Type: Short Paper (15 min.) or Roundtable (30 min)

Software for Educational Research
Novel Applications, Approaches and Ideas

OH Projector/Screen

A partnership was established in the spring of 1996 between the Centerville High School Instructional Materials Department and the College of Education and Human Services of Wright State University. At the suggestion of the Assistant Dean of Technology, a team was developed using experienced technologists from the public school and from the university.

Dr. Ronald G. Helms of the Teacher Education Department has offered over 100 technology presentations during the past ten years. Mrs. Sharon Helms has spearheaded many technology projects at Centerville High School. This team was given the opportunity to attend the Ernest L. Boyer Summit in Pittsburgh.

The Advanced Placement American Literature classes are required to use professional critics' writings as the basis for their studies of authors and works. The teacher is requesting that the librarian help in bringing to his students access to advance research documents as well as access to advanced search skills. Because this need is current, this proposal will focus on this specific problem.

The high school library offers a good, general collection of periodicals in print and on CD-ROM, but the collection does not include literary journals. Because the school library has been unable to fill the resource needs of students in the AP American Literature classes, their teacher has encouraged the students to go to university libraries in order to use specialized indexes and journals. At the universities the students are frustrated by what they consider the immensity of the situation: they can't find their way around the facility, they can't locate the appropriate research tools, the located tools are not user-friendly, and help for the students is either nonexistent or intimidating. Both the teacher and the students perceive that an excessive amount of time is being spent on attempting to gather research materials before projects even begin.

The library staff, after trying several periodical databases, is satisfied that the library is now providing a search and full-text periodical database that serves a broad spectrum of students and curriculum. It is now apparent that there is a need to provide materials for more specialized research for the significant number of students who are taking more challenging English courses.

The Advance Placement English classes hve desired that the high school might provide the Modern Language Association Bibliography. If the library can provide specialized literary research tools such as this, students and staff can be introduced to a more challenging range of literature and can develop refined search strategies. Furthermore, gaining skill at a sophisticated research tool while in the comfort zone of the students' own school will enable the students to venture out to other libraries with the confidence to broaden their horizons even more.

We now hope to bring into the library the Modern Language Association Bibliography, the Humanities Index and the Essay and General Literature Index. The Advanced Placement English teacher and two librarians will use the new literature indexes as the research base for critical units on author and work. A delivery system must be initiated in order for the students to obtain articles which they locate while using the indexes. Necessary initial steps will be to gain access to the databases and to obtain training in the use of the databases for the librarians and teacher. Arrangement for article delivery must be arranged through the public and/or university libraries. As soon as is practicable, training will be introduced to teachers of enriched classes.

A subscription for the Essay and General Literature Index and the Humanities Index can be purchased on CD-ROM from the H.W. Wilson Company. The Modern Language Association Bibliography can be purchased on CD-ROM from Silver Platter. A Wright State University librarian will train the selected high school staff to use the databases. The Wilson Company also has a regional representative who will provide training. Dr. Helms will aid in the arrangement for training at Wright State of public school personnel. Wright State technologists will share resources with public school personnel. Following this training, the teachers will train the high school students at Centerville High School. The Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library and the Wright State University Library will fax articles to the high school on a fee basis.

The quality of the students’ papers after their use of the proposed software can be compared with the work of last year’s students. But probably a more telling comparison will be made by comparing the papers of this year’s students that were submitted immediately before the installation of the research software with those papers which will be prepared with the aid of the new research tools. Quality of work can be assessed on the creativity and insight of the controlling ideas, strength of the major and minor supporting ideas, and depth and scholarship of the works cited entries.

Outcomes of AP Literature scores can indeed be monitored.

Efforts are continually made to obtain recent graduates’ assessments of the school curriculum. This will be an area of interest for English department follow-up, although this segment of assessment does not fall within the time constraints of this project grant.

The software can be put into place within two months of funding. All other matters can be accomplished during the wait time for the software. Training of teachers can be completed in one school day for each teacher. Training of students will be initiated on the first day allotted for their research, and the training and use of the resources will be refined throughout the search project. A method of article delivery will take two weeks to put into place. The Advanced Placement teacher will have one research assignment ready to be presented to students within one month after the software is in place, and the unit will be completed in three weeks. The project, therefore, can be completed and evaluated in approximately five months, or by June 1, 1997. 

Evidence of success will consist of

• demonstrated skill of students in building appropriate search strategies.

• retrieval of appropriate research materials.

• quality of literary projects as judged by the teacher.

• student attitude toward research as judged by the teacher and librarian.

As soon as the training and research of the AP American Literature classes are in progress, training of all English teachers will begin, and the new resources will be incorporated next into enriched American Literature and British Literature classes and then, on a needs basis, into general American and British literature classes. The school supports approximately seventeen enriched English classes. At the school there are eighteen English teachers, each teaching five classes per day. All eighteen English teachers will have access to this training. Other faculty will be offered this training on a personal needs basis.

Dissemination of information about the CPB grant, the project, and project results will be accomplished in several ways as the project progresses.

• When the research tools are ready for student use (after product installation and educator training), an article introducing the databases to the school population will be submitted to the school newspaper; the article will preferably be submitted by one of the AP students.

• After the tools have been used by a sizable number of students, an article highlighting the CPB grant, the resulting resources, and student enthusiasm will be submitted to the education department of the local newspapers.

• At completion of the project there are plans for several collaborative articles by grant recipients and English teacher for English, library, and university professional journals.

• These articles will also be posted to R. Helms’s webpage -- http://www.ed.wright.edu/cehs/helms/rhelms/htm.

• There are also plans for several collaborative state and national conferences by grant recipients and English teacher for English, library, and university professional organizations.

• The first presentation will occur on January 24, 1997 in St. Louis at the Holmes PDS: The Gateway Conference.

• A second scheduled conference may occur at the Ed Media and Ed Telecom ‘97

World Conference on Education and Multimedia and Hypermedia & World Conference on Educational Telecommunications Calgary, Canada on June 14-19, 1997.

• Other conference presentations will be planned.