Ten Easy Ways To Put Research And Inquiry Into Units (3/10)

This series of posts presents ten simple suggestions to help you change your units or parts of your units to develop students’ research skills and competencies that you can adapt to suit your particular context.

10 easy ways

1. Change an assessment to an inquiry
2. Change a laboratory class to guided discovery
3. Engage students in gathering or working with data
4. Turn your unit of study into a conference
5. Arrange for students to interview researchers
6. Invite students and staff to research speed-dating
7. Get students to write an abstract
8. Change essays into academic articles
9. Turn the class into a hypothesis-generating forum
10. Create a competition

3.   Engage students in gathering or working with data

Data is all around us. In practically any subject there are numerous ways in which students can engage in collecting and working with data. Perhaps you have a research project on the go that requires more people to collect more data, to observe a phenomenon, to record samples, for example, or to examine a particular species in a given geographical area, or to find out how people in society think about a particular issue. The possibilities are endless. Data can also be gathered through internet searches of course.

On the other hand, there is the use of existing data sources. From linguistics, to accountancy, students can work in analysing data to understand particular phenomena. Discussions of how to analyse the data collected or worked on can help students understand and critically evaluate theories.

Remember that if students help you to collect data that you subsequently publish, you must acknowledge their contributions in your published work. Also remember that collecting some forms of data may need ethical approval.

Examples

“First year Pharmacy students investigate the way different pharmacist shops are laid out. They pool their responses and in doing so learn about important aspects associated with the practice of pharmacy” (University of Sydney, Australia).

“Pharmacy students examine research evidence from a research project where a mystery shopper posed as a member of the public with a particular ailment and went into a number of pharmacies to examine how the pharmacist explained about the particular medication” (University of Otago, New Zealand).

“Students in an early childhood unit are all asked to take photos of “Childhood” that they notice around them, in the street, on noticeboards, wherever they happen to be. The students take hundreds of photos and then display them all together. The unit then consists of students analyzing this data utilizing the different theories of childhood which is the focus of what they have to learn” (University of Northumbria, UK).

Read also this example from Mayke, on how to do research with your undergraduates.