Research Coordinator Blog

  There are always risks when conducting research, though these are usually minimal (i.e., no greater than participants encounter in their everyday lives). Note, however, that the level of risk varies a little based on your group of participants. For example, students can expect very little danger in their daily lives, but if your participants are police officers of fire fighters, the threshold for minimal risk is actually increased because they do encounter significant risk in their daily lives. For example, there would be a lot more risk in asking a GAS or PHS student to run on a treadmill in extremely hot temperatures while measuring their performance on cognitive tasks, but it would be a more acceptable level of risk to ask trained firefighters to perform such a task as this is similar to what they do in their jobs. Neither of these examples are minimal risk studies, but I use the example to illustrate my point that risk is relative. Ok, now back on track to students! The...

  This topic was requested in the survey I sent out in December. Note: some of the information below was included in previous editions.  The first step to any research project is to complete the TCPS2 Core Certificate ( https://tcps2core.ca/ ) if you haven’t already. But the step of the research process that stumps people the most is probably the first one: finding an idea! An idea for a SoTL research project can come from anywhere. Think of a problem you face in the classroom- it could be related to the material (How can I teach this better?), student performance (Can I do something to help students improve their performance?), or other variable (Does assigning groups for projects reduce group conflicts?). Once you have your SoTL topic, formulate a prediction that you can test and then think about how you can test. Perhaps you want to compare 2 sections of the same course. Or you want to randomly assign students to various conditions within the same class. Now, you’re ready...