Tannis Morgan, JIBC Research Day 2011

Getting Started in Applied Education Research

Introductions Our experiences Your interests What brought you to this session today?

Research is… Scary? Requires money? Overwhelming? Useless? Boring? …?

Overview of the session The research landscape The steps The tools The $$$ Questions?

SOTL?

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

http://www.issotl.org/

Situating Research

SOTL Applied Empirical

Smaller scopeOwn context

Larger scopeLarger context

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) Research Teaching Expanded

Planned reflection and analysis Systematic investigation or exploration via a research process Manageable scope--scalable Teaching context as a laboratory Focus on student learning

Where it starts Who am I as an instructor? Are my exam questions too hard? Does a course weblog help students feel connected? Is group work helping first year math students? Are employers satisfied with graduates of our program?

Carnegie Steps: Step 1

Step What this means How do you do it?Adequate Preparation

Literature review (25%)

•Talk to librarians

•Google

•SOTL journals http://www.cjsotl-rcacea.ca/

•Gather information and keep it organized: Refworks, Cite-u-like

Step 2: Clear Goals

Step What this means How do you do it?

Clear Goals Develop research question/s

•What are you curious about?

•What has been done? (lit review)

•What does your experience tell you?

Step 3: Appropriate MethodsStep What this means How do you do it?Appropriate methods

Is your research question a how or what question?

What will be the process for learning more about your research question/s?

How can you realistically gather the data (depending on time, availability of participants, etc).

How will you systematically analyse your data, and is it appropriate given the methods used?

Use or modify what is already out there (surveys questionnaires, interview questions)

Identify ‘good’ research and try and do what they did.

Get opinions from other researchers.

Research Design & Methods Qualitative--How? Why?

Eg. Case studies, ethnographies, grounded theory

Quantitative--What?Eg. (Quasi-)Experimental, correlational, surveys

Mixed--combination Evaluation studies--typically program, institutional, or innovation focussed with a clear purpose of assessing the quality and effectiveness

Qualitative Methods

Used to “understand” more deeply. Typically results do not seek to generalize widely.

May involve one or more of the following: focus groups/interviews text or discourse analysis observations

Quantitative Methods

Typically seeks to generalize to a large population. It is “hypothetically” more objective and less interpretive.

Examples include one or more of the following: Surveys Experimental Design Content analysis

SOTL/Ed Research Examples Cardiology applied research - quantitative

surveys, validation of instruments Net Gen learner - mixed methods

interviews/focus groups; survey Teaching Presence and Voice Feedback - qualitative

discussion thread; interviews Question Analysis with Clickers - quantitative

clickers, Item Response theory, Classical Theory of Tests

Step 4: Significant Results

Step What this means

How do you do it?

Significant Results

Has anything been learned as a result of your research?

Reflect honestly

Compare with other research

Results Analysis and discussion of what has been investigated Finding flaws in own research

need to investigate further if larger than thought reflective critique of conducting the research so what?

Step 5: Reflective Critique

Step What this means How do you do it?

Reflective Critique So what? Reflect on the results but also the process.

Step 6: Effective PresentationStep What this means How do you do it?

Effective presentation

Share with the world

Use the various communication channels: reports, publication (formal and informal), presentations

Funding JIBC Office of Applied Research Funding Opportunities (Social Science

focussed)http://ltc.bccampus.ca/resources/funding

Support Peer support Mentor support Collaboration - with students, with other

institutions http://ltc.bccampus.ca/

Parting Words

We believe the time has come to move beyond the tired old "teaching versus research" debate and give the familiar and honorable term "scholarship" a broader, more capacious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work. Surely, scholarship means engaging in original research. But the work of the scholar also means stepping back from one's investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one's knowledge effectively to students.

E. L. Boyer

Thanks View/download the presentation and access

the resources at http://researchworkshop.wordpress.com