Artifact 6

ETR 590 Mixed Methods Research:

Special Education Teachers Perceptions toward the Use of Mobile Technology for
Teaching Purposes: An Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods Study
Introduction and Reflection
The artifact presents above is the final mixed methods proposal project for ETR 590
mixed methods course. The course aims to prepare students to understand the concept of mixed
methods research methodology as well as learn how to incorporate mixed methods approaches
into a research study. This course was taken in the middle of my Masters Program. I found this
course extremely interesting because I had the chance to learn a wide range of mixed methods
approaches for example; explanatory sequential design, exploratory sequential design, and
embedded design.
In this course, I designed a mixed methods proposal, which entitled Special Education
Teachers Perceptions toward the Use of Mobile Technology for Teaching Purposes: An
Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods Study. The purpose of this research proposal is to
investigate Saudi special education teachers perceptions toward the use of tablet devices and
their application for teaching purposes based on research gap found in the previous literature. In
this proposal, I employed explanatory sequential design, which involves collecting and mixing to
two data types; quantitative and qualitative to answer the following research questions:
Quantitative questions:

What are the perceptions of male special education teachers on the adoption of tablet
devices and their applications for teaching purposes?

How these perceptions related to male special education teachers characteristics of (age,
academic qualifications, school level and year of experience)?

What are the perceptions of special education teachers toward school administration role
in encouraging them to use of tablet device and its applications for teaching purposes?
Qualitative questions:

Based on the statistical analysis, why certain, if not all, characteristics were significantly
related to participants perceptions?

What are barriers that hinder male special education teachers from adopting tablet
devices and their applications for teaching purposes?
Mixed methods question:

In what way do the qualitative data provide more explanations of the statistical results
emerged from phase one?
In this mixed methods proposal, the quantitative phase is the primary phase in this

research model and data will be collected via survey instrument. The second phase,
qualitative, will be used to further explain the findings that emerged from phase one using
semi- structured interviews.
Once the course finished, I continued developing this mixed methods proposal with my
dissertation chair, and it became my dissertation proposal for the Ph.D. degree in
instructional technology. In mid-January 2016, I successfully defend it as a dissertation
proposal, and then I proceed to collect data in early March 2016. The data collection took
about a month and a half. Once the collect data stage completed, I started analyzing
quantitative and qualitative data and also writing up chapter 4 and 5. In early September
2016, I submitted the final draft to my dissertation committee for pre-defense. After
reviewing my dissertation, the committee approved it for final defense with some minor
changes. On October 19, 2016, I successfully defend my dissertation.

Evidence of Mastery of Objectives 1 and 7

Objective 1, Design a study of an educational research problem or phenomenon using

appropriate methodologies: The artifact presents above demonstrates my ability to design
an educational research problem using mixed methods approach. It also shows that my
ability to include all essential elements (research problem, the purpose of the study,
research questions, literature review, and research methodology etc.) of a scholarly
research proposal.

Objective 7, Demonstrate effective communication skills by presenting and defending a

research project: Objective 7 is met because I had the chance to present my work at
AECT conference that took place November 4th, 2015 in Indianapolis, IN. When I
presented my research proposal at the conference, I received good comments and
suggestions from the audience. These comments and suggestions helped my to further
develop my proposal.