Overview
EDDE 802, the second course in the doctoral program, will equip you with the knowledge and skills required to make informed and defensible decisions when planning and carrying out doctoral research. Thecourse introduces the foundations of educational research and explores quantitative, qualitative, mixed and emergingapproaches to research, with particular attention to open, digital and distance education.
Throughout the course, you will develop an understanding of how research questions, methodology, methods of data collection and analysis, and interpretation work together as a coherent research design. You will engage in a combination of synchronous conference sessions,collaborative and independent learning activities, critical analysis of research, and the development of a preliminary research proposal. Assessment is based on your active participationand completion of assignments that demonstrate your understanding,application, and justification ofof research concepts and methodological choices.
Outline
EDDE 802 is presented in five units over thirteen weeks. Across these units, we discuss the decisions and range of issues in planning rigourous educational research.
Unit 1: The Context of Educational Research
Unit 2: Ethics and Planning Educational Research
Unit 3: Research Design and Methodological Choices
Unit 4: Strategies for Data Collection
Unit 5: Strategies for Data Analysis
Objectives
The overarching goal of EDDE 802 is to provide knowledge and skills related to research inquiry through a focus on quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research, strategies of inquiry used in published qualitative and quantitative research and active application. By the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Identify and articulate significant and researchable problems in open, digital and distance education
- Formulate and refine research questions that follow logically from a research problem, purpose and relevant literature
- Explain key philosophical, onotological, epistemoblogical, and methodological assumptions that inform educational rsearch
- Critically compare quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods and other relevant approaches to educational research
- Evaluate the suitability of different methodologices and research design for particular resarch questions and contexts
Materials
Digital course materials
Links to the following course materials will be made available in the course:
Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2017). Research methods in education, 8th edition. New York: Routledge.