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.

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

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

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.

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.