Operationalising Research

Supposing that we are interested only in question 1 (relation between mode of interaction and equality of participation):

• Design A, single group
  
  
  • Stage 1: measure equality of participation in f2f mode
    
    
  • Stage 2: measure equality of participation in cmc mode
    
    
  • Issues:
    

1. Participants might learn from their activity in stage 1 and so participate more in stage 2
   
   
2. Can we generalise: is the group representative of the population of groups to which we might wish to generalise?
   
   

• Design B, two groups
  
  
  • Stage 1: measure equality of participation in Group 1 in f2f mode
    
    
  • Stage 2: measure equality of participation in Group 2 in cmc mode
    
    
  • Issues:
    
    
    1. Resolved first issue in design A
       
       
    2. But, are the groups comparable?
       
       
    3. Question of representativeness remains.