24 design is to have the qualitative data help explain in more detail the initial
quantitative results” p. 274.
B. Research Setting
The research was conducted at the English Language Education Study Program ELESP of Sanata Dharma University. This study focused on ELESP
students who were in Structure 3 class academic year 20152016. The classroom employed online grammar exercises as media to learn English Grammar. The data
collection was held twice. The first phase was held on 25
th
April 2017. Then, the result of the first phase was used to plan the second phase which was the Focus
Group Discussion section. The second phase was held on 1
st
May 2017.
C. Research Participants
The participants of this research were English Education students academic year 20152016 who joined Structure 3 class D. It consisted of twenty eight
students. This study employed mixed methods research which consisted of two phases of study. Creswell 2014 mentions that “the data collection proceeds in two
distinct phases with rigorous quantitative sampling in the first phase and with purposeful sampling in the second, qualitative phase. Therefore, in the first phase,
the researcher included all the participants of class D to obtain quantitative data. In the second phase, there were four participants who involved in Focus
Group Discussion. The confidentiality of the participants would be protected and guaranteed. Thus, the participants were coded as P1, P2, P3, and P4. The researcher
25 purposively chose the participants who could provide the data for this study.
Specifically, the researcher chose the participants who have high cognitive presence
and low social presence. Those two presences were emerged as the significant gap on the first phase. Franenkel, Wallen, and
Hyun 2012 state that in “purposive sampling, the researcher does not simply study whoever is available, but rather used
the judgment to select a sample that they believe, based on prior information will provide the data they need” p. 99.
D. Research Instruments and Data Gathering Technique
There were two instruments used in the research. The instruments were the questionnaire and the Focus Group Discussion. The questionnaire was used to
generalize the student engagement and built the second phase of the research. Besides, the Focus Group Discussion was used to explain detailed information from
the first phase.
1. Questionnaire
In this study the researcher employed the questionnaire as the instrument to generalize the student engagement. It was used to build the second phase to obtain
detailed explanation about student engagement in using online grammar exercises as the media to engage in learning grammar. Johnson and Christensen 2012
mention that the questionnaire is used to obtain information about the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, values, perceptions, personalities, and behavioral intentions from
the participants. In this study, the questionnaire was used to obtain the information about participants’ thoughts, attitudes and feelings about their engagement in using
26 online grammar exercises. The questionnaire in the study used Likert scale. Ary,
Jacobs, and Sorensen 2010 define Likert scale as
A Likert scale assesses attitudes toward a topic by presenting a set of statements about the topic and asking respondents to indicate for each whether they strongly
agree, agree, are undecided, disagree, or strongly disagree. The various agree –
disagree responses are assigned a numeric value, and the total scale score is found by summing the numeric responses given to each item. This total score assesses the
individual’s attitude toward the topic p. 209.
In order to be able to score the responses, each item must be scored. Ary, Jacobs, and Sorensen 2010 state that for positive response strongly agree is scored
5, agree is scored 4, undecided is scored 3, disagree is scored 2, and strongly disagree is scored 1. However, the researcher reduced the undecided scale to avoid
ambiguity from the participants. It was distributed in the classroom and the type of the questionnaire were close-ended. The items were related to
the students’ self- assessment about their engagement, the social presence, cognitive presence, and
teacher presence. The questionnaire was developed by employing Garisson, Anderson, and Archer
’s theory about Community of Online Inquiry to ensure the student engagement in using online grammar learning.
2. Focus Group Discussion
The second phase of data collection was Focus Group Discussion FGD section. There were four participants who joined in this phase. The participants
were acknowledged as participants who could provide the detailed information about the gap that emerged from the questionnaire. Nagle and Williams 2013,
state that FGD is used to capture deeper understanding from similar backgrounds or experiences about certain topics being studied. The topics being discussed were
27 the gap between the cognitive presence and social presence in using online
grammar exercises. The FGD was chosen to be used in this second phase to obtain the detailed information from the issue being studied. Nagle and Williams 2013
mention that there are five-stage processes to conduct the Focus Group Discussion. They were study purpose, methodology, facilitation, analysis, and reporting. It was
important to conduct those five-stage processes to obtain impactful focus group. The first stage in conducting a quality focus group was study purpose. It
was how to find an issue being studied in the Focus Group Discussion. As it was emerging from the first phase of this research, the cognitive presence and social
presence became the issues of this study. Some participants gain high cognitive and social presence but some participants gain high cognitive presence and gain low
social presence. There was a gap between cognitive and social presence that needed to be explored.
The following step was methodology. It was divided into two elements, namely conceptualization and logistic. Conceptualization element discussed the
participants who were involved in the focus group. They were purposively chosen and could provide detailed information about the issue being studied. In relation to
this, the optimal participants were between 4-12 participants and the optimal questions were approximately five questions Nagle Williams, 2013. The
questions were arranged from the most important question and ordered into a logical flow. The Focus Group Discussion was held in bahasa Indonesia. The
researcher was allowed to trigger the participants if there were no responses to the questions. The second element was logistic. It was the plan made by the researcher
