Analysis, Interpretation and Presentation of Data
Background of the Study
In this study, a researcher measured the performance of students before and after an 8-week Moodle based tuition. The study was formed of 25 undergraduate students,who had to be enrolled in the final year of the degree programme. The effectiveness of Moodle based tuition was considered by many previous researches. The researchers from the University of Patras studied students’ performance and practices, while using the Moodle system in their learning environment. 117 students were involved in this study. The methodology of the study was a problem solving course. The results of the study were examined by a multiple regression analysis. The analysis showed that the Moodle tuition usage is a significant factor of their performance (Filippidi, Tselios, & Komis, 2010).
Aim of the Study
The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of Moodle based tuition on students’ performance and practices.
Study Methodology
The sample consisted of twenty five undergraduate students enrolled in their final year of studying. The students were given a problem solving assignment before they started their Moodle based online tuition. The duration of the research study was 8 weeks. Each week, a problem set of 10 problems was provided for students via Moodle. After the completion of the problem sets, for each of the problem sets the students left their individual feedback, which included their grade and their troubles upon solving. Then, the final assessment was given to them at the end of the course. The performance of the two assessments (before and after a 8-week period) was measured. For the purposes of this research, students were asked to fill out an anonymous questionnaire survey to gather the information about their gender, age and views on the usefulness of the on-line Moodle based tuition.
Results
The research started from the preliminary descriptive statistics of the data sets provided. The average age of the students in the data was 24.08 years with the standard deviation of 4.02 years. The 50% of the students are younger than 23 years old (median). Most often, a student randomly selected from this sample is 22 years old (mode).
The frequency distribution of the age groups in the sample was as follows: a significant majority of participants were young people from 20 to 24 years old (n=21, 84% of the sample), there was one student in the age group from 25 to 30 years old (4%), two students from 31 and 35 years old (8%) and one student was the representative of the oldest age group (>35 years, 1%).
There were 9 male students (36% of the sample) and 14 female students (56%). Two students did not fill out the questionnaire, so 8% of observations are missing (no response).
The next step of the research is to analyze the performance of the students before and after Moodle online tuition intervention. The average students’ score on the assessment 1 before start the online Moodle based tuition was 58% with the standard deviation of 18.93%. The half of the students had their scores below 60% and the most frequent score on the assessment 1 was 40%. The average student’s score on the assessment 2 at the end of the online Moodle based tuition was 77.4% with the standard deviation of 12.09%. The 50% of the students had their scores below 80% (median) and the most often score was 80% as well (mode).
Among the 25 students participated in this research, 23 responded the questionnaire, so the response rate was 23/25 or 92%. For those students who have replied the survey, the frequency distribution of their replies is given in the following table:
Conclusion and Recommendations
The purpose of this research work was to examine the effect of Moodle based tuition on students’ performance and practices. A sample of 25 students was collected and their performance was measured before and after intervention. The majority of the participants were females. The significant part of the students belonged to the youth (20-24 years old). The intervention demonstrated an improvement in the assessment scores of the students between assignment 1 scores (M = 58%, SD = 18.93%) and assignment 2 scores (M = 77.4% SD = 12.09%). The variability of the scores was decreased, while the average performance was increased. This gives some evidence to conclude that the Moodle online tuition intervention was quite effective. This evidence is consistent with the results of the questionnaire. The majority of the students either agreed or strongly agreed that the weekly online Moodle based tuition was helpful for their performance (91.30%). With the lesser extent, students also supported the claim that the weekly Moodle exercises helped them to learn at their own pace (69.56%). More than 80% of the students think that their knowledge in calculations has been improved by the learning intervention. According to the opinion of the 86.96% students, the online Moodle based tuition contributed most to their learning. Finally, 82.61% of the students either agreed or strongly agreed that the overall support they received in calculations during their final year was adequate.
Summing up, the analysis supported the claim that the Moodle tuition intervention was effective in students’ practices and calculation performance. However, this conclusion is based only on the preliminary descriptive statistics of the data. The evidence-based conclusion can be drawn only after making a statistical inference. A test for mean comparison can be used to determine the significance of the performance improving (t-test or its nonparametric equivalent). A Chi-square test can be used to examine if the answers in the questionnaire are significantly different from a hypothesized distribution.
References
Filippidi, A., Tselios, N., & Komis, V. (2010). Impact of Moodle usage practices on students’ performance in the context of a blended learning environment. Social Applications For Lifelong Learning, 4-5. http://www.academia.edu/425665/Impact_of_Moodle_usage_practices_on_students_performance_in_the_context_of_a_blended_learning_environment
