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Changing Teaching Practice in a Research Methods Course Utilizing a Student-Centered Approach
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Shingles, Becerra & Pencek Virginia Tech
February, 2006
APSA Teaching & Learning Conference
4
order to provide students with a comprehensive tool-kitare, are we leaving out other meaningful ways of knowing that students’ can use in their major and future careers?
This paper explains how Shingles and Becerra redesigned their conventional undergraduate methods course to be focus on information literacy and helping students
become better consumers of a variety of forms of information, in addition to scientific research reports. In order to do this, we had to make difficult trade-offs between 1) covering the "how-to-do" elements typical of a conventional research methods course focused on post-positivist epistemology; and 2) raising students level of critical consciousness about other ways they normally go about the act of knowing. In developing a redesigned methods course, we found that learning is enhanced when students are engaged in the processing of information. Thus, our challenge as instructors was to also experiment with creative ways to design dynamic learning environments that involve students in becoming better consumers of research information. To do this, we moved away from an instructor-directed course to a student-centered environment, where students are given a complex, interesting task (Jonassen, 1999), and in the process of addressing that task, they recognize the need for
certain information and skills. As discussed later, our most recent collaboration has been working with our subject librarian, Bruce Pencek, to produce multi-media information literacy modules. Many college research methods faculty have initiating innovative partnerships with library faculty to provide better introduction to research methods students on information literacy. In a recent article, faculty from George Washington University (Nutefall, Ryder & Mentzell, 2005) explained that their collaboration with college librarians helped the team overcome the common misperceptions that writing and research are simple tasks of gathering, organizing, and transferring to paper that which is already known. As Rolf Norgaard (2003) writes, faculty must confront the misperception that what they teach
are "neutral skills.” We agree that both writing and research should be understood as epistemic (Nutefall, Ryder, & Mentzell, 2005). “They are ways of coming to know the world, of becoming conscious about what the student knows and how she knows it. They are ways of coming to understand how knowledge itself is made and shared, and they are ways of joining in that process.”
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| | Authors: Shingles, Richard., Becerra, Raquel. and Pencek, Bruce. |
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Shingles, Becerra & Pencek
Virginia Tech
February, 2006
APSA Teaching & Learning Conference
4
order to provide students with a comprehensive tool-kitare, are we leaving out other
meaningful ways of knowing that students’ can use in their major and future careers?
This paper explains how Shingles and Becerra redesigned their conventional
undergraduate methods course to be focus on information literacy and helping students
become better consumers of a variety of forms of information, in addition to scientific
research reports. In order to do this, we had to make difficult trade-offs between 1)
covering the "how-to-do" elements typical of a conventional research methods course
focused on post-positivist epistemology; and 2) raising students level of critical
consciousness about other ways they normally go about the act of knowing. In
developing a redesigned methods course, we found that learning is enhanced when
students are engaged in the processing of information. Thus, our challenge as
instructors was to also experiment with creative ways to design dynamic learning
environments that involve students in becoming better consumers of research
information. To do this, we moved away from an instructor-directed course to a
student-centered environment, where students are given a complex, interesting task
(Jonassen, 1999), and in the process of addressing that task, they recognize the need for
certain information and skills.
As discussed later, our most recent collaboration has been working with our subject
librarian, Bruce Pencek, to produce multi-media information literacy modules. Many
college research methods faculty have initiating innovative partnerships with library
faculty to provide better introduction to research methods students on information
literacy. In a recent article, faculty from George Washington University (Nutefall, Ryder
& Mentzell, 2005) explained that their collaboration with college librarians helped the
team overcome the common misperceptions that writing and research are simple tasks
of gathering, organizing, and transferring to paper that which is already known. As Rolf
Norgaard (2003) writes, faculty must confront the misperception that what they teach
are "neutral skills.” We agree that both writing and research should be understood as
epistemic (Nutefall, Ryder, & Mentzell, 2005). “They are ways of coming to know the
world, of becoming conscious about what the student knows and how she knows it.
They are ways of coming to understand how knowledge itself is made and shared, and
they are ways of joining in that process.”
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