Author: Margaret Smith

Overview Throughout their CODES classes, students employ place-based research methods to interrogate the communities in which they live and work. In this collaborative assignment, they put those methods to work through a storymap that critically engages with some aspect of the St. Louis region. This is explicitly a counter-map, which challenges dominant narratives by…

Assignment by Molly Kirby, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Overview This assignment is the culmination of all the different explorations the students have completed throughout the semester. Here, they synthesize the data and methods they’ve employed to answer the research question they developed at the start of the semester, producing a research report about some…

Overview In this assignment, students take a field trip to the university archives, where they explore a collection and analyze a document of their choosing. Along with building their source analysis skills, they also explore the archive as a space and institution, learning how it’s organized and how to navigate it. This activity scaffolds…

Assignment by Molly Kirby, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Overview In this assignment, students practice developing and delivering interview questions. As they build on previous research, they also learn to link qualitative and quantitative methods. This activity supports their work in the research team, where they might conduct their own interviews. Assignment Sheet

Pending

Assignment by Molly Kirby, building on materials by Rachel Bradley and Margaret Smith, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Overview In this assignment, students learn how to evaluate existing survey results and how different disciplines approach qualitative data. Through this process, they also learn key critical data concepts. This activity supports their work in the research…

Assignment by Molly Kirby, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Overview In this assignment, students practice drafting a survey instrument, which they’ll later deploy to a segment of the on-campus community. Through this process, students learn how question design shapes their results, intentionally and unintentionally. In CODE123: Research and Systems Thinking, students practice with their chosen…

Assignment by Molly Kirby, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Overview This introduction to survey design teaches students to critically engage with surveys: to consider how choices like phrasing and measures might shape their data and bolster their argument (or not). This assignment leads into Exploration 4: Survey Development in CODE123: Research and Systems Thinking, and…

Assignment by Molly Kirby, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Overview In this assignment, students begin the process of cultivating a research question that they’ll work with over the course of the semester in CODE123: Research and Systems Thinking. This assignment has two key objectives: to introduce students to the FINER criteria for research questions, and…

Assignment by Molly Kirby, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Overview This exploration is the first assignment in CODE123: Research and Systems Thinking, and it’s an essential foundation for everything that follows. Students complete their CITI Training (required for all human subjects research) alongside readings and class discussions about research justice and ethics. They carry both…