Introduction
The process of studying has to be effective: whenever a student spends his/her time on it, there should be a positive result. We are used to measuring the results of studying in scores, and final grades in particular. When we deal with online courses, there are two kinds of studying: when a group is involved and when a student does not contact with mates. Obviously, these two methods differ and may influence student performance, because often people remember the material during a discussion better than when taught individually. The purpose of this research is to compare the final grades of team-taught and not team-taught students and define whether the team studying affects the student performance.
Research methodology
Taking into account the scale of the research (e.g. number of analyzed groups and their characteristics), quantitative methodology would suit best for this study. To be more accurate, quantitative analysis should be held in tight research design because of the small number of research questions and relative inexperience of the researchers (Cohen, L., Manion L. & Morrison K., 2007). The data that is to be analysed is presented by numbers only, and quantitative methodology will enable us to receive the most precise results by analysing subtle deviations and changes of the variety.
Variables that need to be measured
During the research it is necessary to measure dependent variables – final grades in both groups of students. This rate depends on the criteria of team teaching, which is an independent variable in our case. When we assume that final grades depend on the students’ environment (team- or not team-teaching), we deal with only two variables: grades and changing environment, while the latter influences the former.
It is necessary to measure the mediating variable, which is additional, to define how dependent and independent variables are connected. In our case we may analyze the number of hours that students spend on online lessons as the mediating variable. Thus, we will be able to define the difference in time necessary to learn the same material in both groups.
As for the covariate variables, it is possible to use this index to measure how, for example, time spent by every student for online courses and their final grades, are connected. Therefore, this variable would be additional in our research.
The type of data each variable represents
The type of categorical variables used in this research is nominal (team-taught students or not team-taught): we do not rank the categories, but analyze each of them independently from the other one.
The range of final grades refers to interval variable because all the numbers are equally important for our research. When we gather the information about final grades in both groups, we may divide the range into parts (intervals) to define the number of high, low and medium grades, which would make the results of our research more descriptive and demonstrate the quality of final grades in both groups.
Size and characteristics of appropriate sample population
In social science and educational research it is usually impractical and unnecessary to measure all the …