Research Coordinator Blog

  Providing students with opportunities for research inside and outside of their program of study builds important skills which is one of the reasons why course-based research has been highlighted in Goal 4 of the Academic Plan (Objective 4.2). Course-based research involves embedding research in curriculum (within a specific course). What requirements must be met for an activity to be considered course-based research? First, it must be minimal risk research (i.e., no greater risk than students encounter in their everyday lives). The course must also have least one CLO which references research and research ethics and the course must assign and evaluate one or more research activities as part of the course. The final criteria is that the research activities are conducted for the purpose of research (adding new knowledge). These might include conducting interviews (for the purpose of research), distributing questionnaires to develop interview or questionnaire design skills, or con...

  Why are colleges interested in research? Isn’t that a university thing? I received a couple of questions about this last year and I think it’s worth addressing. Colleges are obviously different from universities in important ways, otherwise we wouldn’t have both. Colleges offer different programs and different approaches to teaching. Additionally, our students are different from university students as is our faculty expertise. These differences mean that our students and classrooms aren’t typically represented in traditional university research (and more specifically in SoTL). For example, how do students learn best? Well, that likely depends on the characteristics of the student and the content being taught. Although there is some overlap between colleges and universities in terms of courses and student characteristics, each is unique and this uniqueness needs to be represented in knowledge. Research creates new knowledge, but that knowledge is only accurate if it is based on a ...

  Research generally refers to a systematic inquiry on a given topic, with an aim to expand our knowledge on that topic. The outcome can describe a phenomena or state of affairs, or try to either predict or change behaviours/outcomes, among other things. Typically, a researcher has a research question to guide their inquiry (e.g., “How are students studying for my test?” or “Do my students’ grades improve when I spend some time in class reviewing for the test?”). They then collect data to try to answer their research question(s). Sometimes, the researchers have a hypothesis they are examining, which they form based on previously published inquiry (e.g., “I think my students are using mostly surface-level study behaviours and not engaging deeply with the material.”) In research, data can be collected in a number of ways including surveys and interviews, archival data, and following experimental manipulations. A great way to begin thinking about research is to complete the TCPS2 cor...