Session 4 Assessing Our Classroom Learning Environment

Finally ... we get down to assessing the learning environment. It was back to good old SPSS ... last one I used was SPSS 8.0 now it is 15.0! It's been sometime ...

It was interesting how Dr Quek attempted to get the class to use Excel & SPSS to analyse the research data without going into the details of statistical analysis... I thought that the 'template' or scaffolding done to ensure the learners did not get lost was useful, though it helped little to provide a guide on how to develop the recommendations.

SPSS 15.0 was a handy tool which required getting used to ... but fundamentally was similar to 8.0. Unfortunately my memory on statistics had gone to the gutters as I struggled with the different tools for results reliability (cronbach's) and significance of differences (sample paired T test).

For recommendations, although there was no significant differences between preferred and actual means, I thought that it did not mean that the learning environment was perfect. There were means that could still be improved and several sub-items which notched significant differences. Putting focus on these variables and sub-items would contribute the most value to improving the learning environment given the available room for improvements.