter and survey already, you can email them out on the 27th.

Then, we'll learn about the components of a Research Essay, and see / evaluate some examples from last year's 300 course.


On Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, we will email out all graded and approved letters of introduction and URL's!!!

Then, we will relax from the survey, and hear the next two mini lessons:

1) Katrina Kosma: That/Which
2) Charah Gates: Subject-Verb Agreement

3) and, if Charah can't come, Jamie Wolf on "Style"! Be prepared, please.)

Since on Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, we will email out all graded introductory letters with the URL to our audiences, you need to bring the 20 required emails of your study subjects!!! You can get them from focus groups or self-help groups/parents' groups on the Internet (about twins, autistic children, DS children, children with Tourette, etc.), from the autism center at SIU if you ask them politely, from high school/middle school/elementary school teachers anywhere in the U.S., from people you know, from fellow students, etc. You're not allowed to ask SIU faculty!!!

Then, we'll wait for 1-2 weeks for our results to come in (depending on the deadline we agreed upon). In the meantime, we'll do mini lessons, learn about how to do the statistics for the research essay (xls graphs), learn about the components of the research essay and its required format, and evaluate some sample research essays we created in grammar300 last year. If you're willing to let me use YOUR RESEARCH ESSAY for next year's grammar300 students, please let me know in an email!!! (You can do it after you've received your research essay back in December, and know your grade, or you can do it in general. If you want, I'll take out your name (indicate that!). Your collaboration would be greatly appreciated - you are allowed to see last year's examples throughout this course, too! ;-))

Links to our PRELIMINARY SURVEYS for testing:

Thanks to those who published their URL's; for those who couldn't do it, I've created the URL myself after the deadline for submission on Thursday, 10 a.m. It won't result in a point loss as long as your survey was finished, since it's not your fault I didn't model how to create the URL in our last meeting.

Grammar without Grammar: Just Playing Around, Writing

RESPONSES to this blog entry are due on Wednesday, Oct. 22nd, 2008.
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This article was basically about teaching grammar without your students knowing you are teaching them grammar.

Dean began teaching in a district that specifically addressed the teaching of grammar and sentence structure. When she tried to break down sentences and help her class identify words defined as adverbs, direct objects, adjectives and pronouns she met with blank looks and knew she was quickly losing the interest of her students. In vain she tried to find ways to incorporate grammar into everyday lessons only to be met with a scathing letter from a parent concerning her approach.

Changing methods she zeroed in on the writing of her students. She began to find ways of presenting sentences to the class that peaked their interest and met the grammar criteria. She never specifically told her class this is an adverb, that is the subject of the sentence. When she tried she lost them. She pushed on without mentioning grammar. The students became interested more because they felt it was a fun sentence game and not basic grammar.

Dean found a way to engage and teach her students without putting what she was teacing into specific context. She never said that by writing these sentences you are learning about fragments, subidornate clauses or parallel structure; but they were. The could make up a sentence and then break it down to specific subjects. They were learning and incorporating what they were learning into writing assignments. The idea of not knowing what Dean was specifically teaching them took the fear and boredom out of the lesson and made it easier to teach and therefore to learn.

This approach to grammar might not work for all teachers but clearly worked in Deans case. I found this approach refreshing and would utilize it in a classroom should I decide to teach.

In-Class, Monday, Oct. 13th: Survey Template

MEMO: Don't forget to bring your remaining questions of the 20 on Wednesday, Oct. 15th, for the workshop!!!

There are some surveys that weren't saved correctly (lastname_topic). I'm going to delete those on Wednesday, so make sure you save them in the correct way to prove who did them!!!

P.S. Make sure your first four questions deal ONLY with DEMOGRAPHICS!!! No such things as "how do you feel about Tourette"! You need 4 background questions, and 16 content-related questions.
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Today after the two mini lessons, we are going to create our survey templates.

Log into http://www.surveymonkey.com/ with the secret login and password I give you in class. Note these down so you will be able to log in for your homework. Don't share them with anybody else.

I will model how to create the templates, and once you've created them, I will LABEL them, so you can find your survey easily. My other classes also took/take surveys, so there are lots of names out there. If you are searching for your survey, look under "My Surveys," "Current Folder," then click on the black arrow and select the LABEL "grammarians300-2,Fall2008." This folder contains the surveys from our class only.

When you've chosen the background color for your template, we will do the first four questions together. They should be roughly the same for everybody, and deal with DEMOGRAPHICS (what you want to know about your subjects' background) only:
1. gender
2. age
3. how long they've taught/studied, etc. (professional experience)
4. some detail about experience (which majors; how many children with disabilities, etc.)

Then, we are going to create an Intro for our survey which goes directly under its title (use the EDIT button). It contains the following (look at last year's sample surveys again):


INTRO

1. identify your teacher, course, and university
2. mention whom you are going to interview (your audience)
3. state your research purpose (what you want to find out)
4. mention that you don't need consent of IRB and HSC, because...
5. mention that your survey is anonymous, for in-class use only, and not for publication
6. mention deadline for data submission (how long they can answer before you need the results. ATTENTION: we didn't agree on a date yet, so you can leave the date blank for now!)
7. mention that interviewees can receive the survey results by emailing you at your @grammar300.com email
8. mention that taking this survey does not take longer than 10 min.
9. thank the interviewees for their time/cooperation.



EXAMPLE:

I, first name last name, am a student from Dr. Christina Voss' English 300-1 Language Analysis class at SIUC. For my Fall 2008 project I am exploring the opinions of foreign language instructors to ascertain whether African American English (AAE) is worthy of foreign language status. This survey does not need the consent of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Human Subject Committee (HSC), because I am using this information as an in-class activity only; it is anonymous, and not for publication; I am not taking any blood samples; and I am not surveying minors. The deadline for taking this survey is November 10th, 2008. If you would like to receive the results of this survey, please feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@grammar300.com. This survey will take you about 10 minutes to complete. Thank you very much for your time.


HOMEWORK for Wednesday, Oct. 15th:

On Wednesday, we are finishing up our online surveys in a workshop. You need to bring all your 20 questions on paper.

On Friday, Oct. 17th, we are watching a presentation in LiveText by Jeffrey Ryden. This will take the whole class session. You don't need to prepare anything.

PROMPT: Write the 16 other survey questions (we did the 4 for demographics together in class) on a piece of paper, or into an email to yourself, so all you have to do in class on Friday, Oct. 17th, is to type them into the online builder. MAKE SURE you have 20 questions altogether; some one-choice-only items; some multiple-choice-possible items, some matrices, some single-word textboxes, and some open-ended essay text boxes.................. If you only have yes/no questions, your survey will appear boring. Vary it!!! Check last year's sample surveys for ideas.