Research Methods syllabus and student materials for you
I often find myself teaching Research Methods to graduate and undergraduate students . Because I have a cultural studies focus, I tend to emphasize so-called 'qualitative methods': semiotics, discourse analysis, visual analysis, performance work, interviewing, surveys, ethnographic work, user experience testing, and so forth.
I think my students generally enjoy my methods class because I think of methods as tools, not ends in themselves. Students come to me asking how to develop a survey, do user testing or embark on an ethnographic project. I tell them I first I want to know why they picked that methodological tool for their research job. Those conversations can actually be quite fun, and often save the students loads of time on the back end of their projects.
Quick note: I'm not much of a quantitative girl, so you won't find any standard deviation discussions here...
I'm a fairly obsessive documenter, and the other day I was talking on Twitter about the fact that I have a forty-five page syllabus for my Master's level methods class. Some students and teachers started messaging me asking to see it.
Then someone asked me to post it here, so I have. You can download the syllabus as a PDF from this link.
As you might expect, a fair amount of this syllabus is targeted specifically to my students at UEL, but anyone looking for general help can go to these pages:
Week by Week Schedule 7
Each class, described 9
Methods Bibliography 10
Athens databases you should know 15
Tips for (academic) online searching & Google use 17
Help for Students: Articulating your Object of Study 31
Help for Students: Articulating your Research Question 37
Help for Students: Drafting an Abstract 40
Btw, you can feel free to circulate and use this stuff as you wish. It would be nice if my name appeared somewhere on the documentation, but I'm not exactly going to sue anyone either. Info wants to be free, etc.
Enjoy!
I think my students generally enjoy my methods class because I think of methods as tools, not ends in themselves. Students come to me asking how to develop a survey, do user testing or embark on an ethnographic project. I tell them I first I want to know why they picked that methodological tool for their research job. Those conversations can actually be quite fun, and often save the students loads of time on the back end of their projects.
Quick note: I'm not much of a quantitative girl, so you won't find any standard deviation discussions here...
I'm a fairly obsessive documenter, and the other day I was talking on Twitter about the fact that I have a forty-five page syllabus for my Master's level methods class. Some students and teachers started messaging me asking to see it.
Then someone asked me to post it here, so I have. You can download the syllabus as a PDF from this link.
As you might expect, a fair amount of this syllabus is targeted specifically to my students at UEL, but anyone looking for general help can go to these pages:
Week by Week Schedule 7
Each class, described 9
Methods Bibliography 10
Athens databases you should know 15
Tips for (academic) online searching & Google use 17
Help for Students: Articulating your Object of Study 31
Help for Students: Articulating your Research Question 37
Help for Students: Drafting an Abstract 40
Btw, you can feel free to circulate and use this stuff as you wish. It would be nice if my name appeared somewhere on the documentation, but I'm not exactly going to sue anyone either. Info wants to be free, etc.
Enjoy!