Daphne John,
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
Oberlin College
Rationale:
The course I intend to redesign as part of the pilot project for the Mellon Integrating Information Literacy into the Liberal Arts Curriculum program is my research methods course, Sociology 211: Social Research Methods, a required course for Sociology majors. This course is held every fall semester and usually has 40+ students enrolled. Typically, students take this course in their sophomore or junior year. The research methods course is integral to advanced study in the social sciences because it helps students develop skills necessary for the understanding of social scientific research and to assess research critically. Traditionally, introductory methods courses in Sociology have focused on the techniques of collecting empirical data as well as the concepts necessary to analyze these data. Virtually all of the methods text books in the social sciences are carbon copies of each other, rigidly marching students through the research process and regaling quantitative techniques with only brief mention of qualitative designs. Recently, some attention has been given to writing literature reviews and integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches, but these attempts never really get to the heart of the matter: methods is about managing information. Last year I was solicited by an editor to submit an "innovative prospectus" for a research methods textbook. My desire was to write a book that escaped the trappings of the current textbooks on methods and instead focus on collecting information, processing information, analyzing information and disseminating information. Much to my chagrin, the response to my final prospectus by the editor was: "too innovative". The Mellon initiative concerning integrating information literacy into the Liberal Arts curriculum is the perfect opportunity for me to refocus my methods course away from the traditional pedagogical framework of memorizing terms and learning techniques and toward an interactive learning environment where students collaboratively engage in managing information.
Past Configuration of the Course:
I always have focused on writing in my methods class, particularly on the literature review. Usually this assignment comes early in the semester and I rely on Cynthia Comer, Head of Reference and Instruction, to give a one-time demonstration on using OBIS, Sociological Abstracts, Social Science Index, Statistical Abstracts of the United States, etc. for my students. Students then go off on their own to find relevant information on the topic of their choice (approved by me ahead of time). Until last year, each student researched and wrote a literature review independently. Last fall semester, I had students work in assigned research teams which collectively selected a topic, researched it and wrote a group paper. Related labs were connected to this assignment which required students to use library and Internet resources to obtain information on specific issues (e.g., students were asked to find several article abstracts on women's employment in the U.S. that contained references to race/ethnicity and educational attainment). I feel that this collaborative effort encourages students to discuss the research process with their peers and to engage in active discussions about managing information. This communication, while at times difficult, is essential to understanding the research process and contributes to information literacy. Further, collaborative effort is very common in the contemporary workplace. Our students must develop these collaborative skills if they are to be successful after Oberlin.
Proposed changes in the Course for Fall 2000:
This coming academic year, I will offer two sections (20 students each) of Social Research Methods during the fall semester. I have split the course into these smaller sections to facilitate interaction between myself and the students and to make discussions more manageable and participatory. Also, because this is a 4 hour class, I am now holding the class four days a week (MTWF). I plan on making one class per week a required participatory lab session where students will work "hands on" with information. Approximately 2/3 of these labs will deal, in some way, with information literacy. The remaining labs will be dedicated to software and statistics instruction. Each section will be divided up into four research groups which will operate together on labs and some other assignments (although there will be individual assignments as well) throughout the semester. During these lab sessions, I will collaborate with Cynthia Comer in order integrate information management throughout the course. This should help students learn more and understand the relevance of information literacy to research methods. I plan on having students use the databases available through the library, as well as search the Internet for useful and relevant information. This, of course, will necessitate the incorporation of a segment of the course on how to evaluate information on the web- an issue that must be dealt with in any discipline in this information age. Further, I plan on sharing the experiences of teaching this course with my colleagues in the Sociology department, as well as others in the social sciences, to help integrate some of what I am focusing on in this course into other courses. Clearly, upper level sociology courses will benefit as students will be better prepared to conduct independent research in the classes. Introductory courses may benefit from my experiences in that we might identify specific areas where students have trouble with information literacy and then begin to focus on that at the introductory level.
Social Research Methods Proposed Outline and Goals:
Examples:
This course outline represents a major restructuring of the course and, therefore, I will need five weeks this summer to work on this project. I plan on having every component of this course deal with managing information. For example, in the "Finding Relevant and Useful Information" section, students would use information databases to locate published information related to the topic they are interested in as preparation for writing the literature review. In the "Locating and Obtaining Data" section, students would search the web for data archives, specifically focusing on the ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) site as most data archived here are available to members (Oberlin is a member) at no cost. I have given some thought to an exercise which would help students understand the connection between qualitative and quantitative research. Students would read Elijah Anderson's newest book, Code of the Street, an ethnographic study of inner-city Philadelphia as an example of qualitative design and implementation. Students could then use products that contain Census information (i.e. quantitative demographic data) that are readily available (from Geolytics, Inc.) which allow students to search for specific geographic locations (e.g., the neighborhoods described and discussed by Anderson) and obtain location specific demographic information (e.g., racial/ethnic populations, income/poverty statistics, etc.). Students then can compare the quantitative snapshot to the qualitative details elucidated by Anderson in order to illustrate the pros and cons of both methodological approaches. Clearly, I will spend this summer developing and refining these exercises in order to be ready to use them in the fall.