Innovation in the Teaching of Research Methodology Excellence Awards
An Anthology of Case Histories 2016
Edited by Dan Remenyi
Innovation in the Teaching of Research Methodology Excellence Awards 2016: An Anthology of Case Histories Copyright © 2016 The authors First published May 2016 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the pur‐ poses of critical review, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copy‐ right holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright De‐ signs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6‐10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publish‐ ers. Disclaimer: While every effort has been made by the editor, authors and the publishers to ensure that all the material in this book is accurate and correct at the time of going to press, any error made by readers as a result of any of the material, formulae or other information in this book is the sole responsibility of the reader. Readers should be aware that the URLs quoted in the book may change or be damaged by malware between the time of publishing and accessing by readers. Note to readers: Some papers have been written by authors who use the American form of spelling and some use the British. These two different approaches have been left unchanged. ISBN: 978‐1‐910810‐97‐2 Printed by Lightning Source POD Published by: Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited, Reading, RG4 9SJ, United Kingdom, info@academic‐publishing.org Available from www.academic‐bookshop.com
Contents Introduction .................................................................................................. iv Human Resource Reflective Project: Developing Researching Professionals Paul‐Alan Armstrong and Patricia Bryans .................................................. 1 Research e‐Clinics: Reducing Lags in the Completion of Graduate Students’ Master’s Theses Debra Ferdinand‐James ............................................................................ 15 Unobtrusive Observation for Active Student Learning Crystal Fulton ............................................................................................ 29 Developing Agents of Professional Learning in the Further Education Sector Julie Haddock‐Millar ................................................................................. 39 Putting Interview Skills at the Centre of Undergraduate Qualitative Methods Teaching Tim Harries ............................................................................................... 49 Field Training Research Assistants: Underpinning Methodological Skills in Qualitative Research Martin Jamieson ....................................................................................... 62 An Innovative Approach for Teaching of Research Methodology: Life‐long Spiral of Research (2LSR) Utku Kose .................................................................................................. 76 Using Storytelling to Teach Sampling Techniques Smirti Kutaula, Alvina Gillani and Mark N K Saunders ............................. 88 Thinking Like Researchers in a Research Methods Module for Information Systems Honours Students Brian McArthur ......................................................................................... 99 Learning by Doing: Evidence From Pakistan Rashida Qureshi ...................................................................................... 117 Embedding a Critical Thinking Framework for Undergraduate Business Students Hilary Wason .......................................................................................... 126 i
Acknowledgements We would like to thank the judges, who initially read the abstracts of the case histories submitted to the competition and discussed these to select those to be submitted as full case histories. They subsequently evaluated the entries and made further selections to produce the finalists who are represented in this book.
Director of the Awards Dr Dan Remenyi has been a Visiting Professor specialising in research methodology at seven universities in four countries over the past 20 years. He continues to write, teach and re‐ search in both research methodology and the sociology of research. He conducts seminars on topics related to improv‐ ing effective academic research and obtaining better re‐ search results. One of his areas of specialism is qualitative research and how it may be enhanced using a Grounded Theory approach. He is on the editorial board of a number of academic journals. He is also on the execu‐ tive committees of several European and International conferences. His research has been published in some 50 peer reviewed papers and he has had some 30 text books published. Some of his books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Romanian. He holds a B Soc Sc, MBA and PhD.
Judges Marie Ashwin has more than two decades of experience in higher education in the UK and the Far East, and she is cur‐ rently working at EM Normandie, France. She collaborates with colleagues from around the world on teaching and research projects to enhance the standing of Research Methodology amongst staff and students, and to add value to the teaching of research methodology Marian Carcary is senior lead researcher at the Innovation Value Institute, Maynooth University, Ireland. Her research interests are in the development of IT Capability Maturity Frameworks (IT‐CMF), cloud computing and the drivers and challenges surrounding business value realization from IT. She has a particular interest in the methodology applied to research pro‐ ii
jects. She has managed a number of Enterprise Ireland and European Commission funded research projects centred on ICT professionalism/e‐ skills. She has presented research at international conferences and has published in academic journals. She holds a Bachelor of Business Compu‐ ting, a Master of Science in Enterprise Software and Doctorate of Philoso‐ phy in ICT evaluation. Christine Welch is a Visiting Research Fellow in Portsmouth Business School, UK and a former President of the UK Sys‐ tems Society. Her particular interests include critically‐ informed approaches to inquiry and contextual analysis. She has published articles, book chapters and conference papers in the fields of Systems, knowledge management and organiza‐ tional learning. Christine also has a keen interest in research methodology and how it is taught. Noel Pearse is an Associate Professor in the Rhodes Business School at Rhodes University, South Africa where he is the MBA Programme Co‐ordinator. He lectures in Leadership, People Management, Strategy Implementa‐ tion, Change Management and Research Design. His re‐ search interests lie mainly in the areas of leadership de‐ velopment, tacit knowledge, voluntary organisations, organisational change and development. He has a special interest in research design and how this is taught.
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Introduction The teaching of research methodology is a challenge for most universities. This is because although most academics will have had to master research methodology for their own research degrees they are often glad to be rid of this subject and stay focused on the core content of what they teach and research. For these people research methodology was a tool which they needed during a period of their lives and which they may need again, but if this is the case it will once more be a tool to solve a specific problem. Many academics are just not interested in a broader understanding of all the issues surrounding how to choose and apply an appropriate research methodology to a particular research problem. To make this matter even more challenging research has now been incor‐ porated into many undergraduate degrees. It is now common to find third‐ year students having to undertake a research dissertation in order to ob‐ tain their bachelors degree. Research methodology is a broad subject with a significant number of dif‐ ferent dimensions, meaning that a comprehensive understanding of these is a challenge to many individuals. In the first instance research methodol‐ ogy requires a thorough understanding of the nature of research, and in particular the nature of academic research which differs significantly from other research activities. Then the researcher needs to evaluate the differ‐ ent research methodologies which are available and how a sensible match can be made between the research problem and the alternative methodo‐ logical routes. Then there is the actual mechanism of applying a research method with an appropriate degree of rigour that is acceptable to the aca‐ demic community. Having mastered the skills the issue then becomes how does the researcher interpret the research findings and how can he or she be confident that the approach taken has led to trustworthy results which can be applied in the circumstances required by the researcher. There are few people who can address all the different issues mentioned above and who are skilled in many of the techniques which a researcher can call upon to perform a programme of academic research. As a result research methodology is not always taught effectively.
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It was for this reason that we decided to hold a competition to discover good practice in the teaching of research methodology. This competition, which we refer to as Innovation in the Teaching of Research Methodology Excellence Awards is run in parallel with the European Conference on Re‐ search Methodology in Business and Management each year. The call for case histories was announced in late 2015 and 40 submissions were received describing on an outline basis innovative ways of teaching research methodology. 30 contributors were invited to forward a full case history. A panel of judges chose 10 case history finalists who were invited to present their work at the 15th European Conference on Research Meth‐ odology in Business and Management (ECRM), at Kingston Business School in June 2016 This book is a compilation of the case histories of the 10 finalists. Dan Remenyi Editor
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