Objective 3

Investigate the accessibility of learning formats of STEM courses for the 2020-21 school year

With the knowledge that nearly 25% of students in New Mexico do not have internet access at home, we investigated the accessibility of STEM education for the 2020-21 school year as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to adapt to new learning formats (McKay, 2020).

Distance Learning Survey

Using the Google Forms online survey platform, we developed a series of survey questions that were emailed to administrators from each of the public and charter schools within the scope of northern New Mexico to then be distributed to the administrators’ STEM colleagues. The full survey can be found at the bottom of this page, but here is a sample of these survey questions:

What type of learning format is your school currently utilizing for the 2020-21 school year?
Are all students issued devices such as a tablet or Chromebook that they may bring home to complete schoolwork?
Are all of the STEM courses that were taught prior to the pandemic continuing to be taught at your school this semester?
What is the structure of distance learning delivery and facilitation for STEM courses?
What platforms and learning management systems (LMS) are being used to support online distance learning? (i.e. Canvas, PowerSchool, Zoom, Google Hangouts, etc)
In your opinion, is the current work for STEM courses this semester (whether in person, online, or hybrid), comparable to the work that students would normally be doing in school in these courses? Why or why not?

Descriptive Analysis & Thematic Coding

What is Descriptive Analysis?

This form of analysis is usually the first level meant to help researchers make an initial summary of the data to uncover initial patterns. Examples of commonly used descriptive statistics are mean, median, mode, percentage, frequency, and range (Bhatia, 2018). For the purpose of this project, we analyzed the survey data using mean, percentage, and frequency.

What is Thematic Coding?

Also known as “thematic analysis”, this method involves reading through text that is linked by a common theme or idea and categorizing words or phrases into a thematic framework (Mountain, A. & Marshall, H., 2019). Using the long response survey answers, we completed an initial read through to produce a list of initial themes that emerged. During our second read through, we color coded words or phrases based on these themes and any new ones that presented themselves. Upon the completion of color coding, we produced a finalized framework and utilized it in order to draw conclusions about our findings and make recommendations.

Google Sites

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