Experimental Designs

The course deals with the varied approaches designing experimental research with particular focus on applications in science education research. It opens with a brief discussion of research design strategies and perspectives to establish the importance of experimental research designs. The wide array of group and single/diagrammatic, procedural and analytical discussions. The group designs include pre-experimental, true experimental, quasi-experimental, time series, factorial, counter-balanced and action research designs; while the single-subjects designs include the baseline designs. Data analysis is performed with the two-sample procedures and analysis of variance and covariance. Threats to generalizability of results (internal and external validity) of experiments are identified and clarified with the hope of controlling them through the most appropriate experimental design.