Inquiry impacts on future

Evaluate how your Inquiry impacts on future

Inquiry/practice

Research literature - Examining the impact of digital technologies on student learning

 What is the actual impact after the ‘Take Action’ phase?

Through the process of thematic analysis, three dominant themes have emerged as well as one sub category. The first theme was Student engagement which includes the subcategory of student disengagement. 4 out of 4 participants strongly declared that students were engaged in their learning when using digital technologies, but these 4 participants also explained reasons why students were not engaged in their learning while using digital technology; The second theme was ‘Student Collaboration' which saw 4 out of 4 participants speak about how they encourage students to work collaboratively using digital technology; The final theme was ‘Personalised Learning’ where 3 out of 4 participants spoke about how they were able to use technology to cater to the individual learner needs.

 How is the actual impact different from or similar to the anticipated one?

The actual impact is similar to the literature reviews. However, the words used by the participants for the theme are different from the words used in the literature. 

Beside this all participants talk about students disengagement whereas, while doing the literature review students disengagement was not a big deal. There are times when digital technology can cause students to disengagement within their learning.

Literature	Participants
Students engagement	Students engagement
	Students disengagement
Students -students engagement	Students collaboration
Individualising and personalising learning	Personalisation of learning

 What is the impact on future inquiry/practice?
Time- Throughout this research I found it hard to fit in time to do interviews. Because we were not allowed to interview participants while at school, this put extra pressure on to find time to get these done. This left term four the busiest term of the school year to arrange interviews with possible participants. Three possible participants turned me away and I never heard back from 2 schools.

Interview vs Survey- One of my participants didn’t have time to do an interview but wanted to complete a questionnaire instead so that they could fill it in their own time. I might use this method in the future if I ever do a project like this again as it is more convenient for both parties.

Time frames- trying to organise interviews around my family’s schedule as well as my class timetable was hard. My first interview was rushed because they had meetings to attend.

Word limit- It was difficult trying to stay within the limitations of the word limit in this project because there were so many relevant quotes from the participants that I wanted to use but I had to shorten down or leave some out.

Reference:

Ministry of Education. (2017). Education in New Zealand. Retrieved 12 July, 2017, from https://education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/specific-initiatives/digital-technologies-for-teaching-and-learning/ 

Mutch, C. (2013). Doing educational research : a practitioner's guide to getting started. (2nd ed.). Wellington: NZCER Press.

Smith, L.T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies : research and indigenous peoples. New Zealand: University of Otago Press.