Instructional Context
CODE122 is the second of three semesters of Research Teams. In their second semester, students employ social science research methods, including surveys, interviews, and ethnographies, to understand how the problem they’re studying impacts local community stakeholders. This research supports the development of an implementation plan that addresses the problem in the local community.
Objectives
- Structure an ethical research plan and conduct qualitative research
- Learn and apply methods of Community-Based Participatory Action Research
- Practice collaborative skills
- Learn about your research question in the context of the community organization, the region, the nation, and the world
- Develop an implementation plan
Syllabus
Assignments
This reading check helps students engage actively and critically with scholarly sources, and to come to class prepared for discussion.
This reading check helps students engage actively and critically with scholarly sources, and to come to class prepared for discussion.
In this collaborative lab assignment, students work in small groups to lay out a research plan for the semester. Based on their work from the previous semester, they develop a research question and identify key stakeholders, methods, and sources.
Working from the roadmap they developed in their research plan, group members now work together to develop a survey that will produce usable data for their research question. This assignment applies lessons of research ethics and effective survey design that they have already encountered in CODE123: Research & Systems Thinking over the preceding weeks.
This assignment is designed by the individual research team instructor, in line with the specific themes and methods employed by that research team.
In this lab, students extend their survey data with a qualitative method of their choosing. They might choose to conduct follow-up interviews or focus groups, dig into the archives to understand historical context, or conduct ethnographic observations. As they synthesize their results and reflect on their experiences, they consider how different methods help them approach a complex question from multiple angles.
In their final project, students work in their groups to review and synthesize the data they’ve collected to understand the local impacts of the problem on their community partner and their stakeholders. In response, they develop a plan for a program, resource, or other intervention that responds to that problem. They develop an implementation plan, drawing on their own research and on existing resources, and present it to their community partner for feedback.
