3. Research Ideas Template - openstax/kinetic-learner-characteristics-lib GitHub Wiki

OpenStax Kinetic Research Ideas Template

This document will walk you through all the elements necessary to design and deploy a study on Kinetic. To help guide your thought process, please keep in mind that your study's description and design should prioritize the learners’ experience. Kinetic participants are not guaranteed financial incentives, meaning that they are often motivated to continue participating by having positive experiences with the platform and with the studies researchers create. You can increase your success in attracting participants by writing compelling descriptions and designing interesting studies (to the extent possible) that provide value (whether via personalized feedback, general suggestions, scores from an assessment, etc.) to learners.

After you review this document, you can fill out the Qualtrics Form. The Kinetic team will connect with you once we receive your submission via the above Qualtrics form.

Primary Investigator:

[NAME], [TITLE], [INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION]

Research interests

Please list two to three core research interests of the PI. Max character count: 40. [RESEARCH INTERESTS]

Contact person for follow-up questions

This can be the PI or a graduate student, research assistant, etc. [CONTACT PERSON], [EMAIL ADDRESS]

Study Elements

Study title

The Kinetic system uses two different study titles.

Student-facing title

From initial user research, we have identified that learners prefer titles that they can immediately relate to, which include questions about themselves and/or fun, casual descriptions. For example, instead of a more technical title like, “Examining science knowledge in higher education”, learners would be more likely to show interest in a study titled, “How much do you remember from science class?”. We recommend keeping titles short (45 characters or less), interesting (E.g.: “How much control do you feel over your life?”), fun (E.g.: “Statistics + Writing = Combinatorial Fun”), engaging (E.g.: “Are you a super reader?”), and learner-focused (E.g.: “Do you fit in?”).

[YOUR STUDENT-FACING TITLE]

Researcher-facing title

This is only visible to the researcher and can be as technical as you like (with no character limit).

[YOUR RESEARCHER-FACING TITLE]

Study descriptions

The Kinetic system uses two different study descriptions, as well as a description of learner benefits, to provide different depths of information to learners interested in the study. All three descriptions will be shown to learners. The primary purpose of your descriptions is to attract learners to your study.

Short description of study

Please write a tweet-friendly description of the study in 120 characters or less. This description will be visible to the learners on study cards. The same rules as the title apply to this description. Remember, this description is intended to get learners interested to learn more about the study. Example 1: “What makes you…you? This brief personality quiz will tell you who you are, and what your behaviors and preferences mean.” Example 2: “How much do you remember from middle school science? Find out what you’ve retained… and where you’re a little rusty.”

[YOUR SHORT DESCRIPTION]

Long description of study

This description will be visible to learners when they decide to learn more about a study and should provide more technical details. Explain what the learners need to do and, if possible, the broad purpose of the study. If relevant, mention the number of items in your study and/or the steps learners will complete. Please make this description 250 characters or less. Example 1: “Try highlighting when you read in this study! Online highlighting might be more effective for certain situations or students. You'll highlight text on stress and psychology, play a quick game, and then take a brief quiz (and another in a week).” Example 2: “This is a 10-question quiz about your persistence and dedication to meeting long-term goals. After you take the quiz, you’ll receive your score, as well as suggestions for how to improve your ability to stick with your goals.” [YOUR LONG DESCRIPTION]

Learner benefits description

  • Please describe how participating in your study will benefit learners. In other words, what value are you providing learners? What's in it for them? Learners generally prefer practical feedback that they can use in their lives (e.g., learn more about themselves or how to improve their study behaviors or academic performance, etc.), especially feedback that is personalized based on their responses to your study. If feedback would not be feasible to provide, please add a final block to your study that contains a general "de-brief" of the constructs you were assessing in your study. This information will be displayed when students click to see more information about your study. Please make this description 170 characters or less. Example 1: “You’ll receive your scores on seven different “themes” of your early educational life experiences, which may lead you to do some interesting reflection on your childhood.” Example 2: “You will be contributing to learning science and education research that will help researchers better understand how learners study in a post-pandemic world.” [LEARNER BENEFITS]

Study topic

What general domain(s) does the study relate to? (E.g., personality, learning, memory, careers, knowledge, biology.) This information will help us categorize your study in Kinetic. [STUDY TOPIC(S)]

Proposed study details

Please provide the following details on your proposed study. This information will be available to the internal Kinetic team, as well as other researchers who work on Kinetic and are looking for opportunities to collaborate.

Rationale/motivation for study

Please describe how and why this study will contribute to learning science and allied disciplines. For example, is there a gap in the literature that your findings could contribute to, conflicting results from earlier studies that your study could help clarify, etc.? Max word count: 150 words. [YOUR STUDY RATIONALE]

Scientific hypothesis/problem statement

Please state your hypothesis and/or problem statement. Max word count: 100 words. [YOUR HYPOTHESIS/PROBLEM STATEMENT]

Participants

How many learners need to participate?

Please share the findings from a power analysis to estimate the sample size needed for the study. (G*Power is a popular and free tool for calculating statistical power.) [YOUR REQUIRED NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS]

What are your inclusion criteria for learner selection?

Kinetic collects demographic information on learners' race/ethnicity, gender, native language, childhood SES, and zip code. Please do not include questions asking for any of these items in your own study (you can merge these data with your own data set on Kinetic when you analyze your data). For this release of Kinetic, you will need to remove participants from your analyses yourself after you have completed data collection. [YOUR INCLUSION CRITERIA]

What are your exclusion criteria for learner selection?

[YOUR EXCLUSION CRITERIA]

Proposed measures

If you are considering including psychological learner characteristics (e.g., self-efficacy, personality traits, goal orientation) measures in your study, please note that Kinetic already collects data for many popular constructs. Click here for a full list of learner characteristics measures we collect.

Please do not include any of these measures in your own study (you can merge our learner characteristics data with your own data set on Kinetic when you analyze your data).

If your proposed measures include commonly used learner characteristics that are not already in our library, please contact us at [email protected]. We may be able to add the relevant measure to our learner characteristics library.

  • Please state the measures you intend to use and provide citations: [MEASURES AND CITATIONS]

What task(s) will the learners work on?

We generally divide Kinetic studies into one of three categories: self-report surveys (e.g., personality measures), knowledge and ability assessments (e.g., working memory tasks, knowledge tests), or experimental research (mostly focused on learning and related interventions).

Which category/categories best apply to your study?

[PLEASE SELECT AT LEAST ONE CATEGORY BELOW]

  • [] Self-report surveys
  • [] Knowledge and ability assessments
  • [] Experimental and interventional research
  • [] Other [PLEASE DESCRIBE]

Estimated time and effort for completion

We factor in study completion time and effort to calculate the number of points we award participants.

  • How much time (in minutes) will each session of your study take? [MINUTES PER SESSION]

  • How much effort will be required for each session of your task?

  • What is the cognitive load your study will place on the learner? [PLEASE SELECT ONE OPTION BELOW]

  • [] Almost none (e.g., completing a simple personality survey)
  • [] A little (e.g., answering behavioral questions)
  • [] A moderate amount (e.g., taking a knowledge quiz)
  • [] Somewhat high (e.g., taking a challenging pattern assessment)
  • [] Very high (e.g., solving difficult math problems) [PLEASE PROVIDE MORE CONTEXT, IF NECESSARY]
  • Will this study require one or more follow-up sessions? [PLEASE SELECT ONE OPTION BELOW]
  • [] Yes
  • [] No
  • If yes, please describe how many follow-up sessions and at what intervals.
  • [] [NUMBER OF FOLLOW-UP SESSIONS]
  • [] [AT WHAT INTERVALS (DAYS, WEEKS, ETC.)]

Data collection date

  • When would you like your data collection period to begin? Please choose a date at least one month from now. [MM-DD-YYYY]

  • How will you conclude/terminate the study? We request that you set an a priori criterion for determining when you will be finished with data collection. [PLEASE SELECT ONE OPTION BELOW]

  • [] When a certain date has passed
  • [] When a certain number of participants has been recruited
  • [] Some other rule [PLEASE DESCRIBE]

IRB details

  • Do you have an approved IRB yet for this proposed study? [PLEASE SELECT ONE OPTION BELOW]
  • [] Yes [PLEASE PROVIDE IRB # AND EXPIRATION DATE]
  • [] No [PLEASE DESCRIBE YOUR PLANS TO OBTAIN AN IRB]

Research benefits

Kinetic aims to further research that will make significant impacts on learning science and allied disciplines, as well as the community.

How will your research further science, benefit educators, and/or serve a larger community?

  • Researchers and scientific field.
    Please describe the clear benefits for you and the scientific field as a researcher. Max word count: 150 words. [BENEFITS FOR RESEARCHERS + SCIENTIFIC FIELD]

  • Educators and community. Please describe the clear benefits for educators and/or the larger community. Max word count: 150 words. [BENEFITS FOR EDUCATORS/COMMUNITY]

Submit your study idea!

Now that you have reviewed this document, fill out the Qualtrics form and submit your study idea! The Kinetic team will connect with you once we receive your submission via the above Qualtrics form. If you have any questions in the meantime, please email us at [email protected].