Methodology
Research Questions
Will the strategy of designing role-playing games in the history class be an effective strategy to improve the students’ performance?
What will be the expected average improvement of the improvised strategy?
How will the students perceive the new learning method?
How will we ensure that the students did not improve their mean score through other factors?
How will we validate the results for credibility?
Hypothesis
HA: Group A will perform better than group B with SSL English students improving their mean grade at the end of the fall.
Hypothesis B: Group B will perform averagely but slightly lower than Group B.
Ho: Group A will perform better than group B.
Variables
The students’ behavior will be identified as the main independent variable while their mean score will be the dependent variable.
Research Design
The quasi-research method has been identified to be a favorable research since it identifies real life scenarios. For that reason, the quasi-experimental design that uses pre-tests in equivalent to natural groups will be adopted for the study. Through a quasi-experimental research study, the validity of designing role-playing games in the history class will be identified. The history class will be grouped into three groups; A, B and C. Since the exercise is a total willing exercise, Group C will consist of students that are not willing to take part in the exercise. Equal number of students will be divided between the two groups; control and the experimental group. Group A will be used as the experimental study group, and Group B will be used as the control group. The same teacher will teach group A and B while a different teacher will teach group C.
The main aim of dividing Group A and B equally is to find the end of the fall mean for each of the groups. Importantly, the results will be used to determine if the role-playing strategy was effective for implementation in other subjects in the campus. Group B will practice the old methods of learning. They will use the textbook as their guidebook and take notes just like their previous normal classes. Group A will employ the new study method. With the use of the history third-grade book as their guide, the teacher will identify a game to be played in different topics. The students will be required to take different roles while imitating different leaders in different occasions as well as different historical occasions. For instance, in the case where the students are to discuss the Bosnia-Herzegovina war, the teacher will group the students into the three ethnic groups, the Bosniaks, the Serbs, and Croats. The instructor will then give the students guidelines on what to do with some taking leadership roles in their various groups. The groups will then demonstrate the scenes from the beginning to the end of the war and change roles in the next topic.
Sampling of Population
History students in the third grade will be notified on the new learning strategy during the first students’ meeting of the opening week. The program will be a willing study program, and no student will be coerced to participate in the exercise. Students, who will be unwilling to participate in the study, will be identified first and assigned their class; Group C. Interested students will then be grouped into two groups Group A and Group B.
Collection of Data
Questionnaires will be distributed to students in group A and collected at the end of the fall. The questionnaires will contain various questions to determine the effectiveness of the study. In the questionnaire, the students will give their feedback on the role-playing strategy to improve their performance. The students will be then asked to give opinions on whether the strategy should be implemented in the school program or not. The questionnaires will also require the students to rate their teachers at the end of the term. Audio recordings will be used in Group B classes to act as a reference for future studies. Note taking and observations will be the other methods that will be used by the subordinate teacher. The data recording tools will be under the care of the history teacher for security purposes. The teacher assigned the task of teaching both groups A and B will be urged to record the findings after each lesson. However, an extra teacher will be accompanying the history class teacher to monitor his or her teaching practices and replace him or her in the case of an emergency to avoid contradictions in the case where the teacher is not available.
Data Recording
The data collected will be recorded in digital as well as manual forms. Due to their simplicity, histograms will be used to record the numerical figures from the data. From the histograms, it will be easier for the analyzers to identify the mean, mode as well as the highest mark in the history class of third graders. Notes and daily reports from the two teachers will also be filed in the school archives for future references.
Ethical Consideration
For data validity, ethical considerations will be required in the study. The participants will be urged, to be honest during the exercise period. Their findings should be recorded with honesty for accountability. They will be urged not to pretend in their studies but rather portray their personality for accurate results. The history department management will also be required to inform the students on the data recording tools used in the study. The students will be notified the aim of the study and how the management intends to use the data acquired.
Data Analysis
Data from the questionnaires will be collected at the end of the fall. The results consisting the open-ended question answers as well as personal opinions will be analyzed using the ordinal measurement scale. An ordinal measurement scale is a scale that is used to measure the opinion variables of the research (Agresti & Kateri, 2011). Due to differing opinions among the students, the ordinal scale will help to identify the appropriate results to be concluded in the study. The students’ means will be recorded at the end of the fall. The mean mark will reflect their efforts since the beginning to the end of the semester. The mean will include what the students achieved during the class assessments and the final examination. The interval scale measurement is often used to measure numerical values where the difference between the values is known (Steinberg, 2010). The scale is appropriate in such situations since the standard deviation can be measured with the mode clearly identified. For that reason, the interval scale will be used to determine the mean deviations between Group A and B. Individual means will also be identified and weighed against the three groups A B and C. After identifying the means, the mode will be calculated and the group with the highest scores determined.
The results are meant to identify if all the students in Group B benefited from the program or not and the effectiveness of the program. Data from the audios will be retrieved and analyzed using the Critical Incident Technique. According to Hughes, (2013), the technique is used in incidents where human experiences in information learning are to be researched. For that reason, the technique will be used to analyze intelligence of the students in control as well as the experiment groups critically. Their level of participation in class will also be identified and validated against the teacher’s daily reports. After the data has been analyzed, critical data will be coded and stored in the campus data warehouse. Statistical package SPSS will hence be used to retrieve the data for educational and reference purposes (Shmueli,Patel& Bruce, 2016). The data collected will act as a source of reference for other researchers and will be used by the campus to increase the learning efficiency of the students.
Summary
If the strategy of role-playing games will be identified to increase the learning efficiency in the history class, the method will be implemented in all the groups; Group A, B as well as C during the next fall. The program will also be implemented in other subjects and other students to increase the overall performance. The data will thus be stored in the school archives and will be used for future research concerning the new learning strategy.
References
Agresti, A., & Kateri, M. (2011). Categorical data analysis (pp. 206-208). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Hughes, H. (2012). An expanded critical incident approach for exploring information use and learning. Library and Information Research, 36(112), 72-95.
Shmueli, G., Patel, N. R., & Bruce, P. C. (2016). Data Mining for Business Analytics: Concepts, Techniques, and Applications in XLMiner. John Wiley & Sons.
Steinberg, W. J. (2010). Statistics alive!. Sage Publications
