Guides: EFOP 2140: Higher Education Capstone Seminar: Starting Your Research

How Do I . .

Starting your research can be tough, but these pages can help you along the way. the best place to start your searching is with PITTCat, our gateway searching tool. PITTCat does a broad search across all of the library's resources.

. . Find articles on a topic?

The ULS has access to millions of full-text articles online through the ULS Databases

. . Find tips and techniques on how to use those databases?

. . Get help with writing and citing sources?

. . What if I can't find what I need?

If you're stuck at any point, talk to a librarian. You can contact the Education Librarian at the left, or chat with a librarian. Librarians can save you time and work by pointing you toward the best source of information for your topic.

Learning Proposal

Throughout the semester, you will be working toward the development of a learning proposal related to an inquiry area of your choosing (e.g. student access, student outcomes, student experiences, campus structures, etc.). While the literature review of your learning proposal will involve the most research, keep in mind that each stage of your proposal can be informed by articles and books that examine the particular educational challenge you investigate.

Literature Review (4-5 pages; 10 points) Draft due by 6:00pm on Wednesday, February 14
You should examine an ample body of relevant literature and professional knowledge (at least 10-15 sources, including peer-reviewed research articles) that will help frame your inquiry area. The review should be succinct, comprehensive, and integrated and demonstrate a clear path of your understanding of the inquiry area and how it is framing your understanding of the specific problem. It should not be a series of annotations or a paragraph-by-paragraph summary of individual articles or chapters. The review should demonstrate a clear path of your understanding of the problem area and how it is framing your understanding of the specific problem. Identify 2-4 themes within the literature and develop those themes into the key sections of this part of the paper. While your review in this section may include interventions or approaches to addressing the problem, this should not be the main focus because interventions will be addressed in Part 2 of the project.

Class Texts

The Literature Review by Lawrence A. Machi; Brenda T. McEvoy
ISBN: 9781506336244
From daunting to doable in six steps - The process of literature search and composing a formal literature review can be intimidating. But masters and doctoral candidates in Education and related fields have found academic argumentation to be seamlessly intuitive with the six-step process pioneered by this book. This updated third edition features a wealth of all-new content including: A flowchart that graphically illustrates Machi and McEvoy's process. Reflective Oversight boxes in each chapter, prompting readers to direct metacognitive activities. Links to online guides and resources. Expanded examples illustrating theoretical concepts.
Design-Based School Improvement by Rick Mintrop
At the heart of the effort to enact and scale up successful school reforms is the need for more robust links between research and practice. One promising approach is design development, a methodology widely used in other fields and only recently adapted to education, which offers a disciplined process for identifying practical problems, assessing evidence of outcomes, accounting for variability in implementation and results, and establishing a foundation for broader understanding of the problem and proposed solutions. This exciting new book provides a practical guide for education leaders who are seeking to address issues of equity in their schools and want to pursue this approach.
Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
ISBN: 9781849352611
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride! adrienne maree brown, co-editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit.
The Curricular Approach to Student Affairs by Kathleen G. Kerr; Keith E. Edwards; James F. Tweedy; Hilary Lichtermann; Amanda R. Knerr
ISBN: 9781620369357
Publication Date: 2020-06-30
The curricular approach aligns the mission, goals, outcomes, and practices of a student affairs division, unit, or other unit that works to educate students beyond the classroom with those of the institution, and organizes intentional and developmentally sequenced strategies to facilitate student learning. In this book, the authors explain how to implement a curricular approach for educating students beyond the classroom. The book is based on more than a decade of implementing curricular approaches on multiple campuses, contributing to the scholarship on the curricular approach, and helping many campuses design, implement, and assess their student learning efforts. The curricular approach is rooted in scholarship and the connections between what we know about learning, assessment, pedagogy, and student success. For many who have been socialized in a more traditional programming approach, it may feel revolutionary. Yet, it is also obvious because it is straightforward and simple.

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EFOP 2140: Higher Education Capstone Seminar

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How Do I . .

Learning Proposal

Class Texts