Meashel Mason

Febraury 6, 2016
OMDE 670
Research Topic

Research Proposal

Outline
1. Working title for the research project.
a. How can the usage of design principles in pedagogical practices help motivate
and engage students to continue their distance learning education?
2. Research Topic- What is the general focus area of the project?
a. The general focus area of the project is to see how pedagogical practices can help
keep students engage and motivate to continue education when in a distance
learning setting
3. Research Question what question(s) will your research address
a. How can the usage of design principles in pedagogical practices help motivate
and engage students to continue their distance learning education?
b. What techniques can be essential to the engagement of students?
c. How can these techniques and designs keep students motivated
4. Audience who is the reading audience? Who will benefit from your work?
a. The reading audience is professionals in distance learning who want to learn
methods to incorporate in order to keep students engaged in the learning material
and overall education
b. Who will benefit are the DL professionals and even the students. I say students
because the students can always make suggestions on how they can become
motivated and engage in this learning setting
5. Purpose and Goals- What is the purpose of your research? What major goal(s) do you
want to achieve?
a. The purpose of this research is based on finding ways that can help DL
professionals keep their students engaged and how students can become
motivated from these techniques. The purpose is to also learn for myself how to
improve on my DE skills when I start my career.
b. I want to achieve the knowledge of engagement; for my future career, I want to
learn tips and techniques to being a successful DE professional
6. Relevance to the Field in what way is the research topic relevant to the field of distance
education and e-learning?
a. This topic is relevant because being a distance education student myself, I often
found it hard to be engaged and motivated to continue my education based on
how certain classes were set up. I believe that if each distance education course
included techniques to keep people engaged in learning, maybe the motivation to
continue will increase and the dropout rate will decrease.
7. Data Gathering How will you gather facts/data?
a. I will conduct online research and case studies that are geared towards my broad
topic. These findings will help me discover ways to eventually break the broad
topic down into key points on engagement using pedagogical designs.
b. (If possible), I would also like to collect data myself by asking students in
distance education currently how they feel about the usage of pedagogical designs

c. I will use the course reading book for more strategy information on the topic
8. Initial List of References. What published research/authors work will you use to support
your research or as a source for your research?
a. John Keller Instructional Design Models and Theories: Kellers ARCs Model of
Motivation
b. Marios Miltiadou and Wilhelmina Savenye Applying Social Cognitive
Constructs of Motivation to Enhance Student Success in Online Distance
Education
c. John Keller- First principles of motivation to learn and e-learning