05 - Potential Research Questions, Methodology and Roadmap (2020-12-01)

Tagged as: blog, interaction, research question, methodology, roadmap
Group: J_20/21 Outlining the potential research questions and methodology as well as providing a roadmap for the next steps of our research.

Potential Research Questions

  • Does the type of feedback channel/interaction (semi-synchronous with only text, synchronous with audio and visual) for students in live online lectures have an effect on the understanding of the content of the live online lecture?
  • Does the type of feedback channel/interaction (semi-synchronous with only text, synchronous with audio and visual) for students in live online lectures have an effect on student satisfaction for the live online lecture?

Potential Methodology

We investigated and collected a chat-log of several interactive online courses that were streamed on Twitch and YouTube. A rough overview into how students and instructors interact while streaming was gathered. A possible next step would be to conduct a qualitative analysis on these chat-logs to categorize what students talk about and how they interact with the instructor or with each other. The study design at this point is planned to be a Between-Subjects design to differentiate between the types of interaction (semi-synchronous with only a live-chat and synchronous with additional audio and visual feedback from students). We then plan and stream a lecture, possibly about topics that media informatics students might need help with or interest them (this might lead to a higher participation rate for interested students, since they learn something and they might get additional credit with 'Versuchspersonenstunden' if necessary, unless this is not feasible. Depending on the research question, after the lecture, the participants are given questionnaires or exercises that they need to fill out and that can later be analyzed and compared between the two groups. For the planned lecture, it is still unclear if only one lecture is conducted and the two groups are only allowed to interact with their designated channels (maybe with streaming on two platforms at the same time). Otherwise, we conduct two lectures, which might prevent an overlap regarding the two feedback channels that the students use. Therefore this method is probably the preferred one.

Rough Roadmap

  • November: Initial literature research, first investigation into online livestream chat-logs to understand how students use text-based input channels and if there are differences between research fields or universities
  • December: Finalize Research Question and study design, Possible qualitative analysis of the chat-logs, first draft of our planned online lecture and subsequent questionnaire
  • January: Finalize the online lecture(s) and the questionnaire, conduct the online lecture(s) and present students the questionnaire possibly in the middle or the second half of January
  • February: Evaluating the results, writing the research paper