Guidelines and Templates for Planning, Conducting and Reporting Educational Technology Research

Abstract

Educational Technology (ET) research encompasses a wide range of areas, including the development of technology tools for learning and teaching, pedagogies for technology enhanced learning, and use of ICT-based materials or tools for learning. The interdisciplinary nature of ET leads to a wide variation in the focus and quality of research articles. Hence there is a need for guidelines for planning, conducting and reporting ET research studies. Such guidelines are also useful to instructors, as they are often well-positioned to carry out applied ET research studies. This article is a mini-tutorial that provides guidelines and templates to conduct ET research studies. The emphasis of this tutorial is on criteria that reviewers use to evaluate research papers and how the criteria can be met. This tutorial is designed to be used with an accompanying set of templates that we have created. The templates offer scaffolds to the researcher during various stages of research, so that reviewers. criteria are effectively addressed.