Jason’s NINE research questions
Posted by jbishop4 on February 8, 2010
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1) Think about a teaching and/or learning issue, problem, or question that you have about your students, a course, an assignment, a pedagogical strategy, your program, etc. Briefly state that issue, problem, or question as a question(s)
“How can an introductory sociology course best teach the sociological perspective to students, for their long term use?” would be my ideal research questions, although practically I will probably have to reduce that down to a specific content area. For example, “Which activities are most effective at introducing institutional inequality?”
2) What do you know about this topic and about ways to study this question from the extant literature in your discipline and in higher education more broadly?
I think that this issue has a lot to do with many of the articles and books that I have read in my CTCH classes. The sociological perspective is an ability and therefore requires teaching that rewards application over memorization (deep learning vs. surface learning, active vs. passive learning, etc). Most sociological studies relevant to this issue (mostly in the journal teaching sociology) use pre/post tests, which vary in quality. I hope to learn in this course the most effective ways to measure learning outcomes and apply those methodologies to my proposal for this course.
3) Given your question, what types of information or artifacts do you already have that will help you answer this question?
I think that I kind of answered this question in my above question 2 answer. However, I would think that I would heavily rely on teaching sociology and SToL literature. I also have access to both in class and online course each semester.
4) Given your question, what other types of information or artifacts will you need (and from what sources) to answer this question?
I think that the biggest piece of information I would need is the outcomes assessment. I need to figure out if I want to go qualitative or quantitative in the research design.
5) Given your question and the information your need, what research strategies might you use to obtain this information and answer this question?
I think I would go about this in a pretty standard way, like approaching any research. However, my teaching technique would be the independent variable and the outcomes the dependent variable. Again, I need to decide on qualitative or quantitative methods of gathering my data.
6) What time frame will be most appropriate to answer your question?
This research can be done over the course of a semester (16 weeks) o a shorter time frame for summer courses.
7) What are some practical problems you might face in doing this study? What resources would you need and how might you obtain these?
Well, I have access/informed consent, etc. However, learning outcomes are a difficult variable to measure. Hopefully in this course I can learn some of the better techniques and apply them in my research.
8 What ethical issues should you consider in doing this study?
I don’t see any ethical conflict, but as I get more specific, one may become apparent. I would need to go through the IRB.
9) In what ways and in what outlets will you be able to obtain peer feedback on this work and make this work public?
Well, I will probably attempt to publish my dissertation in teaching sociology. So that would offer peer review.
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Darren Cambridge on February 16th, 2010 2:09 pm
You’ve hit again here on the issue of how what methods are likely to prove more effective in measuring student learning outcomes. For me, an important first step in answering that question is to think carefully about what a “learning outcome” is for you. What’s the scope? The level of specificity? Are outcomes limited to those intended by the instructor or curriculum, or do they include the actual impacts of learning, some of which may be unexpected or even undesired? Does what the students themselves want to learn figure in?