What to do with the collected data?

Any Action Research project involves reading and analyzing the data gathered by the different instruments. What to do with the collected data?

These were the steps followed to deal with the collected data.

First Step : Assembling the data

•Re-reading the data and beginning the detailed analysis process.

•Seeing if data are useful to answer the initial research questions

•Using a website to analyze the surveys qualitatively and quantitatively.

In order to do this first step properly, it was necessary to use the tools given by Encuestafacil.com to get an organized chart including the survey results. In addition, the interview was transcribed and some researcher's logs and some students' artifacts were chosen.

After analyzing the survey's questions, I noticed that some were not very useful; they just provided data about the participants' characteristics.

Second Step : Coding the data

•Examining the data and Identifying broad and frequent patterns.

• Applying a color-coding system.

For this process, the tutor's help was very effective to "recognize" the patterns and categories.

Thus, yellow color was used to identify the information about Internet in a blended course

(sub-question Nº1) and green color coded all the patterns that gave information about Collaborative work

( sub-question Nº 2)

Third Step: Comparing data

• Identifying the repeated patterns across the data gathering techniques.
• Analyzing the data gathered, its patterns and other data emerged from the process.
• Identifying the relationships and connections between the data and the research questions.

The tutor suggested me to design this chart which was useful to analyze the data by focusing on the research questions.

QUESTIONS

What does the use Internet resources in an English course tells us about the language learning process of deaf university students?

· What insights about collaborative learning can be identified in an English course for

deaf students ?

CATEGORIES

· The use of Internet resources in a blended course as an effective didactic strategy.

· The language learning process of deaf students and the use of activities linked to visual media and written text production.

· ·Positive incidence of the collaborative work on the English learning process of deaf students.

Fourth Step : Summarizing trends and building Interpretations

Judging the value of data regarding the research question and sub questions .

Identifying concepts, ideas and interpretations emerged from the data collected.

Drawing conclusions.

Fifth Step : Writing a data analysis report

The report shows the research systematic process and present its findings.

The last two steps were so difficult for me. This writing task demanded a lot of time and effort; organizing the results and building a coherent paper implied to re-read the data several times trying to find possible " connections" and new interpretations