SLO Reflections
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Student Learning Objective 3 – Research Skills
To develop as a professional educator, one must meet and practice certain
learning objectives. The third learning objective encourages educators to develop
research skills “by designing and conducting research ethically and effectively and
presenting their findings at a professional level in oral and written forms.” The
culminating project of the Masters Degree program, the action research project,
demonstrated my ability to meet this learning goal.
I conducted an action research project in my classroom over the past few months
about the effects of differentiated assessments on student achievement and student
motivation. My goal was to learn how to incorporate differentiated assessments into my
curriculum and to see if students performed better and were more motivated to achieve on
different types of assessments than they would be on typical multiple-choice tests.
To begin my study, I researched differentiation and multiple intelligences to learn
about how to create assessments that were differentiated, and how to incorporate multiple
intelligences into the assessments. Additionally, I researched student motivation to learn
about the different aspects of motivation what motivates students to learn. I used this
knowledge to design three differentiated assessments: the meiosis project, the DNA
project, and the biome project. For each project, students had the choice of their project
format; they were able to choose from a list of project options, such as building a threedimensional model, creating a board game, presenting a power point presentation, and
performing a song or rap. Furthermore, students had the choice to work independently or
in groups of two to three people.
SLO Reflections
1
Throughout the research study, I collected data in the form of student scores on
tests and projects as well as student responses to surveys about effort and motivation on
both tests and projects. My research was presented both in written and oral forms
through my action research paper and my power point presentations. Additionally, my
research was presented both visually and orally through my poster presentation, for
which I created a poster and explained my research to others.
In order to ethically conduct this research, I informed both my students and their
parents about the goals of my project by discussing it at “back to school night” and
sending home consent forms for the parents to complete. Students and parents were
informed that the intent of the research was to better my instruction of biology, and most
were excited to participate.
The action research project is one of the most challenging but valuable
assignments I have ever completed throughout my educational career. The data analysis
component of the action research project was the most difficult; I spent many hours
staring at the data and attempting to organize it in the best way to relate to my research
question. Eventually, I produced charts and graphs that presented the data clearly and
effectively to display my results. I found that student achievement did increase on
differentiated assessments, and students were more motivated to succeed on projects than
on tests. Furthermore, I found that students enjoyed having choices of different types of
assessments; they were able to choose the assessment that best matched their individual
strengths. These results have encouraged me to incorporate many more differentiated
assessments into my biology curriculum and to include more opportunities for students to
choose their assignment.