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stage concentrates on the comprehension of the
new knowledge, so the intention of Interaction1
stage is to clarify the confusion about the new
knowledge; and then the Warm-up2 stage spends
six days to prepare the learning content which
will be taught in Interaction2 stage face-to-face.
The rest days after the Interaction2 stage are
allocated for the stage of Review and Exercise,
which includes Interaction3 for consulting about
the exercises or mini-PBL.
1. Can the WIRE model effectively motivate
students to learn?
2. Can the WIRE model effectively facilitate
interaction either between teacher and stu-
dents or among students?
3. Can the WIRE model effectively increase
students learning achievement?
The examination paper for evaluating the dif-
ference between the groups in learning achieve-
ment was made by the teacher according to the
learning content, and was used after the experi-
ment. In addition, the researchers made a ques-
tionnaire to survey the view of the experimental
group on the WIRE model. Finally, 10 students
of the experimental group were invited to the
focus-group interview. The selection principle is
the heterogeneity, that is, the interviewees have
different attributes in learning achievement, par-
ticipation frequency of learning activities, and
different level of agreement to the WIRE model.
The questionnaire was made by five-point
Likert scale. The pretest samples are 32 students
who come from another class of the same depart-
ment and grade and have adopted the WIRE model
for one semester. After the pretest, the researchers
kept 16 items for the formal questionnaire by item
analysis and factor analysis. It contains three fac-
tors, the strategy of warm-up lessons, interactive
activities in class, and the strategy of review and
exercise after class and their reliability estimates
of Cronbach's Alphas are 0.627, 0.870, and 0.911
respectively. Taken as a whole, the Cronbach's
Alpha reliability coefficient is 0.892.
The research procedure is listed as below.
Participants
The experiment has 88 participants which were
divided into two groups (classes). The experi-
mental group has 45 students while the control
group has 43 students. The experimental group
adopts the WIRE model while the control group
adopts lecture-based instruction but is verbally
encouraged to warm-up and review lessons.
Since the participants have been divided into
two classes when they entered the department,
the researchers cannot reorganize and randomly
assign them into two new classes just for the ex-
periment. Therefore, all participants were asked
to take a prior-ability test which comprises basic
Java programming and algebra. The test results
revealed no significant by the Levene's test of
homogeneity of variance (F=.824, p=.429>.05).
That means the discrete distribution of the two
classes have no significant difference, and they
are in equal background knowledge and abilities
to learn the subject 'Data Structure.' In addition,
the students of each class have been divided into
some heterogeneous groups where each group
comprises 3 to 5 students for the group works.
•
Step 1: Give a test for both experimental
and control groups in prior ability of ba-
sic Java programming and algebra, so as
to evaluate sample representativeness and
then to adjust the lesson plan and question
difficulty for each instructional stage.
research questions,
tools and Procedure
The researchers attempt to answer the following
questions in this study by learning achievement
test, questionnaire, and focus-group interview.
•
Step 2: Treat experimental group with the
WIRE scenario showed as Figure 1 while
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