Making Research Methods Approachable and Relevant for Undergraduates

Abstract

Research methods often seem both daunting and unimportant to undergraduate students. Through our experience in designing and teaching a new research methods course, we have developed strategies that help students read, evaluate, and synthesize the literature while also understanding how it connects to the "real world." We undertook this course development to create this research methods course as our department's Scholarly Inquiry-level course. We wanted to ensure that when the students successfully completed the course, they had the skills to make them capable of evaluating scholarly work and conducting their own scholarly work. The session will cover how to guide students through dissecting a research article, including reviewing the statistical section (even if their statistical knowledge is limited), evaluating popular press reports about research using their new knowledge of research methods, and creating an activity-based classroom environment utilizing application of skills. In our design of this new course, we wanted to maintain a 50% lecture-style to 50% activity-based learning to try to ensure that the students would be actively engaged with the material presented.