SNL Research Seminar

Adapted from Chapter 3 of the School for New Learning's Foundations of Adult Learning Resource Book

Overview

The culmination of undergraduate education is the ability to define problems and address them comprehensively. At the School for New Learning, this ability is realized in the Advanced Project. In order to hone your skills, and to prepare you for this problem solving experience, you need to examine the processes and pitfalls of research.
Research can be divided into two basic elements: what you study, and how you study it.  That is, the topic of your research and the methods you employ to find information.  Success in problem solving depends on your ability to define a problem, to find relevant information, to assess the information, to use the information, and to understand how you yourself influence the research process. Therefore, the School has designed three experiences that address these areas: Research Seminar, Externship, and Advanced Project. (See the Focus Area, Chapter 5, for information about  the Advanced Project.)

Instructors generally assess SNL courses in the LL area on a Pass/Fail basis. If you are interested in selecting a “grading option” for L-8, L-9, L-10, and L-11, you must request the letter grade in writing by informing the instructor,, without exception, no later than the beginning of the third week of class. Before officially choosing the letter grade option, you should discuss with your instructor specific assessment criteria for letter grades. The instructor and you, the student, together determine which grading system will serve you best. If approved the switch to a letter grade cannot be undone.

Research Seminar

L-8:      Can pose questions and use methods of formal inquiry to answer questions and solve problems.
L-9:      To be written by faculty/student
Course: Research Seminar (pre-requisite: completion of competences L-1 through L-5)

1. Identifies focused and appropriate questions within a specified context.
2. Reviews existing knowledge about the question and determines directions for additional inquiry.
3. Designs methods of gathering and interpreting information to advance knowledge relevant to the question.
4. Constructs a proposed research model.

Students demonstrate this competence by actively pursuing knowledge that will contribute to answers or solutions for questions or problems of interest. To do so, students must develop a familiarity with the literature in relevant fields and assess its contributions to the question. From this, students should identify needs for additional inquiry and create ways of learning more about the specific question. Students must draw connections between categories of learning in the undergraduate program and the nature of the research question. Completion of Research Seminar is a pre-requisite for Advanced Electives, for Externship, and for Advanced Project.

The Research Seminar presents an opportunity to describe, locate, evaluate, and use information. Students meet regularly as with any other course. However, rather than produce a research paper, students in Research Seminar write a research proposal.  The objective is not to produce an educated opinion on a topic, but rather to find a problem or topic that interests you, formulate it into a question, discover its background (what have experts and researchers discovered about this question), to create your own proposal for adding to (or filling in gaps in) the research and to design a method for answering your research question. Through Research Seminar, students learn what information is, where to find it, how to evaluate sources, libraries, research, etc., and how to design effective means to answer questions.  At the end of the course, you will have a thoroughly investigated research proposal that may, or may not, be linked to your Advanced Project. Research Seminar is offered under a variety of general topics or without a topic (“themeless”). It is also offered through SNL’s Distance Learning Program.