The Language of Learning Objects A Cross-disciplinary Study

Carla Meskill & Gulnara Sadykova

University at Albany, SUNY

Purpose of the study:

Compare and contrast the language used in MERLOT peer reviews,

specifically that of the

Sciencesversus that of the

Humanities versus that of

Education.

Disciplinary Discourses

Humanities SciencesEvocative Analytical

Social construction of knowledge

Scientific view of truths

Critical Empirical

Evaluative Objective

Integration Simplification through Isolation

Working Hypotheses

•There are discipline-specific uses of language in discussing teaching and learning.

•Such differences will be revealed in the patterns and frequencies of specific language use in the MERLOT Peer Reviews.

DATA

1691 peer reviews from the three focal discipline groups

•Hard Sciences: Biology, Chemistry and Physics (892 reviews)

•Humanities: History, Music and World Languages (478 reviews)

•Education (321 reviews)

Linguistic Concordancing

Emerging Categories of Contrast

1) The NOT TOO SURPRISING Category

2) The DESCRIPTORS Category

3) The AGENCY Category

Not Too SurprisingLemmas/roots EDUCATION

N=218,731HUMANITIESN=262,225

HARD SCIENCESN=436,004

applet 2 (52)* 5 (124)* 64 (2777)

audio 4 (97)* 20 (537)* 2 (93)

practice (excludes practical) 12 (267)* 16 (427)* 5 (203)

see (excludes seem (s, ed) 6 (131)* 6 (153)* 12 (530)

discuss 14 (310)* 10 (273)* 8 (363)

teach/taught 131 (2862)* 47 (1224)* 14 (629)

animate 3 (71)* 5 (131)* 26 (1114)

rubric 9 (195)* 1 (19)* 0.1 (5)

clear (includes clearly) 13 (277)* 20 (531) 22 (960)

accurate, (includes inaccurate and accurately)

3 (62)* 4 (93)* 7 (306)

scaffold 1 (15)* 0 0

Descriptors: Preliminary Results

Out of 89 words selected, only 8 showed no significant difference in usage between all three disciplines;

in 29 instances only one group -Education or Humanities - showed significant difference when compared to Hard Sciences;

judging by the words selected, in 67% (60 out of 89 words) reviewers choose different descriptors to describe and evaluate MERLOT learning objects

Agency

Next Steps

• Random content analysis

• Member checks

• Syntactic Constructions

Questions?

Suggestions?