Literature Review
This project is structured as an Information Exchange project. Students will be collaborating with other classes in order to share data that they have collected and then conduct data analysis using the information from all of the participants.
There are numerous telecollaborative projects that have been conducted in the past (some of which are still ongoing) that follow similar structures:
The most similar project to this one is likely the Global Grocery List Project. This project is no longer active, but for many years it allowed classes to submit local prices for particular food items, housing cost, area income, and premium gas. One distinct difference between this project and the Global Grocery List (GGL) Project is that the GGL Project served mostly as an information resource. Visitors to the site can look up the costs for items in a particular location in a given year, but what they do with that information is entirely up to them. The site functions as a database of costs. Although the Cost of Living Project will fulfill those purposes as well, it will also go beyond them. Students will have access to a spreadsheet of all the data collected by participants and will analyze it with their classes. They will also participate in a discussion forum on the site throughout the project and will post reflective works at the end of the project.
Here are a few other projects that share characteristics with this project:
There are numerous telecollaborative projects that have been conducted in the past (some of which are still ongoing) that follow similar structures:
The most similar project to this one is likely the Global Grocery List Project. This project is no longer active, but for many years it allowed classes to submit local prices for particular food items, housing cost, area income, and premium gas. One distinct difference between this project and the Global Grocery List (GGL) Project is that the GGL Project served mostly as an information resource. Visitors to the site can look up the costs for items in a particular location in a given year, but what they do with that information is entirely up to them. The site functions as a database of costs. Although the Cost of Living Project will fulfill those purposes as well, it will also go beyond them. Students will have access to a spreadsheet of all the data collected by participants and will analyze it with their classes. They will also participate in a discussion forum on the site throughout the project and will post reflective works at the end of the project.
Here are a few other projects that share characteristics with this project:
- The O.R.E.O. Project (ongoing) - In this project, classes post their results about how many regular oreo cookies they can stack on top of each other before the stack falls down. Each student in the class records their total, and the class averages their individual results. The class as a whole then submits their average result. This is a similar concept to the Cost of Living Project, but it is geared toward younger students (ranging from pre-school through sixth grade). Additionally, each class only submits their average result, whereas for the Cost of Living Project, each student will submit his/her results. These results will be available to all participants so that all classes can calculate averages and other statistics about their own classes as well as all other participating classes.
- The Human Genetics Project (ongoing) - This project requires students to survey their peers about different genetic traits, share the data with other participants in the project, and analyze the data to determine which traits are the most prevalent. Like the Cost of Living Project, conducting this kind of research requires a large sample size in order to obtain statistically significant results. Although neither project involves advanced statistical analysis, they both instill in students the important research principle that the more people you survey, the more valid and reliable your results will be.
- The Journey North Project (ongoing) - This project studies migration patterns of various species and requires students to record their observations. The key aspect that the Cost of Living Project shares with the Journey North Project is the necessity of telecollaboration. The data involved in both projects requires observation in different locations - something that a single class could not do without traveling to all of the locations and collecting the data themselves. With the telecollaborative aspect, students get the opportunity to analyze data all over the world by sharing the responsibility of collecting the data. Without telecollaboration, neither of these projects would be possible!