RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE EXPLANATORY SEQUENTIAL DESIGN OF MIXED METHODS ADOPTED TO EXPLORE THE INFLUENCES ON ONLINE LEARNING IN HONG KONG BILINGUAL CYBER HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This paper presents the study’s mixed methods designed to explore how students’ English proficiency, online instructor guidance and online collaboration influence the students’ online learning in an introductory information technology course offered by Hong Kong’s cyber higher education. The design of mixed methods used in this study mainly adopted Creswell and Plano Clark’s (2011) follow-up explanations variant of the explanatory sequential design of mixed methods. The  reliability  and validity of research, which  have  been  discussed  in  both  quantitative  research  and qualitative  research,  have to  be  reconsidered for mixed methods in  order  to  reflect the  multiple  methods of establishing  the research’s  trustworthiness. This paper discusses these issues. So far, the major findings of this research using the mixed methods are presented in Wong’s (2015) quantitative phase, which revealed that students’ English proficiency exhibits the largest effect while online instructor guidance and online collaboration have a moderate effect on the students’ learning in cyber education. These quantitative findings provide implications for the qualitative phase of the mixed methods as a follow-up to explore the cause–effect relationship between the variables and the students’ learning in cyber education.

To cite this document: Simon Wong and Paul Cooper, "Reliability and validity of the explanatory sequential design of mixed methods adopted to explore the influences on online learning in Hong Kong bilingual cyber higher education", International Journal of Cyber Society and Education, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 45-64, 2016.

Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/ijcse.1475