Literature reviews, causal comparison & correlational studies - and surveys

On February 2 we covered two weeks of work in a course where we already have too much to do during each class - so it was a lot of material presented without much time to take it in. But we are - more or less caught up.

Administrative detials:

• Everyone is signed up for reaction papers:  presenters for this week (on surveys) will be Josh and Fran.
• NIH training is complete.  Keep the link for your certificate where you can find it.  You will need to turn it in with your IRB application for your research project.
• I have invited you to share 2 google.docs => the reaction paper sign-up sheet, and a collaborative list of sites for sources for literature reviews in composition studies.  Let me know if you have trouble accessing these documents.

Methods chapters

With respect to the methods, what you need to know is in your text book.  As discussed in class, I will be creating study guides for the remaining methods chapters, and I will post them on the site. When I get a break in my workload - I will create study guides for the chapters we've already completed.

What we will do in class Wednesday
I will check in on how you are doing in terms of finding a research topic - and pass around a sign-up sheet for conferences. If you give me a broad topic - I can help direct you to sources and particular references so you can see what has been done - and decide whether you are actually interested.

As part of your assignment for last week, you were asked to look through the appendix on writing a research proposal.  The first step in the process is to write a concept paper - a document you share with your prospective advisor to see if you are on the right track. We will spend some time talking over how to write a concept paper - and do some "practice" in terms of setting one up.

Surveys: we cover the methods chapter - very briefly (be sure to bring questions) -but I am hoping that most of our work on this approach will be in terms of critical analysis of the readings, and some in-class work on designing surveys.

Read:  Mertens, Ch 6 Survey methods; Web-Literacies of the Already Accessed and Technically Inclined: Schooling in Monterrey, Mexico (2000)  1474;  Integrating Multimodality into Composition Curricula, pdf on Course Blog.