Sarah J. Mahler Associate Professor of Anthropology Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University Miami, FL 33199
Studying how to do social science research is one thing; doing research is another. Both are difficult. Undergraduate research methods courses in the social sciences are dreaded by students and they most often do much more poorly than in content classes. Yet such courses are required in most social science undergraduate majors for good reason. The skills used to plan and conduct research as well as to analyze data are very much in demand and are skills that transfer well to myriad non-research related work such as strategic planning and program evaluation. Can team-based learning promote greater understanding of the research enterprise and improve student acquisition of research skills over traditional methods courses? This presentation will discuss two faculty members’ collaboration to transform UG research methods into a TBL format during the fall semester 2009. It will include examples of team project assignments utilized (to do actual research), RATs developed and on-line formats for delivery of course content. It will also present the outcome of student evaluations for the TBL sections versus standard methods courses. To our knowledge, no faculty have used TBL for undergraduate (or graduate) research methods courses. Therefore there is a huge area where TBL could make a difference if, indeed, it improves student learning in this area. This presentation will offer our experiences and best practices so far.
