Contemporary issues are defined by people who share diverse and often strongly defended views about the topic. In Oregon, citizens are increasingly being asked or expected to participate in complex decisions that require a consensus. Rather than teach one professor's synthesis of a contemporary natural resource issue, faculty from six disciplines coach group process, interactive learning skills, and systems thinking as a way to address complex issues from multiple perspectives. Students learn by grappling with a natural resource issue of their choice within groups based on a diversity among majors, degree status, and gender. Students define situation (S), brainstorm new or different targets (T), and analyze two or more pathways (P), using an STP learning and action process. Exploring potential pathways involves defining possible consequences, stakeholder views, feasibility (ecological, social, economic, and political), and planning that includes expected behavior of the improved system over time. Students present their topics and improvements showing systemic relationships, systematic analysis, and integration of scientific facts and secondary data at midterm and during finals. Reflective learning is fostered throughout the course with prompted questions in a journal notebook. Grading criteria promote meaningful inquiry and participation in group process combined with integration of scientific facts and reflective learning.

Research methodology courses can be the most difficult courses in master’s-level programs representing the social, behavioral, and health sciences because, in these courses, students typically are expected to learn to think critically and contextually about social and/or academic problems in addition to learning new terminology and methodological concepts not previously part of each specific discipline. Further, the challenges of online learning might increase due to the nature of research methodology courses and the new concepts taught. Thus, as students and instructors of an online research methodology course, we describe the use of a scoring rubric as a performance assessment and provide our student research proposal project as an exemplar of effectively developing research knowledge, skills, and dispositions for use in future online learning of research methodologies.