Why Read this Book?

Designing effective research assignments is challenging. Perhaps the biggest challenge is, in fact, ensuring that what students learn from a research project is what we wanted to teach them about research.

Once negative misconceptions about research take hold, students can develop an internal response of anxiety or dread when presented with a research project, rather than motivation, excitement, or sense of curiosity.

How can we move students towards a more ideal view of research? This is the question I want to address in this book. And I think you’ll find, as others have, that adjusting your approach to research assignment design can have a significant impact on how students envision research and themselves as researchers (Hardy et al., 2022, Conerton et al., 2023).

Research in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

In December 2022, The Atlantic rocked the academic community by publishing — in writing — what many academics were already contemplating: ‘The College Essay is Dead’^[1]. It wasn’t the first time academics had suggested essay writing (the primary method for assessing writing, critical thinking, and research skills in post-secondary education) was passé. Despite its persistence, academics have been calling for more meaningful and authentic assessments for years.

However, what was different about The Atlantic’s article, I think, was the unspoken assumption that perhaps writing in general — and research skills by extension — may no longer have any value in the society of the future. With the advent of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and the eerily human-like eloquence with which a digital tool could generate large amounts of text in a seemingly endless choice of styles, could we maybe begin to envision a world where the menial and time-consuming tasks of writing and researching will be outsourced to a machine? Perhaps.

And yet, when we look to the past, promising publishing and information-sharing technological innovations have often produced new challenges to frustrate the possibility of doing away with the teaching and learning of writing and research skills, and ChatGPT has been no exception. In many ways, these innovations and social disruptions have simply served to demonstrate the increasingly complex information landscape in which we navigate. For example, consider the following dilemmas:

While the extent of these challenges continue to be debated and these technologies continue to advance and improve, it is clear that rather than removing the need for good research or writing skills, these technologies have, more often than not, highlighted why we need, more than ever, to teach students how to critically engage with source materials, effectively express their own unique voice, and understand the value and power given to those who can harness information effectively.

As Stephen Marche asserts in that same article in The Atlantic: “In a tech-centered world, language matters, voice and style matter, the study of eloquence matters, history matters, ethical systems matter” (para. 10).

Preparing Students for the Future of Work

According to the latest Future of Jobs Report 2023^[7] by the World Economic Forum, the cognitive skills growing in importance over the next 5 years include creative thinking, analytical thinking, technology literacy, and self-efficacy. In addition, the socio-emotional attitudes growing in importance most quickly include “curiosity and lifelong learning; resilience, flexibility and agility; and motivation and self-awareness” (p. 7).

Doesn’t a well-designed research assignment offer an excellent opportunity for students to develop all of these skills and attitudes?

If you still value the learning opportunity that research assignments promise while seeking to ensure your assignments truly foster deep critical thinking, clear self-expression, infinite curiosity, and life-long learning skills that will equip students to thrive and stand out in their future careers, then this handbook is for you.