Events This Week
At the Library

• Message from the Head Librarian
• Keep Your Library Card Privileges
• Library Lessons
  • Lesson 1:  Analysis and Synthesis of Research
  • Lesson 2:  Research Purpose, Questions, and Hypotheses
  • Lesson 3:  Scales of Measurement and Variables in Research
  • Lesson 4: Section I of Your Research Proposal
• Circulation Desk
• Next Week at the Library

A Message from
the Head Librarian

Welcome to your fourth week and your return to the First Floor of the Library!

As a reminder, if you would like to review previous weeks of this course, all content is available to you by going to the events calendar (the schedule page). Each week is listed along with the link to the 3 main pages for that week. Second, if you want a concise list of the assignments due each week, then the best place to find this is on page 3 of each week's content but there is also a brief and concise list in the last column of the Schedule. The circulation desk check-in should provide you with what you need.

I have had a few emails asking for clarification of the quizzes and how they contribute to your final grade so I am going to try to clear that up here. The quizzes should be used as a practice and feedback mechanism - way for you to self-check your comprehension of the text each week. As such the actual grade you receive on your quiz does not calculate into your final grade but completion of them contributes towards your weekly participation. If once you complete your quiz, you still have questions about the content then you should feel free to email me and ask for assistance with your comprehension etc. Also, your final exam will be in a similar format to your weekly quizzes and so these also provide you with a context for that and the score on your final does count toward your final grade.

For the most part, everyone seems to be getting into the swing of things and finding comfort in the routine of the course. As it starts to get busy and you begin working on your rough drafts of your research proposal, I want to suggest that you break the week down as much as possible to keep from getting overwhelmed - try to just focus on one assignment at a time and then move to the next one. I know how busy many of you are. I also know that this class is very demanding and requires a new way of thinking and reading for many given educational research is not often taught at the undergraduate level. I try my best to only provide you with tasks to provide you with opportunities for practice and feedback. If everything you did were attached to a large portion of your final grade then you would be completely stressed out and paranoid about making the smallest mistakes (some of you probably are even without the high percentage points). Providing for opportunities for practice and feedback lessens the feeling of high stakes attached to everything you do and provides the instructor with an opportunity to see what areas students are comprehending and what areas need to be discussed again. Without providing an opportunity for you to complete assignments and turn them in for feedback, I am unable to do this. I do not believe any of the lesson activities each week are simply busy work (this really should be no surprise coming from an instructor :-). Each activity is carefully constructed to provide you with the opportunity to apply some of the skills and knowledge from the chapter to see how well you understood the content. These knowledge and skills will then be applied again to larger assignments such as your Research Proposal.

Two examples of this from last week are the 2 APA formatted references you submitted and your analysis of the statement of the problem. The 2 references allow me to check your understanding of the required elements of empirical articles you use as references as well as your application of APA. It is much easier on me and you to get this small aspect done early so you do not go and find 8 wrong articles or create an entire list of references without APA correct. The statement of the problem allows you to deconstruct this aspect of your research proposal so you can better understand what elements are required when you write your own.

Please continue to provide me with feedback and comments. They are very helpful to me in understanding how you are progressing through the course.

For those who have not received feedback yet, I hope to have feedback to you early this week in relation to your application of APA in your assignments due today so that you can correct errors and apply them appropriately to your Section I draft. I have also read and commented on your research proposal ideas earlier in the week so you can use any comments or ideas I may be able to add to your idea as you work on Section I this week. If you have any questions related to my response to your research topic then feel free to email me.

If you would like to see the results of the Quality Ratings Survey everyone filled out then you can view the results by going to the quizzes section and then next to the survey you should see a pie chart. If you click on the pie chart it will take you to a link where you can "generate the report". Once complete you will see how the statistics on how everyone rated each part of the article. This way you can see how varied the opinions there were and also if you went more with others or were out their on your own when you gave your rating.

We are moving along in this course and this week you should be devoting some of your time to working on your first draft of Section I of your research proposal. While this is a draft upon which you will receive feedback, please remember that drafts are calculated into your grades and submission is required - points are received for timeliness and completeness. In addition, while I expect I will make many comments and provide plenty of feedback on areas for improvement, I do expect that what you turn in is a complete draft of Section I and that APA has been applied throughout the paper (please see Lesson 4 this week for clarification of what I mean by a complete draft). If it is incomplete or it is obvious you did not even bother with APA then it will be returned without feedback and without points.

I will send feedback on all week 3 assignments by Friday and will update the week 3 checklist to reflect the status of these assignments. A new code was added this week to the checklist. You will be given an "R" if you turned in the assignment but it needs to be revised and resubmitted for credit. You will receive full credit ( an X on the checklist) upon resubmission if corrections were made and it was originally turned in on time. If you have any questions on this feel free to email me.

One focus this week is on analysis and synthesis of empirical research This is one of the most difficult things for those new to research. Some have trouble identifying empirical research. Others have trouble analyzing and then synthesizing all that they are reading. These are certainly tasks that require maturation and that you will get better at the more you do it. Hopefully, this week will start you on that journey. We will review some of the content of Chapter 4 while we integrate it with information learned in Chapter 10 of the Creswell text.

While there is much information presented this week I have tried to limit the assignments that are due to give you time to work on Section I. Therefore, some assignments given are ongoing for the next 2 weeks. Please note the checkout counter to be sure you complete tasks that are due this week.

APA Tidbit

The APA tidbit this week is one of the changes for within-text citations new in the 5th edition of the APA manual.  Within-text citations use the author-date method; that is the surname of the author (do not include suffixes such as Jr.) and the year of publication inserted in the text at the appropriate point.  If the name of the author appears as part of the narrative, cite only the year of publication in parentheses.  An example would be

Gardner (1983) describes three biases of American culture that impact thinking regarding the nature of intelligence.  There is the westist attitude in which Americans put certain western cultural values on a pedestal.  A number of writers (Wiggins, 1993; Sternberg, 1985a; Miele, 1995), however, disagree about the importance of the westist attitude in relation to intelligence.

The change in the 5th edition is that within a paragraph, you need not include the year in subsequent references to a document as long as the document cannot be confused with others cited in the paragraph.  For example, no date is included the second time the same Gardner document is mentioned.

Gardner (1983) describes three biases of American culture that impact thinking regarding the nature of intelligence.  There is the westist attitude in which Americans put certain western cultural values on a pedestal.  A number of writers (Wiggins, 1993; Sternberg, 1985a; Miele, 1995), however, disagree about the importance of the westist attitude in relation to intelligence.  The second bias described by Gardner is testist.

This change not only makes it easier for a writer, but reduces the clutter of many parentheses filled with names and dates in a narrative that break the reader's concentration.

Our goals this week are to:

• search for and identify at least 4 empirical, refereed articles related to your research topic and receive approval
• apply appropriate criteria to assess the relevance of the empirical articles you find
• begin constructing your own literature map for your research topic based on the articles you begin to identify
• choose one of the empirical articles you have identified and write an abstract following the format in your text
• distinguish between purpose statements, research questions, and hypotheses when planning and writing a research proposal
• distinguish among the four scales of measurement
• define, identify, and differentiate types of variables in quantitative research
• be able to write purpose statements, research questions, and hypotheses for quantitative studies
• be able to write a qualitative purpose statement, a central research question, and subquestions

Don't Forget Your
Library Card!

Task #1:
Download, view, and/or print instructions for setting indents in MS^® Word (if you do not know how to set first-line or hanging indents): Settings Indents in MS Word (99 KB PDF file)

Task #2:
Download, view, and/or print instructions for inserting page numbers in Word documents (if you do not know how to set up automatic page numbering): Inserting Page Numbers in MS Word (3.12 MB PDF file)

Task #3:
Review some of the resources available to facilitate your search for research articles: Finding Research Articles.

Contact the
Library Staff

Need Help?

Have a question but can't find the answer? Here are some options:

• Check the Course FAQ page to see if your question has already been answered.
• Check the Proposal FAQ page to see if your question has already been answered.
• Email the Head Librarian (Dr. Curda)*.
• Email the Assistant Librarian (Melissa)*.
• Check with the other library patrons.

*Remember to include your name and the course name (Educational Research) or number (EDF 6481) in your message.

Go to the Library Lessons for the Week
(Page 2)