Course Coordinator: Amy Kay Robinson amy.k.robinson@adelaide.edu.au

Lecturer & Tutor: Dr Daniel Lee daniel.a.lee@adelaide.edu.au 

Please consult your university timetable or Course Planner for class times. 

Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

1. Approach a major research area by exploring its explicit and implicit aspects, and by developing secondary research questions;
2. Identify a series of keywords to form a basis for research, and develop broader and narrower search terms in case of insufficient findings;
3. Effectively use the University Library, with a focus on electronic databases, to find sources which inform an approach to the broad area of research;
4. Read and critically analyse a large number of sources for credibility, reliability and relevance to the research question;
5. Develop a thesis argument comprised of a claim linked to evidence, and organise this argument using a plan or outline;
6. Compose an effective introduction and conclusion for an essay, as well as body paragraphs that fully develop a main point using evidence;
7. Complete a major Research Essay from conception to communication with a systematic and structured strategy for the process of research;
8. Assess thier own work and that of other students, and provide appropriately constructive feedback on how to develop each stage of the research process.

Required Texts

It is highly recommended that student purchase 'They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing' by Gerald Gaff & Cathy Birkenstein (2006).

This text is an extremely useful guide for identifying arguments and introducing sources
as well as integrating your own perspective in a written piece. 

This text will likely be very useful for other course assessments and essays. 

You can purchase this text from websites such as https://www.bookdepository.com/ or www.abebooks.com

It is also available through Dymocks; however, can take up to several weeks for it to arrive. 

During this University Research course, we will focusing on the 'I Say' component of
this text to help you establish and build your own ideas, argument and
understanding. 

A key activity of this course requires systematic and collaborative research methods using online resources. In particular, students will be required to use article databases to find high-quality, scholarly journal articles on a broad area of research and then a more defined research question.

This course has a strong focus on researching scholarly sources using online databases through the University of Adelaide Library. This will be covered in class, but success in this area depends on persistence, determination, and sound strategy, so it is strongly recommended that you familiarise yourself with the resources that are available to you. The databases are available at http://libguides.adelaide.edu.au/databases/  

For this course you may wish to use databases that have been tagged on the “Education” page: http://libguides.adelaide.edu.au/content.php?pid=316606&sid=2590774

The Library provides excellent support for the use of databases in scholarly research. Begin with the online training that is available: http://libguides.adelaide.edu.au/home. In particular try the “What is a database and how do I use one?” video.

If you require more one-to-one support, the Library has an excellent help contact form: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/help/fbquery.html There is a Research Librarian for the School of Education who can provide direct assistance with developing your article database research skills. This is one of the best support services available at this University, so make use of it.

MyUni will be used for essential communication including via email, so please check your University email regularly (at least three times a week). If you have a smartphone it is strongly recommended that you set up your email on it for easy and regular access to your University email. For guidance on how to do this, visit:

https://www.adelaide.edu.au/its/networks/mobile/support/config/#mobile

Remember, the most useful portal for all University online activities is Unified:
https://auth.adelaide.edu.au/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Funified.adelaide.edu.au%2Fc%2Fportal%2Flogin 

Lecturers in this Program will be largely online, meaning that your can do your own preparation for tutorials without having to come in at the specified lecture timeslot. The system to be used will be Articulate Storyline: this is an interactive system for online tutorials whichinvolves watching videos on the lecture material and completing activities. It is very important that you undertake the online lecture before the tutorial,as it gives you a baselineof knowledge and essential preparation foer the class that week.

The teaching and learning in this course provides a scaffolded, enabling approach to the development of research capacities using innovative technologies and collaboration. Lectures will be replaced with online lectures which can be completed at the student's own pace, at home or on campus, using an online delivery method. It is essential that these online lectures are completed, and monitring will be undertaken to ensure that students completed them. Classes will consist of workshops of 2 hours long, which require completion of the online lecture beforehand for students to get the most out of the class. Although there are no group-work assignments per se, students will work collaboratively and engage in ongoing peer review of work.

Week 1: Introduction to University Research  
Week 2: Course introduction; What is research?; Qualitative and quantitative research
Week 3: Critical reading strategies for scholarly sources and exploring Self Efficacy. 
Week 4: Search strategies and Library databases
Week 5: Primary research: A brief introduction
Week 6: Critically analysing arguments and developing your own

Mid-semester break

Week 7: Annotated bibliographies and the rest of your Research Portfolio
Week 8: Developing your research question through mindmapping
Week 9: Developing your essay plan through mindmapping
Week 10: Integrating sources into academic writing
Week 11: Drafting paragraphs: body and introduction
Week 12: Redrafting, Editing and proofreading

For clarification on which dates correspond to which weeks, please visit: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/student/dates/ 

Please note that the weekly topics may above may change depending on student interest, delivery and student needs. 

To pass this course, students must attend at least 75% of tutorials; in cases of absence for medical or compassionate reasons, documentation must be provided and students must still attend at least 50% of classes. If students fail to attend the minimum required number of tutorials, they will be considered to have not completed an assignment (see below).

Assessment Task	Due	Weighting	Learning Outcome
Research Portfolio	Week 4	20%	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9
Oral Presentation	Week 7	35%	1,2,3,4,5,9
Major Research Essay	Week 13	45%	5, 6, 7, 8
Engagement Task	Ongoing	TBC	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9

National Association of Enabling Educators (NAEEA) Common Learning Outcomes (2019)

Skills: On completion of an Enabling course, a student will demonstrate:

cognitive skills to understand, analyse, synthesise and critically evaluate information;
information skills to find, retrieve and analyse information for use in academic
contexts;
communication practices to foster the exchange of knowledge and ideas within an
academic context;
academic literacy skills fostering the written communication of ideas, theories and
analysis; and
independent learning skills

Application of knowledge and skills: A student completing an Enabling course will
demonstrate the application of knowledge and skills by:

engaging with the university learning and teaching environment in an ethically and
contextually aware manner;
applying independent learning techniques to achieve their learning outcomes;
using their developing critical thinking skills and broadening knowledge in particular
contexts; and
adopting student practices that meet their institutions’ academic expectations.

This course (and the UPP itself) is still quite new, and so there is not a lot of long-term data on which to base evaluations. However, SELTs so far have shown broad agreement with most of the important points. Open-ended responses have been very useful and deserve some comment, as
follows:

• All students commented that they would recommend the course to other students, indicating a perception of value;

• Some comments indicated that the expectations regarding assignments could be made clearer earlier on; this has been responded to in the Course Profile for “University Research” with much more detail on assignments, and rubrics to be made available on MyUni;

• Some general comments and anecdotal feedback indicate that some people would prefer more groupwork, and more time in class to work on assignments due to conflicting priorities in life. There are several aspects of a response to this:
  • Time to actually work on assignments in class is unlikely to be expanded; this is because much of the workload for University courses in general is comprised of independent study time (the statement on workload is available in course profiles to clarify this). In regular University courses no class time at all is given to working on assignments and it is expected that this will all be done independently; therefore the UPP will reflect this.
  • Having said this, we acknowledge that it is important to allow time for discussion of assessment requirements and questions to be answered in a face-to-face setting. This will be established at the beginning of the course and time given to it several (2-3) weeks before each assignment is due.

• Groupwork certainly is important for learning, and although “University Research” has no groupwork component itself, lots of opportunities for collaborative learning will be built in. In particular, feedback has suggested the value of critical discussionof journal articles, and there will be multiple opportunities for peer review and feedback on major assignments.