Course Description

This course is designed to enable students to become critical consumers and evaluators of current educational research. Students will develop skills necessary to identify, understand, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of educational research. Throughout the course, students will locate and evaluate a collection of educational research publications and write a critical, scholarly literature review focused in a specific area of education.

Course Learning Outcomes
1. Distinguish different types of quantitative and qualitative research.
2. Describe the purpose and standards for excellence for each section in a research paper
3. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of research studies.
4. Determine appropriate inferences from various research findings.
5. Apply main takeaways from research studies to professional practice.
Textbooks
- Understanding and Evaluating Research: A Critical Guide by Sue McGregor (available free through library)
- An Applied Guide to Research Designs: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods by W. Alex Edmonds and Thomas Kennedy (available free through library)
- Introduction to Educational Research: A Critical Thinking Approach by W. Suter (available free through library)

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