Making Room for Methods: Incorporating Full-scale Research Projects in Non-methods Courses

Abstract

Scholarship examining the educational potential of semester-long research projects in non-methods undergraduate sociology courses is limited. To address this gap in knowledge, I drew from active learning and problem-based learning literatures to develop a term research project in two sections of an undergraduate sociology course at a large public university in the Midwest. This study assesses the efficacy of that research project by addressing two main areas in need of further discussion in the teaching sociology literature: (1) the ability of full-scale research projects to develop students’ sociological imaginations and (2) the effectiveness of incorporating a full-scale research project in a non-methods course. Panel survey methods reveal that completing the research project contributed to the improvement of students’ sociological understanding of inequalities. The findings also suggest that completing the project increased students’ confidence in their abilities to conduct social research even though the project took place in a non-methods course.

Authentic learning in the undergraduate social research methods classroom: students’ perspectives on project-based pedagogy

“…The students' reports of their learning experiences support the claim made by Trigwell and Prosser (2004) and others (e.g., (e.g., Bartholomay 2018;Huggins and Stamatel 2015;Sagy et al 2019) that the lecture-based approach to teaching in higher education is linked to surface approaches to learning and negatively associated with deeper learning. The findings also support the claim that projectbased learning has the potential to counteract these tendencies by building direct links between sociological inquiries and students' real-life experiences (Eglitis et al 2016) and to increase students' interest in social science (Markle 2017).…”

“…The limitations of the lecture method and the relative advantages of alternative pedagogical approaches have been highlighted by many authors (e.g., Bartholomay 2018;Clark and Foster 2017;Coll-Serrano et al 2018;Eglitis et al 2016;Ilter 2014;Larmer 2015;Lazonder and Harmsen 2016;Pedaste et al 2015;Wijnen et al 2017). These analysts criticize the one-way flow of information from lecturer to student and its production of low levels of student engagement in lecture-based teaching systems, manifested in poor attendance or lack of attention during class (Huggins and Stamatel 2015;Sagy et al 2019).…”

“…The value of student experience with actual research projects was emphasized by Bourdieu (1992) and has inspired social research methods teachers to 'place real research experience at the center of students' learning and design courses around an array of research endeavors and practical experiences similar to those they might encounter in real research projects' (Kilburn et al 2014, p. 200). Several advocates of active learning approaches argue that students should experience the complete research process as much as possible, rather than small, occasional bits of it (Bartholomay 2018;Craney et al 2011;Johnson et al 2013;Monson 2017;Schutt et al 1984).…”

“…However, this issue is relatively under-researched, especially in higher education. As some authors have pointed out (e.g., Bartholomay 2018;Earley 2014), in the field of research on the learning of research methods there is a considerable lack of studies on students' experiences of project-based innovations. In this respect, there is wide room for greater use of qualitative methods that illuminate students' perspectives on how teachers' pedagogical options affect their learning (McKinney 2018).…”

Do They Have to Like It to Learn from It? Students’ Experiences, Group Dynamics, and Learning Outcomes in Group Research Projects

“…Group research projects combine experiential and small-group learning and typically require students to work together in small groups on all or most of the steps of a research project: review a body of literature, define the research question, design the research project, collect and analyze the data, and write up the research findings. As defined in this article, group research projects might last as little as two weeks (Eglitis, Buntman, and Alexander 2016) or span an entire term or more (Bartholomay 2018); the groups might be subsets of a larger class (Monson 2017), or an entire class might be treated as one small group (Willis and Burns 2011); and the group project may center on locating and analyzing data from secondary sources (Caulfield and Persell 2006) or collecting original data (George 2012). Small-group learning pedagogies, such as group research projects, are widely used at the college level (Davidson and Major 2014;Hillyard, Gillespie, and Littig 2010), and sociology instructors have advocated the use of group research projects in graduate and undergraduate methods courses (Korsching and Peter 2007;Macheski et al 2008;Schutt, Blalock, and Wagenaar 1984) as well as for introductory courses (Caulfield and Persell 2006) and intermediate electives (Anderson 2017;Bartholomay 2018).…”