QED+&+ED+Group+1

Green - Denis Blue - Jenna Purple - Lisa Pink - Ae Lee

AT THIS POINT, YOU SHOULD FINALIZE THIS PROPOSAL (i.e., PUT INTO ONE COLOR, ETC.). IT APPEARS THAT YOU HAVE A SOLID UNDERSTANDING OF THE PROCESS OF DESIGNING AN ED OR QED. AS YOU CAN TELL, THIS IS SOMETHING THAT TAKES TIME, PATIENCE, AND LOTS OF RESEARCH. YOU WERE GIVEN A VERY SHORT TIME PERIOD TO DEVELOP THESE THOUGHTS AND IDEAS, BUT COLLABORATED WELL TO COMPLETE THE TASK AT HAND. THE 2ND CONCEPT TO TAKE FROM THIS ASSIGNMENT IS THAT YOUR CLASSMATES AND COHORT WILL BE INSTRUMENTAL IN HELPING YOU IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS - EACH MIND BRINGS A DIFFERENT ANGLE TO THE QUESTION AT HAND. GREAT WORK!!!!


 * OK THIS IS HOW I FINALIZED IT - - - - I'M GOING TO USE BLACK COLOR NOW. IF YOU DISAGREE WITH SOMETHING OR WANT TO ADD SOMETHING, GO AHEAD. I'M DONE WITH MY PART (DENIS) **

SHELLI IS THIS COLOR These are good websites to look at -

http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/sixsigma1.pdf http://www.stat.yale.edu/Courses/1997-98/101/expdes.htm http://www.experiment-resources.com/experimental-research.html ___PROPOSAL__

The topic: Visual Cues As Tools for Better Retention Of Information

Question: How does the use of various visual cues in lectures facilitate or inhibit the retention of information?

1. Abstract:

2. Introduction

Professors all over the world recognize the positive effect that visual aid has on the retention of information in their lectures. However, do visual techniques always strengthen the retention of the material? What kinds of visual cues work better? Do women have more visual memory than men? We intend to study the nature of this effect using two types of visual cues: handouts and powerpoint presentations. We will also use a lecture without any visual assistance as a control variable to contrast our results to.

Our hypothesis is that the lectures with visual cues will have a higher percentage of retention among participants. The lecture with powerpoint will be remembered best.

4. Method

- Methodology:

All participants of the three lectures will be asked to participate in our study. However, the participation is voluntary and does not affect the outcome of the training (of which the lectures are part). After gathering all responses we use a quasi-experimental design to select the equal number of male and female participants (25 each). We'll try to select participant of similar age to ensure that the memory capacity of all selected participants is similar.


 * Our aim is to assess retention**, i.e. how much information can be retrieved after the lectures and if visualization facilitates retention (not understanding!). We do not intend to assess comprehension of the lecture content.

- Design

We will encourage our business people to be honest as we will not formally assess their knowledge, understanding of the lectures or memory skills. All the tests will be completed anonymously. Since we are only interested in retention and noticeability of visual information depending on its formatting, our questionnaire has questions such as 'Do you remember X from the lecture?' or 'Do you remember the professor mentioning X?'. I think this way we will elicit only the information concerning retention. Our questionnaire will consist of 25 yes/no questions pertaining only to how much of the major point the participants remember.

- Population/Sample

The population of our experiment consists of a group of business people attending a series of lectures on self-actualization, self-efficacy and motivation as boosts of productivity (something like that). Three different experimental units attended the same lecture presented by the same professor in different formats. The participants are about 85% male and 15% female aged from 32 to 53 years old. After the lectures, all participants were asked to fill out the multiple-chioce test. However, we applied randomization to selecting the tests that took part in the experiment.

- Data Collection/Analysis

We analyzed all possible variables that could affect the outcome of our study.

The background variables are the prior experience of our experimental units with presentations and various heuristics they might employ to facilitate the retention of the content. The primary variable is the format of lectures (unaided lecturing, lecturing with handouts (visual aid type 1) and lecturing with powerpoint (visual aid type 2). We hypothesize that the format will affect the percentage of information retention in experimental units based on the formatting of the lecture.

We do not care about their backgrounds (that's why it is our background variable - cannot be assessed). The M:F ratio of test responses will be equal. The age may be another background variable (could be one of the drawbacks of our study).

The constant variable in our experiment is the lecturer and the lecture that remain unaltered throughout the experiment. The professor was asked to keep the same pace and loudness of voice for all participant groups.

Another constant variable is the assessment tool, e.i. multiple-choice test, that the business people have to fill out after the lecture is a constant variable too. This test enables us to estimate the percentage of the information that the sampling units retained with minimal bias.

The same professor will give the same lecture at the same time of the day three times for three different groups of business people.

- Techniques

We provide the questionnaire after each lecture. Then we collect all responses and randomly select a number that corresponds to 10% of male and 10% of female audience (of similar age). Then we establish a correlation between the three types of lectures and analyze the data to see if our hypothesis can hold true or not. Only after completing the questionnaire can participants ask questions about the content of the lecture as this might have a bias on responses.

- Ethical Considerations

- IRB approval as well as approval from the institution where research will be performed

- Informed consent should be provided to subjects: elements to be provided to subjects would include a statement that the study involves research, the expected duration of the subject's participation, a description of the procedures to be followed, and identification of any procedures that are experimental. In addition, there will be an explanation of how the institution and the researcher will keep the confidentiality of the research records or data. 6. Discussion Even though we are not focusing on students, we are looking at people in a situation to potentially learn, and there is much to understand about the way in which they best retain information. Should we learn that one type of lecture/visual combination work better than another, it offers teachers (and presenters in general) an opportunity to re-format their instruction to best fit the needs of the students. The implications could be different depending on the types of questions we ask on the MC test.

7. References