Originally, I was planning on focusing my action research project on the impact of extra-curricular activities on student success. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence to support the idea that students that are involved in activities beyond the school day have greater academic success and fewer discipline issues than those that are not. It would be interesting to see if data supports those ideas.

My current situation, however, has given me cause to reconsider. I am changing schools this year, and changing subjects as well. I recently learned that I will be teaching a TAKS remediation class this year. This will not be the first time I have taught such a class, and my previous experience has me thinking of ways to better serve the needs of those students. I know that my approach to this type of class last time was not the most effective method, so I am looking at ways that might be more motivational and effective this time. Another important piece of information is that each student on my new campus will be isssued a laptop computer. This has me wondering if perhaps there is a computer based remediation program out there. And if not, if simply using the computer on a daily basis to teach the objectives of the TAKS test will somehow increase the motivation of these students to learn.

Considering all of this, I believe that the purpose of my action research project will be to test the effectiveness of computer based TAKS remediation. The significance of this study will be to find a methodology that best motivates struggling science students and effectively prepares them for the science TAKS test.

Obviously there are a few details that need to be worked out, but I feel better about the direction of the project now. I am at least headed in a direction. I now need to research the available computer based programs and check the available research on programs that have already been used. This will lead me to a determining which program I will focus on in my project.