8113 Week 6 Assignment

Bear in mind that the rubric & points for this assignment loosely follow the format of a capstone evaluation. This means that the four grades available, Novice, Emerging, Proficient, and Advanced, do NOT follow the traditional percentages of D, C, B, and A.  "Novice" is not a failing grade! Most of you are novices in academic writing and it would be normal for you to earn a novice grade on your very first writing assignment. Again, "Proficient" is not the equivalent of a B, it is higher than that. If you are writing proficiently, it would mean that you are on-track for doctoral success...probably this would be considered by most to be an A.  

To prepare:

· Review the required readings, media, and resources.

· Use your citation management software and Boolean logic, as you seek evidence from the literature that justifies pursuing this research problem.

Download the

·

By Day 7

To complete:

The Week 4 Assignment should be written in correct APA style and should include the following:

To Complete In your prospectus document include:

· The working title

· Problem statement

· Three to five key citations that highlight the relevance and currency of the problem (these should be current—within the last 5 years)

· Evidence of the problem in the research literature (and locally, for the project study)

Use the template provided in the announcements, discussion board, and Doc Sharing!

Note that I often highlight the most important revisions needed in blue.

	Novice	Emerging	Proficient	Advanced	Points
	1 (10%) Fulfills minimal expectations of the assignment. Key components are not included.	1.6 (16%) Most parts of assignment are completed. Topics are not fully developed.	1.8 (18%) All parts of the assignment are completed, with fully developed topics.	2 (20%) Assignment exceeds expectations, integrating additional material, information, or both.	1.4
Adherence to Assignment Expectations	1 (10%) Assignment demonstrates minimal understanding of the course or module’s criteria.	1.6 (16%) Assignment demonstrates some understanding of the course or module’s criteria.	1.8 (18%) Assignment demonstrates a clear understanding of the course or module’s criteria.	2 (20%) Assignment demonstrates an exceptional understanding of the course or module’s criteria.	1.4
Assimilation and Synthesis of Ideas	1 (10%) Shows a minimal understanding of the assignment’s purpose.	1.6 (16%) Shows some degree of understanding of the assignment’s purpose.	1.8 (18%) Demonstrates a clear understanding of the assignment’s purpose.	2 (20%) Demonstrates a clear understanding of the assignment’s purpose as well as the intellectual ability to explore and implement key instructional concepts.	1.4
Assimilation and Synthesis of Ideas	1 (10%) Does not include specific information from course videos or required readings.	1.6 (16%) Minimally includes specific information from course videos or required readings.	1.8 (18%) Includes specific information from course videos or required readings to support major points.	2 (20%) Demonstrates exceptional inclusion of major points, using creditable sources, in addition to course videos or required readings.	1.4
Written Expression and Formatting	1 (10%) The quality of writing, APA formatting, or both are minimally acceptable for advanced graduate level work. The writing has many grammatical or mechanical errors. (1 point) The writing includes some attempt to convey ideas, but they need to be expressed more clearly and concisely.	1.6 (16%) Somewhat represents scholarly, advanced graduate-level writing. The writing shows more than a few grammatical or mechanical errors. Generally, follows APA style, but the elements of effective communication, such as an introduction and conclusion, are not included.	1.8 (18%) Work is well organized and uses mostly correct APA formatting throughout with few, if any, grammatical or mechanical errors. The elements of effective communication, such as an introduction and conclusion, are included.	2 (20%) Work represents scholarly writing in correct APA format; effective sentence variety; and clear, concise, powerful expression. The entire piece is well organized and includes an introduction and conclusion.	1.4
Total Points: 10	7.0

Week [2 or 4] Assignment: Research Problem Development

Angel Winslow

EDD: Early Childhood Education

Walden University

The Impact of Virtual Learning on Academic Success in Early Childhood Education Comment by Steve Wells: Audio comments: https://share.vidyard.com/watch/hYSRGAC63pH64vbrx5xAKc?

Background

During the 2020-2021 school year when the pandemic forced schools to pivot to a virtual environment, school readiness goals were not met and children’s scores decreased by 25%. Virtual learning is increasingly being promoted by educational policymakers to replace face-to-face models during the COVID-19 pandemic (Dhawan, 2020). This decision is informed by the desire to maintain young children’s learning while preventing the spread of the disease among the children population (Kaden, 2020). However, parents, teachers, and learners’ beliefs and attitudes towards its efficacy in accomplishing the desired academic outcomes remain largely unexplored by past and contemporary scholars (Avgerinou & Moros, 2020). This phenomenon is widely attributed to the newness of the technology among early learners. Many schools in North America closed in-person learning following the outbreak of the pandemic. As a result, it has become increasingly clear that returning to physical learning models will need to be prolonged from 2021 school clear and possibly resumed in the future. In response to this crisis, many educational agencies have shifted teaching and learning from the physical to online platforms. While institutions of higher learning had already explored the academic feasibility of virtual learning on academic success, there is still a scarcity of knowledge on its impacts on early childhood education environments. Therefore, there is a need to conduct research that directly responds to this concern by assessing the distinct challenges associated with remote teaching and learning and its impact on academic success in early childhood education contexts. Comment by Steve Wells: ? Please revise this sentence for clarity. Comment by Steve Wells: Why do you believe this? You need to support this statement with evidence from peer-reviewed research lit. Do this in every paragraph, even if I do not mark it. :-)

Problem Statement

The first paragraph goes here.

Evidence from the Local Setting

The effect of virtual learning on student success in early childhood education is an area of study that has not yet been expansively explored by researchers. This technology enables teachers to use tools such as email, zoom, Seesaw, phone or text to communicate with students and parents. However, students continued to struggle. Learning occurs through hands-on experiences guided by an intentional facilitator (Virtual learning for early childhood students, n.d). To increase scores due to virtual learning, the learning tool Seesaw was used to teach students online virtually (Seesaw, 2014). Virtual learning has this positive impact on learning because children develop better hand-eye coordination and motor skills. These skills help them to form clearer images and improve their capabilities to solve problems (Keller, 2020). The existing gaps in studies examining the effects of virtual learning technologies on educational success in early childhood educational settings is largely attributed to its newness in such contexts. While previous researchers have found a strong positive correlation between their use in higher learning and educational success, a wide gap still exists ion their impact in early childhood academic environments. In that connection, Donohue et al. (2021) attributed the absence of scholarly investigations on this important area of pedagogy on the newness of virtual learning to professional development in the field of early childhood education. According to them, such a gap has resulted in a few studies being generated to determine the efficacious practices for students or instructors who are still new to this learning approach. Similarly, Timmons et al. (2021) observes that the existence of a knowledge dearth on virtual learning programs is partly owed to the fact that learning in kindergarten and early primary school environments is often largely play- and inquiry- based. As a cConsequencye, educational researchers have placed minimal attention on the need to explore the importance of virtual learning on academic success in early childhood environments. Comment by Steve Wells: Just delete this. Either you’ve already said it above or it really is unnecessary. Just state the problem and give 3-5 citations to support its existence and that it is being discussed in the lit. Please watch this video: Problem Statement Part 1 Comment by Steve Wells: What is your problem. Please start this section with the problem sentence…and word it like this: “The problem is __________________. For both the EDD Dissertation and Project Study, the problem must be about a gap in practice as the EDD is an applied degree. A gap in practice is the difference between what is currently happening and what stakeholders would want to happen to achieve best practices. For an EDD Dissertation the gap in practice will be found within the research literature. If the EDD Dissertation collects data in a specific localized setting, evidence is needed to justify the use of the local setting. For a Project Study, the gap in practice is found within a local setting but it is also required to show that the problem is relevant and meaningful to the research literature found within the field/program specialization. Keep in mind that a gap in the research/knowledge is not, in and of itself, a reason to conduct research. The need to address an identified gap in practice must be clear, current, and relevant to the discipline and area of practice. A research problem* is a focused topic of concern, a condition to be improved upon, or troubling question that is supported in scholarly literature or theory that you study to understand in more detail, and that can lead to recommendations for resolutions. It is the research problem* that drives the rest of the study: the purpose, the research questions, and the methodology. Click here* for additional resources. Keep the problem statement to one sentence. Example (EDD Dissertation) The research problem is that nationally online doctoral students’ time to graduation has increased over the last decade despite a federal initiative to fund colleges and universities’ efforts to provide additional resources to address this problem. Example (EDD Project Study) The research problem is that College A has implemented new research mentoring resources to assist online doctoral students progress through their capstone process, but student surveys indicate students do not highly value these resources as support for degree completion. ………………………………………………………………………………………………… Thanks Comment by Steve Wells: You really cannot make any of these claims without providing immediate APA citations to the references. Comment by Steve Wells: Please review the lit in past tense, per APA. Comment by Steve Wells: Please go through the rest of your paper and address all other instances of this issue, even if I did not mark them.

While the efficacy of virtual learning in supporting knowledge acquisition is widely mentioned by many researchers, their studies only emphasize on higher educational settings. According to Gayatri (2020), many early childhood education invitations and governments have switched from the traditional face-to-face learning to distance learning to respond to the outbreak of the pandemic without prior research understanding of its effectiveness in such contexts. Additionally, Ferri et al. (2020) observe that issues such as unreliability of internet connectivity and students’ lack of necessary electronic devices pose challenges to effective virtual learning. Similarly, Gillet-Swan (2017) states that virtual learning enables institutions to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to education. However, he cautions against low engagement of learners who become physically isolated from their colleagues while using the technologies. Furthermore, he observes that such learners encounter many challenges to their full participation compared to their traditional counterparts. Therefore, there is a need to fill this knowledge gap by exploring the impact of virtual learning models on early childhood education success. Comment by Steve Wells: So, we still do not know what the problem is. We have an idea about the general topic, but no research problem. Comment by Steve Wells: Same comment this time. Need a narrower, more concise, clearer problem statement with evidence.

Evidence from the Local Setting

During 2020-2021 school year School Readiness Goals of a Head Start Agency declined by25%. During the 2020-2021 school year, the communication education Tool “Seesaw “was used to Improve School Readiness Goals. Schools are increasingly becoming aware of the diversity of their existing and prospective learners. As a consequenceConsequently, they are shifting from traditional models of learning to incorporate flexible strategies that accommodate remote learners. In the face of such shifts, however, schools are not yet fully ready to adopt hybrid learning techniques. According to Adedoyin and Soykan (2020), the process of digital transformation of schools against the backdrop of the pandemic is an uphill task that requires sufficient strategic preparation, trust establishment, and collaborative organizational knowledge and skills. The existence of literature gap on the effect of virtual learning on early childhood education success is also attributed to shortage of technological systems that are customized to meet children’s needs. For instance, Inan (2021) states that when schools closed abruptly due to the pandemic, they lacked systems, research, and procedures for online learning, such as study content. As a result, researchers who attempt to explore the effect of virtual learning on education success would encounter challenges. Comment by Steve Wells: This is not local evidence, it is a research article. Personal communications Just identify the person by job title in a generic phrase integrated into the sentence. Do not use the personal communication citation if you are not naming the person. Check my suggested revision and revise as needed if it doesn’t quite capture your intended meaning. See this SMRT guide: https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/ld.php?content_id=43538457 Local evidence must come from the local context. You may use personal communications, minutes from meetings, agendas, local performance data, etc. But journal articles are not local (usually) unless they were research done in the local context. Comment by Steve Wells: Again, we are not concerned with a gap in the lit in the EdD program. Only a gap in practice. Problem of Practice Note for increased understanding: For both the EDD Dissertation and Project Study, the problem must be about a gap in practice as the EDD is an applied degree. A gap in practice is the difference between what is currently happening and what stakeholders would want to happen to achieve best practices. Keep in mind that a gap in the research/knowledge is not, in and of itself, a reason to conduct research. The need to address an identified gap in practice must be clear, current, and relevant to the discipline and area of practice. For an EDD Dissertation the gap in practice will be found within the research literature. If the EDD Dissertation collects data in a specific localized setting, evidence is needed to justify the use of the local setting. For a Project Study, the gap in practice is found within a local setting but it is also required to show that the problem is relevant and meaningful to the research literature found within the field/program specialization.

The Gap in Practice (or the gap in the literature about practice)

Virtual learning is an educational exercise that occurs over the internet as a form of distance knowledge acquisition. It is an educational exercise that occurs over the internet and with the support of other digital tools, which include computers, smartphones, and tablets. The practice is widely becoming ubiquitous in the face of the emergence and spread of the COVID 19 pandemic. According to Kim (2020), the existing gap in studies associated with virtual learning in early childhood education the slow pace of adoption in such contexts and teachers’ hesitance to gain the technical skills required to tailoring them towards optimizing children’s intellectual growth and development. To fill this knowledge gap, the researcher I suggests the need to equip learners and educators with the technological competence required to use digital technologies for optimizing academic success. In the same vein, Timmons et al. (2021) urge modern researchers to turn their attention to investigating the use of virtual learning tools to optimize academic success since the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended temporary closure of schools as part of their efforts to promote children’s health and safety due to the pandemic. Some of the public health measures that WHO recommends include mask wearing and mandatory social distancing. According to the researchers, the latter recommendation directly affects early childhood educational practices since it paves the way for the introduction of alternative learning models, such as distance or virtual education. However, the researchers observe a major paucity of studies that have been previously conducted on the area within the context of early childhood education. Additionally, they call for he need to explore how such technological tools can be employed to optimize students’ knowledge acquisition and retention. To fill the aforementioned knowledgeknowledge gap, there is a need to conduct a study, which is geared towards determining the impact of virtual learning tools in determining students’ academic success. Most specifically, such a study will go a long way in encouraging subsequent scholarly investigations into this problematic area of knowledge. Comment by Steve Wells: Both Walden and APA prefer first person (“I,” “me,” “my”) pronouns (APA §4.16). Avoid using the third-person (e.g., referring to yourself by a pronoun such as a “she” or a noun such as “the researcher”). Also visit our Letter from the Editor on the First Person

 

References

Adedoyin, O. B., & Soykan, E. (2020). Covid-19 pandemic and online learning: the challenges

and opportunities. Interactive Learning Environments, 1-13.

Dhawan, S. (2020). Online learning: A panacea in the time of COVID-19 crisis. Journal of

Educational Technology Systems, 49(1), 5-22.

Donohue, C., Johnson, A., Lucas, P., Lynd, C., Mukerjee, J., & Thouvenelle, S. (2020). Distance

.Learning and Early Childhood Education.

Ferri, F., Grifoni, P., & Guzzo, T. (2020). Online learning and emergency remote teaching:

Opportunities and challenges in emergency situations. Societies, 10(4), 86.

Gayatri, M. (2020). The Implementation of Early Childhood Education in the Time of Covid-19

Pandemic: A Systematic Review. Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 8(6), 46-54.

Gillett-Swan, J. (2017). The challenges of online learning: Supporting and engaging the isolated

learner. Journal of Learning Design, 10(1), 20-30.

Kaden, U. (2020). COVID-19 school closure-related changes to the professional life of a K–12

teacher. Education Sciences, 10(6), 165.

Keller, S. (2020, November 4). What effects are we seeing virtual learning has on kids, teachers,

and parents. Applied Imaging. https://www.appliedimaging.com/blog-it-services/virtual-

learning-what-teachers-and-parents-are-saying-about-the-impact-on-students/

Schachter, H. L. (2017). Organization development and management history: a tale of changing

seasons. Public Administration Quarterly, 233-253.

Seesaw. (2014). Seesaw. Seesaw. https://web.seesaw.me/

Shafiei Sarvestani, M., Mohammadi, M., Afshin, J., & Raeisy, L. (2019). Students’ experiences

of e-Learning challenges; a phenomenological study. Interdisciplinary Journal of Virtual

Learning in Medical Sciences, 10(3), 1-10.

Virtual learning for early childhood students. (n.d.). Www.uft.org. Retrieved August 11, 2021,

from https://www.uft.org/news/teaching/teacher-teacher/virtual-learning-early-childhood-

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