Module 2: Educational Research in an Online Environment By Frank Rennie, PhD, Gareth Davies, PhD, Lews Castle College UHI, & Thu Le
Orientation
This module is intended to enable students to understand and critically appreciate a range of resources available in the online environment to enable the conduct of robust and peer-reviewed academic research. Both the online resources themselves and the evaluation processes that are required to ensure systematic and justifiable research decisions are considered. The module is intended to enable students to effectively use online services and resources to produce high-quality educational research. The module can be taken as a stand-alone course or as a preparation for the completion of a larger piece of research, including for the research dissertation stage of a higher degree.
In each week, you are provided with core reading resources that offer the key contents of the Week, an example of the topics, a video of the seminar/workshop/discussion, podcasts, snippets, which are all pertaining to the topic, and finally some further reading resources that will significantly fulfill other relevant aspects of the topic
Students will be able to engage with a range of online resources available to assist in conducting a review of academic literature, an appreciation of methodological approaches, and techniques for a range of research methods of data gathering in order to prepare a comprehensive research proposal.
Upon Completing the Readings and Assignments Comprising this Module, Students will be Able to:
- Present and critically discuss the key elements of a research proposal at postgraduate level.
- Reflect and critically analyze a range of the main online resources available to assist educational research on an identified topic.
- Critically assess the elements of a proposal for educational research to professional standards of competency
- Prepare a proposal for a qualitative or quantitative project
- Identify and describe the theoretical foundations of qualitative and quantitative research
- Compare and contrast different online tools for collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data
- Identify and discuss ethical issues and dilemmas in the conduct of qualitative and quantitative research
- Critically evaluate the quality and standard of a robust and peer-reviewed academic article
- Identify different steps and notes of getting a research paper published
Assessment
- Formative assessment: Weekly reading and writing assignments
- Summative assessment: The final research proposal
