Researching Student Success
In the spring of 2012, Dr. Brian Marchman, Dr. Matthew Ohlson, and Kathryn Haber conducted extensive research to examine the leading indicators of student success at Florida Virtual School.
The study examined the mathematics performance of more than 5,000 high school students over a three-year period. The initial hopes were to determine the factors that led to student success including communication with the teacher, participation in help sessions, length of time in the course, and student/teacher demographics. Using ANOVA to determine significance, data analysis revealed no significant gender performance disparity between male and female students. These findings are significant as they dramatically differ from established and historical research including:
- Girls’ math scores average 10.5 percent lower than those of boys in the International 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)
- Junior high school boys outperform girls on advanced quantitative assessments (Benbow, Lubinski, Shea, & Eftekhari-Sanjani, 2000)
- High school and college men perform better than women on tests of advanced mathematical ability, including standardized tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE; Brown & Josephs, 1999;Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990).
This study illustrates the impact virtual learning may have upon student outcomes; and increased performance in mathematics is a key national educational initiative (Kilpatrick, 2011). Further research will be conducted to examine if the virtual environment helps to diminish barriers to success commonly found in traditional school settings such as social anxieties, a lack of differentiated instruction, and gender stereotype in various subject areas (Davies, Spencer, Quinn, & Gerhardstein, 2002). Sharing these findings may serve as a catalyst for districts, schools, and students to look at Florida Virtual School not only as an alternative, but rather as a solution for increased student achievement.
Post by: Dr. Matthew Ohlson
Is the full study available somewhere on the FLVS website or will it be published in a peer-reviewed journal in the near future?
We will be presenting this preliminary research at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) International Conference in New Orleans on March 27th. We also are in the process of submitting this work to peer-reviewed journals focusing on educational technology, virtual learning and STEM.
Great! I look forward to meeting you and hearing more at SITE!
When researching for my Shakespeare presentation I read about a newly coined term: Social Energy, restlessness of teenagers so busy keeping up with social networks, email, etc. Were any social energy factors collected in the study? I wonder if social energy has anything to do with student’s success in our virtual environment or blended environments. I figure resilience is also a factor, it is in all we do, from the way we act, or what we expect, to the way we treat people. Are we empowering student’s resilience online?
Maria,
Thank you for your comment and I am intrigued by the ideas of Social Energy and resilience. We did not analyze these specific factors within the study but I do believe that there is overlap with the factors we did analyze. In addition, I would love to learn more so as to include these factors in future studies.
Our research is just beginning in this area and we welcome any/every suggestion to help impact the growing knowledge base.
Matthew Ohlson