Improving the Development of Student's Research Questions and Hypotheses in an Introductory Business Research Methods Course

Strangman, Laurie; Knowles, Elizabeth

doi:10.20429/ijsotl.2012.060224

Cited by 11 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The data suggests that students in all phases failed to master the ability to generate narrow, testable hypotheses. Generally, students' hypotheses were too vague, a finding that is in line with previous studies, which have also found that vague, confusing hypotheses are common mistakes made by students (35,43). The hypothesis generation portion of the inquiry question emphasizes students' abilities to apply hypothetico-deductive reasoning skills, whereas the other sections emphasize argumentation skills.…”

Section: Student Performancesupporting

confidence: 88%

Inquiry in oral communication: adapting oral examinations for teaching introductory physiology students to evaluate scientific research studies

James

Campbell

2020

Advances in Physiology Education

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Generating an increasingly skilled and numerous workforces of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals is a national priority. Central to this goal is improving the ability of STEM graduates to apply scientific inquiry within oral communication, a necessary skill for STEM professionals. In this case study of an introductory biology course, we observed that providing explanatory feedback to students responding to inquiry-based questions in an oral examination suggests improvements in students’ abilities to critically analyze results, draw conclusions, and discuss the broader implications of data. We found students struggled with generating hypotheses and constraining discussions of scientific limitation and broader implications. We show that low-performing students especially benefit from the feedback intervention. The findings of this study are applicable to college and university instructors who are looking to incorporate methods for teaching students to use scientific inquiry effectively during oral communication, particularly those with access to teaching assistants.

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Section: Student Performancesupporting

confidence: 88%

Inquiry in oral communication: adapting oral examinations for teaching introductory physiology students to evaluate scientific research studies

James

Campbell

2020

Advances in Physiology Education

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“…The few studies that have examined question formation as an essential research skill have proposed instructional methods for improving this skill that range from short units to individual class activities or worksheets. Strangman and Knowles (2012) created lessons for an introductory business research methods class that included a three-day research question unit that substantially improved students' questions. Badia (2016) conducted a class in which students created research questions from general topics and then discussed each question to determine its quality.…”

Section: Posing Effective Research Questions: a Review Of The Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Badia (2016) conducted a class in which students created research questions from general topics and then discussed each question to determine its quality. Unlike Strangman and Knowles (2012), Badia did not provide any formal assessment data, noting only that the students gave positive feedback on the activity. Similarly, in two separate studies, Kanter and Byrd (2020) as well as Pecher, Chu, and Byrd (2020) developed worksheets that assisted students in refining their topics into appropriate research questions but did not formally assess the effectiveness of these approaches.…”

Section: Posing Effective Research Questions: a Review Of The Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Chapter 8. No Such Thing as a Bad Question: Using Rubrics to Help Students Learn from and Strengthen Failed Research Questions

Baril¹,

Post²,

Spieth³

2022

Confronting Failure: Building Confidence and Resilience in Undergraduate Researchers

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This chapter uses findings from a mixed-methods study of undergraduates’ research experiences in a developmental writing course at a small, private university to suggest that writing bad research questions is a necessary part of the research process and that students can learn valuable lessons from the struggle to pose effective questions if given the necessary support. It offers a set of rubrics that can be used to evaluate the debatability, researchability, and feasibility of students’ research questions to help students turn failed research questions into successful ones.

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“…Teaching research methodology in the social sciences is challenging, partly because research methods are a complex domain (Strangman and Knowles, 2012;Saeed and Al Qunayeer, 2021), even more so in contexts where educator resources are scarce relative to the number of students and the student body is diverse in educational background and preparedness (Longmore, Dunn and Jarboe, 1996). Most importantly, the educational value of "learning by doing" i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast-tracking Research Methodology Immersion for Students: Experiences from a Project on Fairwork in the Gig Economy

Turpin¹,

Belle²

2021

EJBRM

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This paper showcases an innovative student research project in a South African taught Masters programme, where students learnt to apply a sound research methodology in the real world, and align their work with a global research project. The Fairwork (https://fair.work) project assesses the extent to which gig work platforms in a number of countries conform to ‘fair work’ principles for their workers. The Fairwork project has a clearly defined and rigorous research methodology used by senior academics around the world to rate labour-broking platforms such as those in e-hailing (Bolt, Uber) or delivery services (UberEats) to rate their adoption of fair work principles for their workers. The University of Pretoria adopted this research methodology in the context of a student-based group project in a taught 2020 “Digital Economy” Masters programme. Student groups used the same methodology and interviewed South African platform workers to score seven different platforms. The key motivations and intended benefits were that the research methodology was already tried and tested, students should able to apply the skills taught in an earlier (theoretical) research methods course, subject specific knowledge around the gig economy had to be researched and was internalized, each group had the freedom to select its own platform, results could be validated against publicly available ratings, students engaged themselves in real world empirical research, and their research outputs had a real world relevance. In addition, this project turned out to work well under Covid19 partial lockdown circumstances. The student submissions exceeded the expectations of everyone involved, and some groups produced research results which matched the level of highly experienced researchers. This project also provides a strong contribution to the academic community, not only because it provides a validation benchmark and alternative research approach to the Fairwork project, but also because this project is easily portable to similar courses in other country contexts.

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Improving the Development of Student's Research Questions and Hypotheses in an Introductory Business Research Methods Course

Cited by 11 publications

References 4 publications

Inquiry in oral communication: adapting oral examinations for teaching introductory physiology students to evaluate scientific research studies

Inquiry in oral communication: adapting oral examinations for teaching introductory physiology students to evaluate scientific research studies

Chapter 8. No Such Thing as a Bad Question: Using Rubrics to Help Students Learn from and Strengthen Failed Research Questions

Fast-tracking Research Methodology Immersion for Students: Experiences from a Project on Fairwork in the Gig Economy

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