This week Quaco led the lecture session with a cracking account
of the real purpose of research – making connections with your Research Project
– and especially with the Research Report that everybody had to write to finish
off this part of the analytical process. This Report and this process is not a
pointless assessment hoop to jump through!
The point of research is to investigate an aspect of our world
and then to tell people about what we did, why we did it – what we discovered –
what it might mean – and what practical applications it has in the world.
There’s
no point in keeping research to yourself!
In Education particularly it helps us all if research relates
to our real experiences – it all makes much more sense when we know what is
happening and why – if we can see a practical purpose to the work. And that is
the point of this Research Project. You were asked to investigate an issue or
an aspect of teaching and learning that you found interesting. You are supposed
to use your interest to help you do the work. You are supposed to use that
interest to help you make sense of your findings: you should know WHY you were
investigating what you did – so you should know WHAT you want to tell the world
about what you have discovered.
So – one
last time: The Report
The Report part of this Project is where you report your
findings – you discuss what the raw data might mean – you draw conclusions as
to their relevance to *this* context (for you were analysing an aspect of HE
study) – and where applicable you make Recommendation for Practice, that is,
suggestions for how to improve the learning for University students, based on
your analysis of your research data:
Findings
Discussion
Conclusions
Recommendations for Practice
Bibliography
Try to stop worrying about this as ACADEMIC WRITING – try to
stop worrying about this as an ASSESSMENT – try to think about it as having
something to SAY to REAL PEOPLE.
Of your RESEARCH PROPOSAL that would have been asking:
So what are you going
to investigate? - INTRODUCTION
Why are you interested
in that topic? – BACKGROUND/CONTEXT
What have other
academics already discovered about that topic? – LITERATURE REVIEW
How will you carry out
your own research? - METHOD
Why have you chosen to
carry out the research in that way? - METHOD
Of your RESEARCH REPORT they will be asking:
So what happened when
you conducted your research? What are the key highlights? – FINDINGS
What do your findings
mean? – DISCUSSION
What overall
conclusions do you draw about University teaching/learning? – CONCLUSION
What should we do
differently because of what you have found out? – RECOMMENDATIONS
Okay – so it is all in just 1000 words! So no room for a lot of
description – but quite a lot of *concise* analysis and discussion required.
AND – if you are still struggling
with this – talk to other people in the class – what is baffling when we are
alone with our worries becomes sensible and do-able when we work with other
people!!
BUT if you do not want to talk to
anyone – read some educational research and see how other people write it up.
As we have mentioned before – the free online journal: Journal of Learning
Development in Higher Education covers exactly the sort of research that you
are doing – and will offer excellent models for how you should write up your
work: http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/ojs/index.php?journal=jldhe
Conference
session
This week in the Workshop time, students had the option of
continuing to work on their assignments or attending a session where we shared
our Conference presentation. This year
we presented at the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education
Conference upon the topic of blogging your learning – with a particular focus
on the blogging that we have asked you to do here in the Becoming module.
The workshop was a chance for us to show you what a formal
academic conference presentation might look like – and to show you the sort of
research that we engage in as educationalists ourselves. If you missed the
Workshop – or would like to find out a bit more about the conference itself –
please go to our Least Refuge blog: http://lastrefugelmu.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aldinhe-conference-2014-learning.html.
It would be great if you popped in a Comment or some feedback!
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