{"id":39112,"date":"2021-09-01t09:12:05","date_gmt":"2021-09-01t14:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=39112"},"modified":"2021-09-21t10:05:12","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21t15:05:12","slug":"lessons-from-a-journal-club-investigating-student-learning-post-3-reasons-for-doing-systematic-inquiry-and-final-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2021\/09\/lessons-from-a-journal-club-investigating-student-learning-post-3-reasons-for-doing-systematic-inquiry-and-final-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"lessons from a journal club: investigating student learning – post 3: reasons for doing systematic inquiry and final reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"
by leah marion roberts, senior graduate teaching fellow<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n welcome to the final post in this series on systematic inquiry in teaching and learning contexts.<\/p>\n this spring, cynthia brame and i facilitated a journal club looking at different ways to investigate student learning. in this blog series, i\u2019m sharing some highlights of our collective learning, organized thematically by the types of questions instructors could ask. the first post<\/a> explored the difference between research questions that ask \u201cwhat is?\u201d versus \u201cwhat works?\u201d. the second post<\/a> looked at the differences between affective versus cognitive research questions and qualitative versus quantitative approaches.<\/p>\n this final post poses reflection questions for instructors about their motivations and reasons for doing systemic inquiry in their classes. it also highlights some of the key takeaways that participants shared with us about their experience in this journal club.<\/p>\n understanding our reasons for doing research can help us ask more poignant questions and clarify the scope of our research project. here are some (non- exhaustive!) reasons we came up with for asking systemtiac questions about our courses:<\/p>\n recognizing that most of us have multiple reasons for wanting to pursue research in our classes, we asked participants to pick their one <\/i>primary reason from the list above. here\u2019s what they said:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n the majority of participants\u2019 primary reason for doing research in their classrooms is to understand what is happening in their courses in order to inform their teaching. one participant explained that she wanted some baseline knowledge to plan a path forward. she wanted to draw on literature on teaching and learning in her discipline to inform her questions; however, her goal was to understand student experiences in her courses for her own and her colleagues’ learning — not to contribute new knowledge to the field, necessarily.<\/p>\n another participant had taught the same course for four years and had observed disparities in students’ ability to understand and apply theory from readings or discussion and she didn\u2019t understand what was driving this difference. prior knowledge? reading skills? something else? she therefore wanted to understand what contributed to these disparities in order to be able to strategize teaching methods that could help eliminate such disparities.<\/p>\n it is okay to ask questions about the conditions of the class (what is?) before trying to offer solutions about what works.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n one of the graduate student participants expressed the desire to publish in a teaching context because she wants her career to focus on teaching and learning.<\/p>\n overall, the take home point was: there are many reasons to do research on teaching and learning in our courses! understanding our goals will help us make decisions about our research design.<\/p>\n during our last session, we asked all participants to write one core lesson they took away from this journal club. here\u2019s what they had to say:<\/p>\n we want to close with a huge thank you to our colleagues in this journal club. thank you to all participants for awesome conversations and contributions to our collective learning!: amanda brockman, sociology; celina callahan-kapoor, medicine health and society; jessica gilpin, biological sciences; rachel hanebutt, human and organizational development; brielle harbin, political science; sara mayeux, law; danielle picard, medicine health and society; jos\u00e9 luis de ram\u00f3n ruiz, spanish and portuguese; cole meier, biological sciences; melanie schuele, hearing and speech sciences; james sears, biological sciences; and ben yett, electrical engineering.<\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by leah marion roberts, senior graduate teaching fellow welcome to the final post in this series on systematic inquiry in teaching and learning contexts. this spring, cynthia brame and i facilitated a journal club looking at different ways to investigate student learning. in this blog series, i\u2019m sharing some highlights of our collective learning,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":38444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,207],"tags":[451,387,64],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-sub\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/59\/2021\/06\/19134005\/journal-club-250.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39112"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39112"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39440,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39112\/revisions\/39440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ntheme 4: why do systematic inquiry?<\/h2>\n
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overview: key take-aways<\/h3>\n
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<\/h3>\n
\nread all the posts from the lessons from a journal club series<\/a><\/h3>\n