[nwinter]

Control group vs. Skritter group, track the time they spend spend studying characters specifically, give them a huge quiz at the end of the semester--not enough? You're right that we can't get a large sample, but we can get a large effect because the Skritter method will drastically favor long term retention.

[briansmith]

I, personally, would only feel comfortable making quantified claims like that if they were verified to be statistically significant. I asked some SLA researchers what would be required to get a statistically significant result and their responses were really discouraging. It's really hard to get definite results even with huge student populations across multiple schools. Because of what they told me, I dropped the idea of making such claims about my own software. Instead I'm going to market it a different way.

I think many people will be interested in the results of your study. Do you know when/where the results will be published?

[nwinter]

No, we can't even start it until next semester. I did do a smaller study last year that showed average writing retention rates of 38%, and it'll be easy to destroy that. Maybe if SLA research is too tight to penetrate, we can still go the transparent web data presentation route.

[girk]

If you're interested in getting more students on board to take part of initial group to be tracked, feel free email me at melgirk at the only email service worth using.