ELECTRONIC PORTFOLIO

1
ELECTRONIC PORTFOLIO

• Brandi Williams
• EDP 667
• Summer 2004

2
Table of Contents

• Explanation of Organization Slide 3
• Syllabus Slide 4
• Weekly Calendar Slide 5
• On-line Postings Slides 6-10
• Journal Evaluation Slides 11-16
• Summary Slide 17

3
Explanation of Organization and Meaning

• In order to create this portfolio, I used the
  checklist provided to us by Dr. Sherman and
  included the necessary slides. Please see the
  Table of Contents to find where items can be
  located.

4
Syllabus

• The syllabus contained some useful information
  that assisted in our learning for this class,
  including the link to the texts web page and
  tutorial quizzes. Also, the link to the ERIC
  digests can be helpful in the future. The
  objectives seemed to be very vague and
  unspecific.
• Link to Syllabus

5
Weekly Calendar

• The weekly calendar was a useful tool to keep
  track of where we were and where we were headed.
  The web-based Statistical programs were
  interesting.
• Link to Weekly Calendar

6
On-line Postings

• Brandi WilliamsDate June 29, 2004 at
  140506Subject Reflection 1Reply Hi all!!
  This is Brandi. I teach kindergarten and am
  working toward a Masters as an Early Childhood
  Education, Intervention Specialist. I also work
  as a clown, and in an embroidery shop. I am a
  little worried about statistics, because I took
  it before and really struggled. I know it will
  help me understanding research for our school and
  also in conducting research about our school.
  Have a great day !!!!
• Brandi WilliamsDate June 29, 2004 at
  143443Subject ReactionReply I am sure that
  you will do fine with statistics. You are a
  dedicated person who is not afraid to ask. You
  will do great!!!
• Brandi Date June 29, 2004 at 160212Subject
  ResponseReply J.D., I didn't want you to be
  forgotten either. You must be a hard working
  person to accomplish what you have so far, and
  this seems to be a group of people who will
  really help and support each other. I am sure the
  math will come back to you quickly.

7
On-line Postings (cont.)

• Brandi WilliamsDate July 03, 2004 at
  230650Subject Reflection 2Reply First of
  all, installling StatView was cake. It came up
  easily and took care of installation all on it's
  own. I am looking forward to trying it out on an
  actual data set. I feel like I am doing fairly
  well with the problems so far. I had a short
  setback on problem 21 in Chapter 2. I couldn't
  think about how to find the percentile ranks, but
  after review, I remembered to create a cumulative
  frequency column to help. I will check in later
  to see if I can help anyone, or if I run into
  another problem. Good luck preparing for the
  test.
• Brandi williamsDate July 05, 2004 at
  171754Subject Reaction to 2Reply I must
  agree with everyone about the need for
  repetition. I would be great to have some
  specific examples in the class to try to assist
  in making the concepts permenant in our brains.
  Good luck to everyone
• Brandi WilliamsDate July 08, 2004 at
  075038Subject Reflection 3Reply First,
  thanks Nneka for stepping up to start the
  discussion this time. I feel better about the
  testing in the class. I was a little unsure about
  the format, but if future tests have a similar
  format, I would be happy. Have a great day
  everyone, and I will see you in class.

8
On-line Postings (cont.)

• Brandi WilliamsDate July 12, 2004 at
  133041Subject Reflection 3Reply I did
  fairly well with the problems. The only
  difficutly I ran into was paying attention to the
  population formulas versus the sample formuals. I
  calculated one problem and was sure I was
  correct, but when I checked the answers, I was
  wrong. When I looked at the problem again, I
  realized that it said the 4 scores were a
  population and I used the sample formula. I will
  have to pay careful attention to that in the
  future.
• Brandi WilliamsDate July 15, 2004 at
  161153Subject Reflection 5Reply So far, I
  feel pretty good about what I have learned and
  the use of StatView. I really like the program
  and the ability to easily create and copy tables
  into papers. I have already thought of ways that
  Z-Scores may be useful in my classroom and am
  excited to try it out next year. I know with what
  I have learned I will be better able to read and
  understand research and to describe and analyze
  any research I will do in the future. As far as
  this test goes, the true-false questions caught
  me a little bit. I argued with myself on each one
  of them and am curious to see how that section
  turns out on Monday. I hope everyone has a good
  weekend!!!!!

9
On-line Postings (cont.)

• Brandi WilliamsDate July 19, 2004 at
  193403Subject Reflection 6Comment Hi all!
  I know I wasn't supposed to start this round, but
  I had a comment, so here we go. I found a problem
  in Chapter 7 that tripped me up and I just
  thought I would give you a heads up about it. On
  number 15, they ask you to compute the
  probability of a sample mean falling between 45
  and 55 on a particular test. I tried to compute
  the z-score for these and then find the distance
  between them. What I forgot was that these are
  not separate scores, but sample means. I used the
  standard deviation to compute Z rather than the
  standard error. Watch out for this one. I am sure
  I will have more problems as the night continues
  and I will keep you posted.
• Brandi WilliamsDate July 25, 2004 at
  191647Subject Reflection 7Reply Hamilton,
  Chad, Shinn, Mark R. (2003) Characteristics of
  Word Callers An Investigation of the Accuracy of
  Teachers Judgements of Reading Comprehension and
  Oral Reading Skills. School Psychology Review. 32
  (2), 228-240. I chose this article because I use
  a lot of observation in my class to determine
  what my students know, and I have never had a
  great deal of confidence in the curriculum based
  assessments that accompany the reading series.
  That is the topic of this article, and I think it
  will be enlightening for me to review this study.
  I can observe means, standard deviations, ANOVA
  analysis and alpha levels just by glancing
  through the article. There are also some line
  graphs that will be interesting to review for
  this paper.

10
On-line Postings (cont.)

• Brandi WilliamsDate July 25, 2004 at
  191647Subject Reflection 7Reply Hamilton,
  Chad, Shinn, Mark R. (2003) Characteristics of
  Word Callers An Investigation of the Accuracy of
  Teachers Judgements of Reading Comprehension and
  Oral Reading Skills. School Psychology Review. 32
  (2), 228-240. I chose this article because I use
  a lot of observation in my class to determine
  what my students know, and I have never had a
  great deal of confidence in the curriculum based
  assessments that accompany the reading series.
  That is the topic of this article, and I think it
  will be enlightening for me to review this study.
  I can observe means, standard deviations, ANOVA
  analysis and alpha levels just by glancing
  through the article. There are also some line
  graphs that will be interesting to review for
  this paper.
• Brandi WilliamsDate August 02, 2004 at
  104139Subject Reaction 8Reply I think we
  are getting the hang of using Statview to solve
  these. I was excited to learn Power Point, but I
  am still curious about the content of this
  portfolio we are supposed to create. What is "The
  Evidence"? Anybody have any insights????
• Link to On-line Discussion Page

11
Journal Evaluation

• Title Characteristics of Word Callers An
  Investigation of the Accuracy of Teachers
  Judgements of Reading Comprehension and Oral
  Reading Skills.        Authors Chad Hamilton,
  and Mark R. Shinn        Journal School
  Psychology Review                Date
  2003        Volume 32-2        Pages
  228-240
• INTRODUCTION        The title of this article
  gives a hint that we will be comparing teachers
  judgements of student performance with some more
  standardized measure of that performance.  There
  is also the impression that this study will be
  multifactored concerning both Reading
  Comprehension and Oral Reading.  The independent
  and dependent variables are not directly
  mentioned in the title of the article, but
  looking through the text, one can find the
  statistical tools used in this study in the
  results section of the paper.         

12
Journal Evaluation (cont.)

• ANALYZING THE VARIABLES
• The independent variables in this study are the
  groups that the children are put into,
• specifically, Word Callers (WC), or Similarly
  Fluent Peers (SFP).  Students were placed into
  one of these groups based on the perceptions of
  their teachers as to their ability to read and
  comprehend an age appropriate text.  This is a
  nominal and discrete variable with only two
  possible values, Word Callers or Similarly Fluent
  Peers.   Also these variables are paired where
  one student from one classroom in one group is
  matched with another student from the same
  classroom in the other group.         The
  dependent variables are the scores that the
  students earn on four different tests as well as
  the estimate of the score that the teacher
  believed the students would earn.  Each of the
  test scores will be compared with the estimates
  of the teachers in order to judge the accuracy of
  their predictions based on observation of the
  students in their room. 

13
Journal Evaluation (cont.)

• HYPOTHESES        The article clearly states two
  questions that the researchers are trying to
  address.  Are students identified by their
  teachers as word callers reading fluently but not
  comprehending, and Given that word callers are
  predicated on teachers judgements of individual
  students oral reading and comprehension skills,
  are teachers accurate in their judgements of
  these skills?.  However, the article never
  clearly states the hypothesis of the
  researchers.  It never says that they believe the
  teachers judgements to be accurate or that they
  do not.  Based on a knowledge of statistical
  principals I assume that their null hypothesis
  states that there is no difference between
  teacher estimates of scores and actual scores
  earned on the assessments used.  (Ho ì (teacher
  estimates) ì (actual scores)).  The alternative
  hypothesis would then state that the two would be
  different from eachother (Ho ì (teacher
  estimates) lt ì (actual scores), or ì (teacher
  estimates) gt ì (actual scores)).  The hypothesis
  does not have a definite direction.  The alpha
  level in this study appears to be .05.  This is
  the highest p value in the article where the
  authors write that a significant statistical
  difference has been found. 

14
Journal Evaluation (cont.)

• SAMPLE        I believe that the sample was
  sufficient in size with a total of N66 (WC
  n33, SFP n33).  Each group had more than 30
  people, causing the distribution of sample means
  to approximate a normal distribution.  The
  researchers provide us with N, the mean of each
  test group, and the standard deviation for each
  group, so the Standard Error of the Mean can be
  computed.  The following table shows this
  information
• R-CBMCBM-MazeCQTWRMT-PCW.C. (M) 129.9  
  89.112.2    9.15.4    5.292.4W.C.(SD) 42.8   
  19.95.0    3.01.0    1.912.7W.C. (S) 7.46   
  3.470.87    0.520.17    0.332.21SFP (M) 138.1  
  116.220.9    13.68.8    8.299.6SFP (SD) 47.2   
  22.66.2    3.00.8    1.49.8SFP (S) 8.22   
  3.941.08    13.60.14    0.241.71
• Note The bold face scores are the Teacher
  Estimates, while the plain text shows the actual
  scores. S Standard Error of the Mean
• In each F statistic, the researchers compared the
  teachers estimate with the acutal score, so df1
  in the numerator, and df64 in the denominator. 
  It appears (although it is never directly stated)
  that the researchers are using á.05 which would
  required and F value of 4.00 or greater to be in
  the critical region.

15
Journal Evaluation (cont.)

• RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS        A homogeneity of
  variance test was not used as far as I can tell. 
  An F-Max test can be conducted for this test. 
  With each ANOVA test having 2 samples and n33
  the F-Max value must not exceed 2.07 to be a
  valid test.  The following table shows the F-Max
  scores for each of the tests that were compared.
• R-CBM CBM-MazeCQTWRMT-PCWord Callers Variance
  396.019.03.61161.29S.F.P. Variance
  510.769.01.9696.04F-Max 1.291.01.841.68

16
Journal Evaluation (cont.)

• Based on the F-Max test, the number and types of
  variables and the research question being asked,
  I feel that using ANOVA and MANOVA were
  appropriate statistical tests to use. 
          The authors also used a table to present
  the means, standard deviations, and mean
  differences for each test and each group.  It
  made it much easier to view the relationship
  between the teachers estimates and the actual
  scores, as well as the difference between the
  scores of the word callers and the similarly
  fluent peers.  Also, three Interactive Line Plots
  were presented showing the differences between
  the actual scores of each group as well as the
  predicted scores of each group.  These graphs
  also provided good visual information that made
  the results appear much more tangible and
  understandable.          By looking at the
  results, the investigators conclude that in this
  case the teachers overestimated the fluency of
  the word callers in so much as they were less
  fluent than the students that the teacher paired
  them with.  Both students struggled with
  comprehension, showing that the definition of a
  word caller may not be accurate.  The students
  are not reading as fluently as the teachers
  predict that they are.  The means of the actual
  scores of each group did show a significant
  statistical difference for the two groups
  F(4,61)19.4, pgt.001.  This would cause the
  authors to reject their null hypothesis and
  accept the research hypothesis.          I do
  not believe that the researchers over-conclude in
  this study, because they are very cautious about
  the validity of their test.  They insist that the
  study needs to be replicated and that the
  geographic limitations of this study may affect
  its results.  But it does conclude that teachers
  need to be cautious about their understanding of
  the difference between fluency and accuracy. 
  These students may read each word correctly, but
  that does not translate to fluency.   
• Link to Journal Evaluation    

17
Summary

• Overall, this class has given me a basic grasp of
  the statistical techniques that I may observe in
  my professional readings and research. I have
  found uses for some of these methods in my
  classroom and am anxious to try them out. After
  looking at the syllabus and reflecting on the
  class, I was surprised by the lack of cooperative
  activities in the class. I did not see any
  benefits from the on-line postings, because we
  were meeting daily and discussing our problems
  and concerns together in class. I could see its
  use in a regular semester, but it did not seem
  useful here. The paper was a useful tool to
  see how the statistics are used, but it was very
  difficult to complete, because we did not have
  the knowledge to understand the statistics until
  the Friday before the paper was due. It would
  have been helpful to have a group of articles to
  choose from that had the simplistic statistics
  that were presented early on in order to do a
  complete job on the paper. This portfolio was a
  good way to learn Power Point.
• As I continue with research in my pursuit of my
  Masters Degree, this understanding of Statistics
  will prove to be useful.