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Vol. 15 No. 4 (2018)

Published: 1 February 2018

Articles

  • Research skill development spanning higher education: Critiques, curricula and connections

    John W Willison

    The Research Skill Development (RSD) framework was devised in 2006 to articulate what educators do when they facilitate student learning through active exploration in ways that enable their skills to grow in sophistication and rigour. This special issue of JUTLP comprises eight articles that focus on the critique, adaptation and application of the RSD. This article introduces the special issue and presents the 2018 version of the RSD, in response to 12 years of feedback on the framework. Changes in the RSD include improvements in articulation of the facets of research, better delineation of autonomy, and the addition of the affective domain and guiding questions. Of the other seven articles, five are set in the undergraduate years and two in master’s, with contexts including biology, education, engineering, humanities and interdisciplinary studies. The articles are based across diverse settings, including laboratory, online, language and workplace learning. Of these seven, one critiques the RSD, three focus on curriculum design and three connect the RSD to enduring issues of current concern by adapting the framework for academic literacy, work skills and problem solving. These three adaptations are examples of numerous emerging models that modify RSD terminology and shape, within its broad parameters, and are introduced in this issue as the Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching (MELT).

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  • Frameworks and freedoms: Supervising research learning and the undergraduate dissertation

    Gina Wisker

    Much current debate about undergraduate student research involves a focus on ‘students as partners’ and co-constructors of knowledge (Healey, Flint & Harrington 2014, 2016). This debate reveals interesting tensions between student freedom and the role of structuring frameworks. Undergraduate lecturers and research supervisors might feel we are in a quandary concerning how far we can help manage a balance between supportive frameworks and the independence that student researchers need to develop. Will the use of the Research Skill Development (Willison & O’Regan, 2006/2018) framework and other frameworks at every step of the undergraduate research journey form a constraint, or an essential scaffold? This paper considers frameworks, scaffolds and the need for freedom and creative co-construction of knowledge to enable successful undergraduate research within the context of final year research and writing at undergraduate third year (UK), honours (Australia) or senior/fourth year (US and Canada).

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  • Research skills in the first-year biology practical - Are they there?

    Lyn Torres

    Laboratory practicals engage students in complex thinking to build their scientific knowledge and understanding. Surprisingly few studies connect the development of students’ cognitive and metacognitive skills for learning in the laboratory practical with foundational skills for researching. Librarians strive to establish teaching partnerships with academics to contextualise research skills within curriculum content. However, pedagogical models to make research skills explicit and guide library-faculty collaborations are lacking. This study explores the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework (Willison & O'Regan 2006/2018; see the first article in this issue) to extrapolate students’ research skills in a first-year biology practical unit. A qualitative research design was applied to identify research skills in the unit’s laboratory manual and in descriptive observations of students in five laboratory practicals. Results show students engaged in the research skills articulated by the RSD, yet these skills were implied rather than explicitly taught. Implications suggest that fundamental research skills which enable student preparedness for research can be overlooked in practical curricula. Research skills remaining unrecognised impacts learning and teaching, including the contribution librarians could make in this context. Findings demonstrated that the RSD is a useful theoretical construct and a priori framework to make research skills visible to educators.

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  • Graduate students' research-based learning experiences in an online Master of Education program

    Michele Jacobsen, Mairi McDermott, Barbara Brown, Sarah Elaine Eaton, Marlon Simmons

    The purpose of this research was to better understand graduate students' learning experiences in a research-intensive, online Master of Education (MEd) program. In alignment with the program goal for graduate scholars of the profession, this course-based program adopted an inquiry-based signature pedagogy grounded in the innovative practice of research-based learning. As part of this study, we explored broader program structures, including the cohort-based model, course sequencing and research ethics approval processes, which situate the research-based learning experiences. Several research questions framed our investigation into the experiences of online students who are engaged in a research-active MEd program. Analysis of survey and focus group information contributes to this mixed-methods case study and provides insights into implications for research-based learning in online course-based graduate programs.

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  • Evaluating the effectiveness of postgraduate research skills training and its alignment with the Research Skill Development framework

    Emma Gyuris

    This exploratory research focuses on a one-semester subject designed to facilitate deliberate practice while explicitly aiming to develop postgraduate students’ basic research skills: academic writing and its co-requisite skill, critical thinking. The research considers the alignment of the curriculum and assessment design of the subject ‘Research and Communication Skills for the Natural Sciences’ (SC5055) with the RSD framework. The research then identifies students who benefit most from a focus on the development of research and communication skills. The impact of SC5055 on students’ achievement and their ability to self-evaluate the development of their skills and understanding is also explored.

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  • Integrated academic literacy development: Learner-teacher autonomy for MELTing the barriers

    Ursula McGowan

    Effective and continuing development of tertiary students’ academic literacy during their undergraduate years has become a crucial issue for Anglophone universities into the 21st century. Research into pedagogies aimed at supporting students’ academic literacy development has pointed to the inadequacy of generic approaches delivered as remedial support services, and has called instead for the integration of the teaching and learning of academic literacy into discipline content courses. Successful models tended to require collaboration between discipline and communication specialists. However, reluctance by discipline specialists to engage with language in favour of content teaching, and financial implications of collaboration represent two major barriers to the uptake and scalability of curriculum-integrated academic literacy development. This paper describes a collaborative approach to genre pedagogy that has the potential for overcoming the content-language dichotomy and also the cost barrier. It provides a method for the discipline lecturer’s progress from initial dependence on the literacy specialist’s expertise towards learner and teacher autonomy. The pedagogy is demonstrated by two Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching (MELT) that are derived from the Research Skill Development framework. This paper describes the two models and their potential role in overcoming barriers to curriculum-integration of academic literacy development.

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  • From Research Skill Development to Work Skill Development

    Suniti Bandaranaike

    The thinking required by higher education student engagement in research processes may segue into the development of students’ work skills, enabling them to professionally transition to the workforce. However, although this transition may be facilitated before and during Work Integrated Learning [WIL] experiences, there is typically a gulf between the skills taught in higher education and skill requirements of industry. To address these challenges faced by WIL, and to connect students more effectively with contemporary and future employer needs, the first objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the use of a validated generic employability framework, the Work Skills Development [WSD] framework, and the second objective is to provide evidence about the framework’s effectiveness when used to articulate work skills and student autonomy. This overview of the WSD and its uses contributes to WIL pedagogy and has direct applicability to tertiary educators’ contribution to the development of student work mindset to bridge the gap between tertiary institutions and industry requirements.

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  • Student engineers optimising problem solving and research skills

    Dorothy Missingham, Siddarth Shah, Fizza Sabir, John Willison

    Problem solving and researching are connected activities in the engineering profession and across education. The empirical research presented in this paper considered the effectiveness for teaching and learning of a model that was based on this connection and derived from the parameters of the Research Skill Development framework. The model, devised by students for students, is called the Optimising Problem Solving (OPS) pentagon, and was piloted in a large first-year engineering course in 2014-2015 and in another university in the first half of 2016. This article presents data from formal research conducted on the 2016 offering of the course gathered from pre (n=221) and post (n=169) surveys, and semi-structured interviews of students (n=5) and student/tutors (n=5) sixteen months after course completion. Statistically significant (p < 0.01) changes from pre to post in items with medium to large effect sizes provided student perspectives on which problem-solving skills improved, and the interview data provided rich detail on the nature of changes and how these changes were effected. For the 2016 cohort studied, our evidence suggests that use of the OPS pentagon was associated with improved student problem-solving skills, and tutors’ capacity to teach problem solving.

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