Diagnostic Study - On Which Activities Should the Study Focus?
From here on we'll work on an example, so you can see the kind of thinking needed to create a diagnostic. As I did with the proof-tracking study, I'll focus on the Houston algebra case study (but you can do a diagnostic study without first doing a proof-tracking study - it simply depends on what kind of information you need most or first.)
After studying the Learning Environment section of the Houston-Downtown algebra program case study, I decided to focus on
three technology-dependent activities
in the course, the technologies used to carry them out, and one goal for their use. This is the triad on which our studies are focusing.
Which of these should be the subject of a diagnostic, if any? Let me think aloud about this, to help you understand the issues involved.
A diagnostic is meant to help you do something by gathering data that you wouldn't otherwise see. It's just the same as a doctor ordering an X-ray of a painful leg: you gather information so you can decide what to do. Obviously you don't waste energy on this if: a) there's no problem, b) there is a problem, but there are only one or two conceivable reasons for it, or c) you have no educational equivalent of an X-ray - no way to diagnose the problem.
So in using this triad to decide what we might diagnose, I ask myself which facet of the triad is most likely to pose a problem with many conceivable causes -- causes which we could relatively easily diagnose by looking beneath the symptoms. I first considered the faculty's use of projected functions and graphs to stimulate class discussion. But many faculty are already pretty good at facilitating discussion and diagnosing potential causes of student silence in class. So I looked at the second activity: use by students of graphing software on computers in the lab. I hesitated here, too, because (perhaps because I don't teach algebra and haven't taken it for over 30 years) I wasn't sure what sorts of 'bugs' could derail this learning process, or how to detect them.
Ultimately I decided to focus on the faculty's hope that students would use software on assignments involving real world issues and data. Faculty hopes in Houston are described in the section of the Learning Environment called "Connecting to Real World Data." They hope that students will use computers in the labs to work (often together) on issues in a process that involves framing a math problem in the context of a real world situation and solving that problem, probably relying on numerical and graphical representations of the functions.
Are all students using computers to think and learn in this way? Probably not.
If many students aren't thinking in this way, some of the problems are probably not easily fixed. But isn't quite possible that some students may be facing barriers every week that, if the faculty member only knew about them, could be dealt with more easily? A misconception blocking a few students? Lack of a key computer skill hindering others? Inability to find a computer outside class that has been slowing a few others? And so on. If that's the case, then a quick diagnosis might conceivably make a huge difference for many students individually and for the tone of the course as a whole. The key guess I was making at this point was that there were enough such potential problems that recurred - so that if you discovered the problems in week 2 and fixed them in week 3 that students would be able to learn faster and better in week 4 and thereafter. (If the problem were specific to week 2, and week 2 only, then discovering it in week 3 doesn't help anyone except students in the next offering of the course when they get to week 2. That's OK but there's more of a payoff in dealing first with problems that affect students every week.) Anyway, with my attention now fixed on this particular learning activity, I decided to try sketching a diagnostic survey. That's on the last page of this section.
