Designing for Student Engagement in an Online Doctoral Research Method Course

Abstract

This paper is a report on preliminary findings of a scholarship of teaching and learning inquiry into a redesign of an online doctoral research course to include purposefully designed cycles of less formal auditory synchronous discussions with more formal text-based asynchronous discussions. The research design includes thematic analyses of archived auditory and text-based student engagements with learning resources, and with peers and the instructor, as well as student feedback via focus groups and individual interviews. The research design, data collection and data analysis procedures are explained and preliminary findings discussed. Recommendations for practice are shared.