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(Introduction to Chapter 4: Results)This chapter will report findings that answer the research questions, as well as address the questions that emerged during data analysis and their corresponding
findings. Also included are a description of the course and a section on how the students viewed this online experience. These will help present a full picture of this unique educational experience, which should give
the actual findings more clarity and depth. This chapter also includes many insights that emerged over the length of the study. Note that all excerpts of the students' online interaction are printed in this chapter just
as they wrote their responses online. The results of the study provide descriptive analysis of the following main areas:
- this online educational experience;
- the nature of the online interaction; and,
- the evidence of constructivist learning principles.
There will also be a section describing these two organizational outlines: (a) the analytic bin system, which was informed by theory, and transformed by the data and analytic processes; and, (b) the
subsequent categorization of the data, which resulted from the ongoing recursive processes of data exploration and data analysis. This section is more methodological, and will be discussed in more detail elsewhere; but
the rest of the study's findings will be more fully understood with a brief section on the results of how the data were analytically organized. A description of the organizational structure of the
data reflects the results of analysis. That is, the analytic bin system and the subsequent organization of the data (i.e., categorization of data and emergence of patterns and themes) were in constant evolution. Results
of analysis were continually informing the analytic categories and how the data were categorized and organized. This in turn offered completely fresh perspectives, which altered the analysis, producing new results – and
this was a continual, integrated process. The data analysis was changing the structure of the analytic bin system for categorical organization of the huge volume of data. The change in structure was both affecting and
affected by the results of analysis. These analytic outlines of the online interaction and of the categorization system will help to illuminate the findings.
Note that this chapter contains citations from the students' online responses that have been copied exactly as they were written by the students. This chapter contains the following
sections as outlined... [outline is above, so I will not repeat it here].: |
