Classroom computer experiences that stick: Two lenses on reflective timed essays

Testing the hypotheses that reflective timed-essay prompts should elicit memories of meaningful experiences in students’ undergraduate education, and that computer-mediated classroom experiences should be salient among those memories, a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods paints a richer, more complex picture than either method would independently. A quantitative approach appears to provide support for the hypotheses, revealing that students mention media-related experiences three times as often as they mention specific professors. A qualitative, close-reading approach both challenges and supports the hypotheses. The construct of media-related experiences includes mundane, instrumental encounters with computers as well as transformative experiences with them. This hybrid research methodology supports the identification of those transformative experiences and thus provides validity evidence for the use of reflective timed-essay responses in guiding endorsements of specific classroom practices.