Question

Read the following scenario describing a research project, and then write a short criticism of this project. You should clearly identify at least four aspects of the project which you believe are incorrect or poor. These may relate to the research question, the experimental design, the analysis and reporting, and/or any ethical or academic misconduct issues. For each criticism which you identify, clearly describe the problem and state how it should have been addressed to improve the quality of the research.

A company providing on-line teaching software claims that students who are on-line
students achieve better results on learning programming languages than on campus students. The company has developed a hypothesis based on this claim. The company chose one university to conduct research to test this hypothesis. It applied for research ethics clearance and at the same time included both on-line and on campus students to participate in this experiment.

At the end of semester, all students undertook the same paper on programming languages. The company used final scores of all students to test its hypothesis. The company has published a report in which it concludes “the average score of 67 for on-line students is higher than the average score of 65.5 for on campus students, and so we can conclude that on-line students achieve better results in learning programming languages than on campus students. Therefore, this teaching method should be used for all students in future.”

Answer 1

In the first sentence where the software claims that the student who are  online achieve better results on learning programming language than on campus student it is clearly a very poor aspect. It can be true for some students and can be false for other . It is seen that this situation it is usually not true as in online methods students can be distracted in many ways. In the campus where all students are together sitting in the classroom has better study environment then online learning.

The company choose one university to conduct research to test the hypothesis which is wrong because you can't make a decision based on research on only one university. It may be false for other university. So before making a claim the software company should conduct research not only one but rather many different universities of different reasons and different subjects also.It may be true for a subject like computer science and not for civil engineering student as they need experimental knowledge also.

The company makes evaluation based on the the final score. Final score should not be way to judge because for the final test students work hard on their own they to study at homes to give the test so the marks can be good . final score not only depends on online learning but also the student practice in their homes.

After considering all those weak points to give a conclusion that online student achieve better result on learning programming language then on campus student. It is wrong the company should improve the way of research and it seems it trying to give a favourable and misleading result in order to promote its software. The result of the research should be the true one. We should not manipulate the results according to to our products.

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