Lucky Last

“Please write a reflection on the course, what you have learned, what you have enjoyed (or not!).  It helps me reflect on how the course has gone and how I can improve it for the next group of students.”

The research methods class to date has been reasonably cruisy however, I have yet to hear any recent feedback on my progress. Let’s assume all is tickety boo.

To start, Research methods started with a lot of deep thinking and words I had not heard of before like Ontology and Epistemology and talks on truth versus true and many more debatable topics. This was a great method of indirectly having us try and get in the mindset of a researcher. What was interesting is the perspective of how we as a human may perceive our surroundings.

The Academic Stuff

Assignment 1: I found a little confusing at times – there are the practice blog questions in class and then the extended questions somewhere…. hidden.   Otherwise, the task of writing one blog a week was not too strenuous and the topics we discuss in class are interesting enough to blog about. Unfortunately, when my DAT602 paper landed 6 weeks back, requiring a ridiculous 4 blogs a week, that is when the light went out and the RES blogging ceased.

Assignment 2: The critique of an academic paper was fine the biggest challenge was trying to find a paper that had not too many pages with a methodology to critique. Augmented reality is the subject I chose to investigate something I am kind of interested in and I enjoyed researching.

Assignment 3: Well! I have yet to start. For very good reason, I am unaware of how to write a research proposal and have no topic to write a proposal for. I keep getting asked what my major is, what I.T related topic am I interested in? When I make something up, I am told my topic is too broad. None of this helps with starting assignment 3. I need more clarification.

Recommendations

Class time is a tad late and on a Friday, not to mention some students have a class that finishes at 2pm the time that Research Methods starts. My brain is fried after DAT602 Todd lecture on speed. haha

But! I do like having one class a week.

Assignment 1: I would recommend keeping up with the blogs, it is no fun spending your weekend writing material to catch up.

Assignment 3: Be great to have a better understanding of what is required. The project proposal appears specific and finding a topic is the hardest part of the RES701 paper. I would have liked to have established an idea a LOT earlier than this.

On that note! I really enjoy Lars as a tutor, the course dynamics and content is well structured. I like how Lars doesn’t fluff around speaking nonsense just to fill time. Lars made a boring research paper funny, thought-provoking and interesting. Changing it up by bringing in Stuart and the guest speakers was a great idea along with class discussions, our presentation all made for a stimulating paper.