Quick and Easy Research Projects

In December, I asked for your feedback via a survey. One of the comments in it requested information about the types of research projects that are the quickest and easiest to produce. The short answer to that is that projects requiring no new data collection (i.e., those which collect data through secondary use approval) will be the least time-consuming to produce. Here’s my rationale for this response and some ways to begin.

	With a secondary use of data project, you have already collected the information you need, so you won’t need to request volunteers to participate (which sometimes takes a long time). Additionally, in many cases, you won’t need to ask for permission with a consent form to use it. For example, in many cases, it would be more harmful to participants to be contacted by you to request they consent to you using their grades in your class (or impossible to do so if they have graduated and are no longer Durham College students). Finally, the REB application form for secondary use is much shorter and less time-consuming to complete, so that part of the project is also less time-consuming.

         Now for some project ideas. Think back to any semester where you have changed something in your course. Perhaps you have included a new activity to review for tests. Or perhaps you flipped your classroom. Or you might have been scheduled in a very nice classroom for a change and wonder if that influenced students’ grades. Or if you keep a seating chart, perhaps you have a hypothesis related to students’ chosen seat in the class affecting performance in some way. In each of these cases, you didn’t intend to collect students’ performance for the purpose of research (you collected this information in order to assess learning and assign a grade), but you can use these data to test a hypothesis. 

	So that’s where I would start for an “easy”, and less time-consuming research project. I hope this post has given you some food for thought! As always, if you have any suggestions for things you’d like to see from me, please reach out to me via email (lynne.kennette(at)durhamcollege.ca) or on MS Teams, or pop in during my weekly “office hours” on whereby(dot)com(slash)drlynne (every Friday from 12:30-1:30). 

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