Course Title: Qualitative Methods in Educational Research
Course Number: EDRS 812
Reflection: Nothing prepared me for the impact which this course would have in refining my attitudes and beliefs about myself, my academic research strengths, and potentially the direction for career decisions. Not only was the artful method in which the information was shared demonstrative of quality adult teaching methods, but the subject itself also ignited a passion for a research methodology to which I had little exposure to previously and found to be most agreeable to who I am. This class sparked the beginnings of how I can see myself contributing to the body of knowledge in meaningful ways. Who says research and writing has to be drudgery!? Although not altogether enjoyable (the class did demand quite a bit of growth and production), I can genuinely see how a qualitative style of research will likely frame the methods and information which I will pursue to uncover in the future directions of this program and beyond.
Artifacts: To share a little on how this class was structured (so wonderfully), essentially there were a number of writing assignment which were required throughout the course. About 2/3′s of the way through the semester, we had to the chance to review a few submissions of earlier students as examples of their final works. It became apparent that the final paper for the class, and I asked as much, was “simply” a weaving together of all the shorter documents we had or were going to produce! Brilliant! Armed with that information, I believe the entire class breathed a sigh of relief as we realized that our 25-30 page final paper was not something which necessarily needed to be crafted from scratch, but could borrow heavily from the four shorter papers which we had to produce over the course of the class. Presented here is simply the final paper.
Professor: Dr. Joseph Maxwell
Grade: B+