resources on starting higher education research
The field of engineering education research is active and quite well established. There are a number of resources written for engineers who want to get into education research, and they would be quite useful for anyone thinking about doing SoTL but not having an education or qualitative research background. Let me know what you think of them!
Planning, Implementing, and Reporting Quantitative Research in Education: A User’s Guide
Qualitative Research Basics: A Guide for Engineering Educators
A Guidebook on Conceptual Frameworks for Research in Engineering Education
For a more comprehensive overview of educational research methods, the following is an often-recommended resource. I have a copy if my office if you’d like to borrow it.
Do you have any resources from education research in your discipline? Please share!
– Janice
new journal: Teaching and Learning Inquiry
Hi everyone – on the subject of venues for SoTL publication, I received my first copy of “Teaching Learning Inquiry” last week. TLI is the official journal of the International Society for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and is published by Indiana University Press. We are delighted to have both of the journal’s co-editors – Nancy Chick and Gary Poole – keynoting our SoTL Symposium in November. More information about Teaching Learning Inquiry is available here.
-posted by Jim Zimmer
ACIFA SoTL Award – applications due Oct 15
ACIFA awards up to two grants of $1,000.00 each annually for research projects related to improving teaching and learning conducted by members of ACIFA. The award is intended to assist with materials and/or study costs associated with the research project.
The research project may span part or all of the 2013/2014 academic year but must not exceed that time limit. Application form attached.
using Think Alouds in “Calculations and Expectations: How engineering students describe three-dimensional forces”
Miller-Young, Janice (2013) “Calculations and Expectations: How engineering students describe three-dimensional forces,” The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 4.
This paper resulted from my original project in the 2009 Nexen Scholars program. I am posting it here because I thought the think-aloud protocol was particularly useful, and others may want to consider using it in a study.
The purpose of this inquiry was to determine the difficulties students in a first-year engineering class experience in learning to visualize 3D statics problems from 2D drawings. The main data source was think-alouds using two visualization problems. Think-alouds are a type of verbal protocol and are a mainstay in cognitive psychology. They are used to infer mental models by observing students while they are actually engaged in mental activities. In short, participants are asked to talk out loud about what they are thinking, while engaged in a task which could normally be carried out alone. One advantage of this type of interview protocol is that students’ thinking is captured in “real time”, rather than a retrospective reflection. However, the logistics of conducting and recording think-aloud protocols are a little more complicated if you do it during the semester, as I did.
The data from the think-aloud interviews was triangulated with data from individual course work, and gave me new insights into the types of visualization problems students initially struggle with in my class. See the paper for more details and references.
Going Public – places to publish or present work on the study of teaching and learning
Conferences
Centennial Symposium on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Banff, Alberta. Nov. 7-9, 2013
http://www.mtroyal.ca/wcm/groups/public/documents/pdf/2012symposiumsavethedate.pdf
International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
http://www.issotl.org/conferences.html
Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
http://www.stlhe.ca/conferences-events/stlhe-annual-conference/
Journals
Until we develop one of our own, here’s a great list from the Univeristy of Central Florida
http://www.fctl.ucf.edu/researchandscholarship/sotl/journals/
Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
http://www.cjsotl-rcacea.ca/
Transformative Dialogues:Teaching and Learning Journal
http://www.kwantlen.ca/TD.html
Discipline-Specific Journals
Journal of Chemical Education
http://pubs.acs.org/journal/jceda8
Got some suggestions? Please add them in the comments section of this post!
Provocative article on evidence-based teaching
Dr. Ben Goldacre writes extensively on science and science communication issues. Recently tasks with looking at Education research in the UK, his report is now available online. Although directed at the K-12 system, most of what he has to say is equally applicable to postsecondary issues.
enjoy,
margy
– posted by Margy MacMillan
TITLE – Textual Information for Teaching and Learning Edification
Pulled these from the last few months’ worth of new book lists….
Interpretative phenomenological analysis: theory, method and research / Jonathan A. Smith, Paul Flowers and Michael Larkin. Los Angeles, [Calif.]: SAGE, 2009. BF 204.5 S65 2009
Ethnography and virtual worlds: a handbook of method / Tom Boellstorff … [et al.] ; with a foreword by George Marcus. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c2012. GN 345. B64 2012
Introducing research methodology: a beginner’s guide to doing a research project / Uwe Flick. Los Angeles, Calif.: SAGE, 2011. H 62. F45 2011
Natural experiments in the social sciences: a design-based approach / Thad Dunning.Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. H 62. D86 2012
Using IBM SPSS statistics for social statistics and research methods / William E. Wagner.Los Angeles, Calif.: SAGE, c2013. HA 32. W34 2013
Case study research: design and methods / Robert K. Yin. Los Angeles, Calif.: SAGE, c2009. H 62. Y56 2009
Interpreting qualitative data: a guide to the principles of qualitative research / David Silverman. Los Angeles, Calif.: Sage, 2011. HM 571. S53 2011
Visual research: an introduction to research methodologies in graphic design / Ian Noble, Russell Bestley ; foreward by Ellen Lupton. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA, c2011. NC 997. N62 2011
Media discourse / Norman Fairclough. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1995.
P 96. L34 F35 1995 – a classic
Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language / by Norman Fairclough. Toronto ; Harlow, Eng.: Longman, c2010. P 302. F35 2010
How to do critical discourse analysis: a multimodal introduction / David Machin and Andrea Mayr. Los Angeles, [Calif.]: SAGE, 2012. P 302. M33 2012
Discourse of text messaging: analysis of text message communication / Caroline Tagg.New York: Continuum International Pub. Group, 2011. P 302.3 T34 2011
Critical media analysis: an introduction for media professionals / Matteo Stocchetti, Karin Kukkonen. Frankfurt am Main, [Germany] ; New York: Peter Lang, 2011. P 96. C76 S76 2011
Systematic approaches to a successful literature review / Andrew Booth, Diana Papaioannou, Anthea Sutton. Los Angeles, Calif.: Sage, 2012. Q 180.55 M4 B64 2012
Sentiment analysis and opinion mining / Bing Liu. [S.l.]: Morgan & Claypool, c2012.
QA 76.9 D343 L58 2012
Synthesizing qualitative research: choosing the right approach / edited by Karin Hannes, Craig Lockwood. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, BMJ Books, 2012. R 853. Q34 S96 2012
-posted by Margy MacMillan
blog on teaching & learning
Hat tip to Nancy Chick who writes for the CfT blog and through whom I found out about it. Interesting, thoughtful posts about aspects of teaching and learning. –http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/blog/
-posted by Margy MacMillan
Classifying Educational Research
Tomorrow’s Professor (February 28 2013, message #1233) just had a nice post on different classifications of educational research, which would also be applicable to SoTL. It would be a nice introductory read for someone just entering the world of SoTL/educational research. It briefly describes and gives examples of theoretical, action, evaluative, experimental, case study, exploratory, comparative, grounded theory, and ethnography research.
TP Archives can be found here:
http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php
The post is taken from Chapter 1, Research, paradigms, and ethics, in the book: A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Your Education Research Project, by Mike Lambert. Published by SAGE Publications Inc.
Congratulations!
Kudos to Jodi Nickel on the recent accceptance of her SoTL paper for publication. Jodi’s paper – Formative Assessment and Syntheses in Reflection Journals – is published in Transformative Dialogues. Congratulations! – posted by Jim Zimmer