WRIT 1133, Summer 2010

Formal Assignment 3
Quantitative Research: Measuring Attitudes About Learning
5+ pgs, 4-6 sources
APA Style

Your first assignment asked you to examine DU from a historical perspective,

analyzing DU culture as you interpreted it through artifacts. The second assignment
asked you to examine a current DU culture, observing and analyzing a particular
subculture as it interacts and contributes to campus. While these assignments asked
about the social and cultural environment of your campus, in this assignment you’ll be
asked to inquire about attitudes and beliefs of its academic environment.

Your assignment will be to use quantitative measurements to describe student and

teacher attitudes toward the classroom environments at DU. One goal with this
assignment will be to critically use quantitative measurements to create an honest
description of the academic environment as it exists at the University of Denver. In
other words, you’re taking abstract measurements about the environments of learning
on campus that have been gathered through primary research, and making them
meaningful to a popular audience, and audience outside of academia and the
university itself.

We’ll use the CTL’s 2009 study of Technology in the Classroom (available at:
https://portfolio.du.edu/pc/port?page=4&uid=21059) as the quantitative data that will
drive the arguments you make for this assignment. You’re encouraged to use other
data sets about learning at DU (ask me which ones!), but to also supplement your
analysis of the Technology Survey with at least 3 other, print-based sources in APA
format.

The Technology Survey will allow us to inquire further into the learning environments
at DU, and particularly how technology affects these environments. We might ask, for
example: How do faculty/students at DU learn through technology? What do
students/faculty value about the use of technology to enhance learning? How do
faculty/students feel about the current uses of technology in their classes? What kinds
of learning happen at DU through technology? What should an outside audience know
about the technological opportunities as they relate to the education received at DU?

While there are many ways to approach this assignment, in this project you’ll imagine
a popular audience and specific purpose to describe or explain DU’s academic culture
using quantitative measurements. (Feel free to also explore popular forums like news
articles, blogs, letters, or “Guides to DU,” or a series of tweets.)

Your project should describe DU’s educational and technological culture by using
data correlations to synthesize the study’s measurements and support claim(s)
you create from the study. Here is where you will also use relevant, secondary
sources in support of your claims, or to correlate with your synthesis of the CTL’s
study.
For example: You might wish to argue why both DU students and faculty seem to
use and prefer face-to-face interactions and email as the dominant modes of
communicating with one another about class, over other possibilities like social-
 networking, twitter, or chat. Find an appropriate popular forum that would be
interested in your translations of such research (maybe even Twitter itself).
OR: You might inquire as to why students overwhelmingly write to social
networking sites outside of class (Question 4), when, in classroom environments,
students predominately use collaborative tools or social bookmarking sites
(Question 5). Make an argument, then, as to how this illustrates attitudes toward
student-teacher relationships at DU, targeting alumni, parents, or another popular
audience.
OR: You might point to a particular component of the CTL survey to identify where
DU could improve in its incorporation of technology in the classroom to enhance
teaching, learning, or student preparation for life outside of DU, and synthesize the
Technology Survey results to address this issue toward an audience of business
professionals.
One Last Option: There’s a lot of information included in the questions on the
survey that ask for qualitative data. [I’m obviously NOT asking you to read this; it’s
simply too much, besides, our focus is on the numbers.] However, if you can
determine a way to use this data in making your argument, feel free to do so.

Readings to Help You Along the Way (All available on Blackboard under
“Readings”):
1. “Select Results and Quotes PPT from Pre-Conference Survey”
2. “2009 CTL Survey Data Documents”
3. CTL Conference Student Survey Results
4. CTL Conference Faculty Survey Results

What you’ll be graded on:

• How strong your approach to using quantitative research is, including:
• The strength of your choice of topic and your ability to incorporate quantitative
data and secondary material toward an argument or analysis,
• How you identify the importance of the topic covered toward the audience
chosen,
• How you target your audience, and how your discussion of quantitative data has
been translated as important to that audience
• How strong your use of research is to support your analysis of quantitative
data,
• How you use credible evidence appropriately to support your main analysis
• How well you incorporate different rhetorical strategies to achieve your purpose.

DUE: July 24th, 5pm Mountain Time