Collaborating on Research with Master's Students

Annotated Bibliography

Bartholomay, D. J. (2018). Making room for methods: Incorporating full-scale research projects in non-methods courses. Teaching Sociology, 46(3), 247–261. http://doi.org/10.1177/0092055X17737356 

To find out whether students’ confidence in conducting sociological research could be increased with practice, Bartholomay incorporated a large-scale, scaffolded research project into his course on gender inequality at a large U.S. research university. In small groups, students completed 10 project components, ranging from topic identification and a literature review to a final paper and final poster. To answer his research question quantitatively, Bartholomay asked students to respond to a pretest and posttest containing Likert-scale items that addressed students’ comfort with sociological research and understanding of course content. He found that students’ confidence in research did increase significantly after they completed the course’s large research project. Their additional feedback elaborated on these numbers, showing that engaging in research also helped them better remember what they learned, interested them more than just reading, and was a formative and confidence-boosting experience for them.  

This review may be helpful if many instructors in a given graduate program already incorporate large-scale research projects into their courses but struggle with scaffolding the work for students. The article’s discussion of the project components might help instructors conceptualize larger projects and articulate project instructions. Assessing students’ performance on all ten components would be virtually impossible in a nine-week quarter, although extending the project over multiple quarters would afford instructors more time to give feedback on different components, and for students to integrate that feedback into their work.

Bueno, D. C. (2023). Empowering MAEd students: The impact of faculty mentorship on research skill development. Institutional Multidisciplinary Research and Development Journal, 4, 1–10. [no DOI] 

At a graduate school for continuing education in the Philippines, Bueno studied ten MAEd students who had engaged with a faculty mentor on research to find out more about their experiences. His interviews with students touched on several topics, including guidance during the research process, topic selection, methodological expertise, literature review, data collection & analysis, feedback & support, and opportunities for dissemination. Although the study was small, Bueno found that mentorship was critical for students as they moved through the stages of research, especially for fueling their motivation as they engaged in their first formal research experiences. Students said that they had developed research skills in every course, not only during a one-time experience, so their knowledge had increased over several years and from working with many faculty members.  

Although the national and educational context in this study differs from ours, the idea of extending research opportunities across multiple courses was interesting given our short nine-week quarter. The way that students engaged with multiple faculty to build their research skills could help departments reconceptualize their graduate programs places where students could engage in smaller-scale research opportunities with multiple instructors during their degree program, if they don’t already. Such an approach would require agreement between instructors about what kinds of research skills are being developed in their courses so that students leave the program equipped with a set of skills they need for academic or industry careers.

Falk, K., & Muller, G. (2019). Embedded Master’s students conduct highly relevant research using industry as their laboratory. Technology Innovation Management Review, 9(5), 54–73. http://doi.org/10.22215/timreview/1241  

Falk and Muller, two instructors in Systems Engineering at the University of Southeastern Norway, sought to understand how they could better equip their students to transfer knowledge between industry and academia. Systems Engineering is an emerging field in which there is so much tacit knowledge in industry that isn’t passed on to students through coursework. Consequently, students are not always sure how to access that knowledge or how to bring to the table what they learn in their programs, which are two critical components of action research, the framework for this study. The authors analyzed 40 Master’s theses to find out whether they contained elements of action research, including an aim of changing the practice and a collaboration on the research with other parties. Students selected a topic and a problem to address based on where they were currently working in industry, and engaged in a streamlined process for completing that research in a year (which in itself was a compelling example of how to structure such a project). They found that most papers dealt with a problem of immediate concern to the boss, such as cost or time, and that students gained deep knowledge about the topic area based on their findings. This article was included as another approach to building research into a Master’s program and specifically of how to use research to address and solve real problems.

Hammond, L. (2021). The activity of student research: Using Activity Theory to conceptualise student research for Master’s programmes. Studies in Higher Education, 46(6), 1055–1067. http://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1666261  

In her examination of the Master’s ‘dissertation’ in the British medical school context, Hammond explores different ways for these students to disseminate their research and ultimately, other ways to conceptualize that research. She explores the disconnect between the traditional, academic, theoretical MA thesis and what Master’s students want out of their degrees – practical skills that they can use, forward movement in their current jobs, and a higher qualification in their field. She points out that reconceptualizing the Master’s thesis as an end but also as a beginning could help us instead view the thesis as an “apprentice model of learning, where the supervisory context is the place where students develop the skills, and…undergo an epistemic and identity shift as they progress through their apprentice journey” (Hammond, 2021, p. 1063). While a traditional Master’s thesis may be more relevant for students who later pursue a PhD, Hammond advocates for options in MA programs for students who go into industry and who have other, non-academic motivations for pursuing postsecondary education.

Healey, M., Jordan, F., Pell, B., & Short, C. (2010). The research–teaching nexus: A case study of students’ awareness, experiences and perceptions of research. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 47(2), 235–246. http://doi.org/10.1080/14703291003718968  

Healey, Jordan, Pell and Short present a case study of students’ perceptions of four different kinds of research activities in classes at a university in the U.K. The four kinds of activities were, as it pertains to the research review’s guiding question, the most useful part of this article, and provide inspiration for how more research in general can be incorporated into graduate courses. The four types of activities are: 

• “Research-led: where students learn about research findings, the curriculum content is dominated by faculty research interests, and information transmission is the main teaching mode.  
• Research-oriented: where students learn about research processes, the curriculum emphasizes as much the processes by which knowledge is produced as learning knowledge that has been achieved, and faculty try to engender a research ethos through their teaching.  
• Research-based: where students learn as researchers, the curriculum is largely designed around inquiry-based activities, and the division of roles between teacher and student is minimized.  
• Research tutored: where students learn in small group discussions with a teacher about research findings.” (p. 237) 

Although this research review asked about how students and faculty could foster more research collaboration, integration of many different kinds of engagement with research – including not just doing research but also engaging with its findings together with other students and an instructor – could prepare students to do research on their own, because they have engaged with research actively and passively, with multiple instructors and on many topics, over the course of their experience [in the department].  

These authors also discuss the benefits for students of instructors sharing their own research in class. Students responding to the survey said that instructors who did research were more enthusiastic and better at illuminating abstract topics. They also noted that those instructors were “cutting edge” and “up to date” (p. 241). This article complements others in this research review by noting that the ways that instructors’ research play into their teaching can benefit students. Motivating instructors to share their research in class with students could also incentivize their engagement with their field outside of the classroom.