As a Masters Degree student, a course such as Methods of Inquiry (EDD 9300) can be on the intimidating side. For me, this was very much a reality. Briefly, the purpose of this course is to prepare a doctoral student for writing a concept paper. Not yet at the doctoral level, the thought of a dissertation or even a concept paper had not seriously crossed my mind. However, unbeknownst to me, the course design and the facilitation techniques of Dr. Dillon would amount to an unexpected result.

It is important to mention that this course assumes each learner has identified a research topic and is in the process of approval. This assumption posed a slight challenge as I did not have one. Luckily, as part of a previous course, Principles of Instructional Technology (EDD 8008), one of the assignments was a literature review. To my benefit, I was able to take this same topic and continue to expand the research in this course. In fact, this course helped to identify that the research topic I previously identified was too broad, but held significant potential. Completing the first assignment helped to refine the focus of the research problem and identified that large amounts of similar research had already been completed; however, the specific focus I was interested in had only been minimally researched. This discovery was a confidence builder as it can be a challenging task to identify a research problem that has not yet been explored.

With a refined research problem, the next assignment was a preliminary literature review. I had already identified that literature and research on this focus was minimal, so I focused on reviewing similar studies that would aid in the process of forming the research problem hypothesis and null hypothesis. Because of the course limitations, the third assignment, data analysis was preconceived. During this assignment SPSS was introduced as well as many of the sophisticated data analysis properties. The assignment was good practice and helped firm up the basics of data analysis. The fourth assignment offered an opportunity to explore experiment designs, both quantitative and qualitative. Additionally, measurement instruments were explored.

Having completed these four assignments, the fifth assignment allowed each learner to act as a research program evaluator. A preconceived experiment, including research problem, methodology, data, and results, was presented. The task was to critically analyze the experiment in an effort to identify the best program evaluation model. Beyond identifying the appropriate model, a proposed plan for implementation was part of the assignment.

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This page last updated: December 15, 2006