Goals:

• Complete a qualitative and quantitative analysis of a student essay response.

Activity Guide:

1 Get a transcript of a focus group, open response survey or other source of qualitative data.  You may have done interviews as part of your Fall assignment. If not, consider maybe copy and pasting the text from one of our 2 Summers online threaded discussions from this class or another. Alternatively you can get a transcript (and also listen to the presentation) from this Same Focus Group Transcript Site.

Reduce these data using qualitative summary of the content (Wordle)

1. Go to WordItOut.com
2. Copy/Paste the transcript text from your saved file into the “Original Text” area
3. Click Generate
4. Explore, if you want, the display options on the left side that impact how the word cloud looks
5. Some tools have more sophisticated options for the shape of the word cloud.
6. As a summary, the LARGER the word the more frequently it appeared in the word list. This should help you detect any emergent themes you could explore.

Reduce this essay using a simple quantitative word count and reading level score.

1. Word Count can be done in MS Word very easily. (if you don’t already know how to do this, just google it and your OS/version and you should get a tutorial like this one for PC, or this YouTube for Mac.)
2. If you prefer this is a free online tool available to do word counts as well called LexiCool.
   1. to use this tool simply paste the text into the text window
   2. then press the GO button.
3. You may also want to use the Readability Index that is a built in part of MS Word’s spelling and grammar tool. You have to turn on that feature in your Word Preferences… at least one time, but then you always get the Readability with every spell check. Here are the instructions for Mac users and for PC Word and Outlook.