Research Methods as a Core Module

As a second year undergraduate I have benefitted from this module. It has given me a toolbox to assist me with my final year research and other skills to take forward into my career as an educator. I have also discovered that group work can be beneficial to the learning experience; however I think this method would benefit from a more formal structure.

By this I mean that some sort of contract be drawn up and agreed between members of a group, so that no group member is under any illusion of the responsibility to his or her colleagues and the level of commitment required to complete a group task. This could also be carried forward to a more strict agreement, where aside from the deadlines posed by tutors for hand in dates, a group would agree a draft date where all work must be posted to a group blog or similar so that it can be assessed by the peer group and edited accordingly. This type of project management would be similar to a formal working environment, so that the effort of all members of the group was equal. Rather than one member leaving things to the last minute and the other members feeling obliged to perform extra work, just in case the lazy one (for want of a better description) fails to deliver any content. Despite various emails and group meetings where the project and content is discussed a review by the tutor of the content at a fixed point with some type of feedback would offer some support to working group to apply pressure to the failing colleague. As all this is happening inside a learning environment for the purpose of education I feel the tutor should take a firmer approach to members of a group who fail to meet the requirements of the contract drawn up between the group members at the outset. It is not reasonable for members of a group to lose marks due to the lack of effort by one party.

The use of a blog for creative thinking and learning has been useful. It has given me the opportunity to express my feelings and record my reflections at various times. I am glad there has been no format imposed at this stage and having the freedom to write as I like has been cathartic. It has allowed me to challenge my own perceptions of situations and share with an audience, who by their own choice read my material.

Having the opportunity to read others work via the learning journal in the Victory E-Learning environment has been useful too, but I would have liked more comments from the lecturers or suitably qualified members of the faculty, as this would have perhaps prompted more effort and improve the level of understanding and the quality of the work written. I am not saying I want a scoring system in place but I feel every post to the learning journal should have a type of read receipt from the lecturer or person reviewing the work, so that the student would at least know when their work had been read. A small comment either positive or negative would also incite reflection from the student, thereby improving future postings. Also I think that postings in the learning journal could be limited for viewing until you have posted your version for the particular week. The reason for this is, I feel that other students can benefit from looking at completed work, which means that they are not necessarily using their own skills to produce work and merely re-wording content from other students. This may be difficult to achieve with the current system that is in use at Portsmouth University. I have no problem having a chat box or drop box for peer advice and questions but the actual posting of completed work should be private until every student is working on the same level or weeks activities.