Flora's+Design+Block+F+2011

An English professor believes that students who have the opportunity to write their essay on word processors will produce better essays than those who write their essays by hand. Design a study that tests the professor's belief.
 * Problem:**

Students who have the opportunity to write their essay on word processors will produce better essays than those who write their essays by hand.
 * (ask) Hypothesis:**

Writing device the students will use to write their essays (word processor or by hand)
 * (identify) Independent Variable:**

Results of the essay exam
 * (Identify) Dependent Variable:**

1. Make sure that each participant gets same amount of sleep and food.
 * Plan:**

2. Start the experiment in the morning (but not too early --> around 9~10am)

3. Do a written quiz/test on the essay topic and collect group of people who earned similar marks (so that the people taking the essays exam have similar level of knowledge)

4. Divide the group in two and make them take the essay test in different ways

5. Compare how much a person can hand write in the same time the person can type.

6. Give more time to the hand writing group accordingly.

7. Make the essays anonymous and type all handwritten essays so that graders won't know which one was written on word processor and which was hand written (double blind procedure)

8. Have each of the essays graded by a a minimum of 3 same teachers.

9. Make sure each teacher is grading on the same criteria.

10. Average out the grades given by the three teachers.

11. Make a graph according to score range.

11. Compare the results of the two groups (look for the group with more people on the higher range)

There might be a confounding variable where students handwriting the exam earns better marks than the students who used word processor. However, this unexpected results will not distort anything in the plan or the study. Rather, it will only disprove our hypothesis.