ONLINE HOMEWORK HELPER

Online homework helper:  Homework is assigned, often on a daily basis, to students of all ages all over the world. Planning and assigning homework are a major responsibility and challenge to teachers at all grade levels. Cooper defined homework as tasks assigned to learners by their teachers, that are to be done outside of school time and without concomitant teacher direction. Homework is most frequently done at home and alone, but it may be done in other places such as the library, in study periods during or after school, or with other people such as parents or fellow students. There are different kinds of homework. Some homework is designed to assure that students review, practice, and drill material that has been learned at school. Other homework assignments are intended to provide students with the opportunity to amplify, elaborate, and enrich previously learned information. Homework is also sometimes used to prepare, in advance, material to be learned in the following classes.

Online homework helper:  The scope and depth of the literature on the topic of homework may be described in terms that Mark Twain used to describe the Mississippi River. It is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” There is a large popular literature consisting of books and articles advising parents and teachers on how to help children with homework, but only a sparse empirical research literature on the topic. Negative articles about homework are ubiquitous in popular periodicals with wide audiences. An article in the January 25, 1999 issue of Time magazine entitled “The homework Ate My Family” and subtitled “Kids are Dazed, Parents are Stressed,” is an excellent example of this literature.

Online homework helper:  Strong opinions on the topic of the efficacy of homework as a teaching strategy appear in the professional literature as well. The views range from strong criticism of the use of homework to claims that the proper use of homework can yield a significant increase in the level of academic achievement. By contrast, there have been relatively few empirical studies on the effects of homework. A number of authorities on the topic examined these studies and concluded that (a) only a small number of studies have been conducted, (b) many of them were poorly designed, and (c) they focused almost exclusively on the characteristics of the homework itself (e.g., types, quality, amount, grading system, feedback) or on the effect of homework on achievement.

The purpose of Study 4 was to examine the factor structure of the HPQ with the samples of students younger (Grade 5) and older (Grades 9 and 10) than those used in the foregoing studies. With the Grade 5 sample, we implemented the change and eliminated the time-element items. With the Grades 9 and 10 samples, we included the two experimental items for the responsibility component. However, the new set-time/variable-time items were not added at this stage. The empirical factor structures from the current and previous studies were compared with the hypothesized five-factor structures to re-examine the appropriateness of structural components in each category of homework motivation and preference (physics homework help).

Method

The participants were 201 fifth graders (104 males, 96 females, and 1 unspecified) from three public elementary school in a large western metropolitan area in the United States. Sixty-three ninth (n = 24) and tenth (n = 39) graders were used for the analyses of the older student group (24 males and 39 females), who were from three multi-age classes taught by a geometry teacher. These students were from a public school in a western suburban area. Due to the small sample size and to the fact that the students of both grades were taught in a same class, the combination of the two grades was considered acceptable. With the removal of the 8 time-related items, the revised HPQ used with the fifth graders was a 75-item questionnaire (HPQ-3a). The 77-item HPQ-3b was used with the Grades 9 and 10 sample due to the new two additional responsibility items (physics homework help).

Results

A 13-factor solution, accounting for 46% of the variance, was more consistent with the findings from Study 2 and 3 than the 14- or 15-factor solutions. Other solutions with a criterion of a larger or smaller number of factors did not result in structures that better describe the hypothesized categories and components. The factor structures were similar to those found in the previous studies just reported, with a slightly better defined structural pattern. Internal consistency estimates ranged from .60 to .84 with an exception of .59 in the structure component. With the time-related items eliminated in this study, most items loaded on a factor with a loading greater than .30. The main differences between this and the previous two factor studies are that the order and structure factors were extracted as two separate factors, whereas Intake–Design was extracted as one. The small loadings in the second motivational factor indicate that problems exist in the responsibility and persistence items, but the findings of the specific items with low loadings were inconsistent across the sample (physics homework help). 

The purpose of Study 2 was to examine whether the proposed five-category factor structure of the HPQ can be grounded in the data, using a sample of seventh graders from the United States. The study also examined the internal consistency, item dispersion, and item-total correlations of the HPQ. The scale was refined according to the examination of the findings from these analyses (history homework help).

Although we suggested the five overarching categories of the 21 components (24 components if the four time-related components—set time, morning, afternoon, evening—are counted separately), some of the components in a category were not expected to converge as a factor. That is, the components within most of the hypothesized categories described in Study 1 are conceptually related, but empirical correlations among components should not be expected to be meaningful in some of the categories. For example, the environmental category consists of five components—sound, light, temperature, design, place—each with distinct characteristics; thus correlations among most of these five components would not be meaningful. On the other hand, the components of the motivational category have meaningful relationships among them. In this case, the components would correlate through their relationship to one or two higher order motivation factors. The factor analyses determined these relationships (history homework help).
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Method

The participants were 263 U.S. seventh graders (127 males and 133 females; 3 unspecified). The students were from a public middle school in a large western metropolitan area. The sample selection was based on voluntary participation, and parent consent forms were obtained from all participating students. The HPQ was group administered to students
in their classrooms. The data analyses were conducted on the responses of 263 students for whom there were complete data on the HPQ (history homework help).

Results

A maximum likelihood factor analysis with varimax rotation was conducted. The number of factors retained was determined by the eigenvalues greater than 1, a minimum of two items for each factor that have loadings greater than .30, and theoretical soundness. Although there were 17 factors with the size of eigenvalues greater than 1, one factor did not have discernible factor loading that is greater than .30, another factor was uninterpretable. A 16-factor solution was also obtained but the last factor was not interpretable. Thus, the 15-factor varimax solution, which accounted for 50% of the variance, was selected. The number of empirically determined factors (15) was smaller than the number hypothesized (21), indicating that some of the components were correlated highly enough to converge as higher order factors (history homework help). The items with the loadings greater than .30 were interpreted. Due to the large number of items tested, a summary of the findings is presented here: The first number is the factor number, followed by the empirical factor name, and the quantity and names of original items that loaded on the respective factor (history homework help).