SYLLABUS
Queens College/CUNY
Education Unit
Spring 2008
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 |
Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13 | Week 14 | Week 15 | Week 16 |
SEYS 778 – Seminar Research in Science Education II
Wednesday 7:10 pm to 9:40 pm
Powdermaker Hall Room 020
INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION:
Brian Murfin,
Ph.D.,
Office: Powdermaker Hall Room 150P,
Office Hours:
Wednesday 5:00
pm to 6:00 pm
Thursday 3:00
pm to 4:00 pm
And by
appointment
Please send me email to brian.murfin@qc.cuny.edu to arrange an online appointment using either:
- ScienceMOO, or
- DimDim
Phone: 718 998-5150
Email: brian.murfin@qc.cuny.edu
A. COURSE DESCRIPTION
SEYS 778. Seminar in Research in Science Education. 2 hr. plus conf.; 3 cr.
Prereq.: For SEYS 777, matriculation in MS in Education (science) program, completion of 20 graduate credits, and 30 credits (undergraduate and graduate) in general science; for SEYS 778, SEYS 777 during the preceding semester.
Education Unit Conceptual Framework:
This course is
being offered by the Secondary Education department which is part of the
Education Unit at Queens
College. The Education
Unit seeks to promote equity, excellence, and ethics in urban education and is committed to preparing teachers
and other education professionals who will:
Build inclusive communities that nurture and challenge all learners (Equity)
- Demonstrate professionalism, scholarship, efficacy, and evidence-based and reflective practice (Excellence)
- Diversity, democracy, and social justice (Ethics)
This course is aligned with the Education Unit’s commitment to preparing educational professionals to work in diverse urban and suburban communities. Specifically, the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that candidates will development/demonstrate at the successful completion of this course are directly linked to the Education Unit’s seven principles: 1) discipline specific competencies, 2) learning and development, 3) families and urban communities, 4) diversity, inclusion, democracy and social justice, 5) language and literacy, 6) curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and 7) technology.
B. COURSE GOALS/OBJECTIVES
This semester, participants will undertake a significant study in
science education. A strict schedule of check-off points is included to help
guide research investigations. See “Assignments, Due Dates and
Grading.” Final projects will be presented by each investigator in seminar
during April and May 2008. An appropriately formatted (APA style) research
paper of a study or project is due Finals Week.
No extensions.
Course objectives aligned with Core Values:
At the end of this course, students will have demonstrated competency in the following areas:
- Understanding the nature of social/scientific research and the scientific processes applied in research. Excellence, Ethics
- Understanding the ethical and philosophical principles adhered to in research. Equity, Excellence
- Designing a research project. Equity, Excellence, Ethics. Note: Research projects commonly embody many QCPs
- Conducting a research project. Equity, Excellence, Ethics
- Identifying needed data, their sources, and the procedures by which data are collected. Excellence
- Analyzing data appropriately. Excellence
- Answering research questions and testing hypotheses. Equity, Excellence, Ethics
- Stating findings and drawing conclusions. Excellence
- Presenting and defending a research project at a seminar [i.e.“So what?” factor]. Equity, Excellence, Ethics
- Writing an appropriate research report or project. Excellence
C. TEXTBOOK AND SUPPLIES
Text (Required):
Mertler,C.A.and Charles,C.M. (2005). Introduction to Educational Research - 5e. New York:Longman
References:
Gabel, D.L. (1993). Handbook of Research on Science Teaching and Learning. New York: Macmillan.
Burnaford,G.,Fischer,J.,Hobson,D. (1996). Teachers Doing Research: Practical Possibilities. New Jersey: Erlbaum Asso.
Glass, G., Hopkins, K. (1996). Statistical Methods in Education and Psychology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Web Resource: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/
D. DISCUSSION TOPICS – TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
Active class participation in discussions of focus topics expected. Excessive absences may result in a half-letter drop of the final grade.
1/30/2008 – Week 1 - First semester Reviews of the Literature and Proposal due. Semester overview, review of deadlines, syllabus;
- Browse and enjoy the following:
- Why the chicken crossed the road according to scientists
- How to Write a Scientific Paper by Eric Schulman
- Google directory of science humor
- Statistician Jokes
- Gary C. Ramseyer's First Iinternet Gallery of Statistics Jokes
- The Archives Of Statistics Fun by Gary Ramseyer
- Guernsey McPearson's Statistical Menagerie
- Commentaries on Significance TestingCompiled by David F. Parkhurst, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405
- Science jokes Science humor collected by Joachim Verhagen
- Hiawatha Designs an Experiment
- Statistician Jokes by Keith M. Gregg
- Statistical Humor
- Profession Jokes Statisticians
- Statistical Quotes By Rainer Wuerlaender
- Science Humor Webring
- the Straight Dope
- Complete the research needs assessment,
- in-class activity- science education research article review
2/6/2008 - Week 2 - Discussion of research priorities, including issues related to data and data collection. Data collection procedures
In-class activities:
- Celebrate Chinese New Year's Eve! an opportunity for a multicultural science connection
- review the Chapter 7 Lecture Outline
- Use your textbook and work in pairs to complete the following:
Assignment: Chap. 7. Due: Timeline
2/13/2008 - Week 3 - Issues related to the design of a qualitative and
quantitative data collection instrument. In groups: Bring 10 copies to class for feedback. e.g.
questionnaires, inventories, surveys or unit tests. Also: Issues related to data collation in
qualitative and quantitative studies.
Assignment: Chapter 7.
2/20/2008 - Week 4 - Issues related to data analysis. Discussion
of (your) data analysis plans. How will you report the outcome(s) of your
study? Measures of central tendency, inferential
statistics and tests of significance will be reviewed.
In-class activities:review the Chapter 8 Lecture outline
- Read through Basic Applied Statistics Techniques
- Descriptive statistics -decision tree
- Inferential statistics - decision tree
- Use your textbook and work in pairs to complete the following:
- Complete the "Random assignment assignment"
- Go through the Selecting Statistics site
- Complete the Chapter 8 Developmental Activity - Statistical Analysis Decisions
- IMPORTANT: Post your data analysis plan on the Discussion Board in BlackBoard (check on the Discussion Board for instructions)
- IMPORTANT: Make sure all of your data collection instruments have been posted on the Discussion Board in BlackBoard
- IMPORTANT: Make sure you have posted your Research Proposal and Timeline on the Discussion Board in BlackBoard, and read the instructor's comments.
- Sign up for your individual conference. The current schedule is in BlackBoard under the Course Documents. If you have not signed up, let me know your preference.
Assignment: Chapter 8, Appendix pp. 337-358. Sign-up for conference schedule 3/5, 3/12 and 3/19, 3/26.
Useful Links:- Experimental design summary
- Random assignment tool
- Quantitative Software
- Qualitative research software - open source
- Weft - for interview data and written text and field notes
- Text analysis software
- Transana - for audio and video
2/27/2008 - Week 5 - Individual conferences (20 minutes each) . Additional online activities designed to help you with your research project will take place while the individual conferences are taking place. Please make sure to check the course outline online for updates each week.
Class activities:
1. Start your Master's project paper draft using Google Docs
- Sign up for a Google account if you do not already have one.
- Create a blank Google doc and copy and paste the Final paper template into your new Google doc and save. Rename your paper so that it has your last name and seys778, e.g. YournameSEYS778. Check the following links for information on your research paper:
- Share your document with me. My email address is qcscied@gmail.com
- Start working on the draft of your Master's project paper. You can keep a backup of your paper by copying and pasting text from the Google Doc into Microsoft Word.
3. Post updates on the progress of your research project on the Discussion Board in BlackBoard
4. Pick one of the following online statistics textbooks and go through the introductory chapters:
3/5/2008 – Week 6 - Individual conferences (20 minutes each) Additional online activities designed to help you with your research project will take place while the individual conferences are taking place. Please make sure to check the course outline online for updates each week.
Class Activities:
1. Download Open Office. An introduction to data entry (Open Office Base)and analysis (Open Office Calc) (you can also use Microsoft Access and Excel if you have it at home). Open Office Base is a database. We will create a table first, then a form to enter data. After the data is entered, it is easy to copy the table into Open Office Calc (this is the spreadsheet). In Open Office Calc, charts, graphs and tables can be made just like in Excel. You can also export the data from Calc if you need to do more statistical tests in SPSS. For now, just install Open Office. I will have the tutorials up in time for our class this Wednesday. This week we will work on data entry and the following week will be devoted to producing tables, charts, and graphs and importing the data into SPSS. (You may also want to download and install OpenOffice.orgGoogleDocs. This allows you to import and export docs from OpenOffice to Google Docs)- Data entry tutorial using OpenOffice.org Base and Calc (Text version)
- Data entry demonstration using OpenOffice Base and Calc (Video) (The fonts may be hard to read so you might want to maximize the window so that it is "full screen" On a Windows computer you can press the "F11" key to maximize, and then when you want to return, you can click the minimize icon. )
2. Read "Pitfalls of data analysis"
Useful Links:
- Research methodology and statistics
- a gigantic list of statistics tutorials
- Excel tutorial on statistics
- Stats Tutorial Microsoft Excel basics
- Excel tutorials and Learning manuals
3/12/2008 – Week 7 - Individual conferences (20 minutes each). Additional online activities designed to help you with your research project will take place while the individual conferences are taking place. Please make sure to check the course outline online for updates each week.
Class activities:
- An introduction to data analysis with SPSS.
- Go through the SPSS tutorial. Check the other tutorials in the useful links below.
- Pick a sample data file from this link and open it in SPSS and explore. You could do descriptive stats, try printing a table or graph and explore the statistical tests you might be using with your own data.
- A free, open source alternative to SPSS, OpenStat (Please note: OpenStat is not available for the Mac so you will need to do this at home if you wish to use OpenStat)
- Quick Guide to OpenStat
- Sample .tab files for use in OpenStat (These are great learning tools, pick data similar to yours and explore)
Useful links:
- SPSS tutorial
- SPSS resource and tutorial
- Tutorial for SPSS for Windows
- A Beginner's Guide to SPSS
- the Very Basics of SPSS: Useful Resources
3/19/2008 – Week 8 - Individual conferences (20 minutes each) (Completed). Additional online activities designed to help you with your research project will take place while the individual conferences are taking place. Please make sure to check the course outline online for updates each week.
Class activities:- An introduction to the analysis of qualitative data - read through the materials below:
- Online QDA - Complete Beginner
- Introduction to qualitative analysis
- Go though the following activities:
- Qualitative research
- Beginner's guide to action research
- List of software
- open source software:
- Transana (older version is free)
- Weft QDA
- Express Scribe (interview transcription software)
- ToscanaJ
- TAMS and TAMS Analyzer (Text-Analysis Markup System)
- Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis software
3/26/2008 – Week 9 - NO CLASS - CLASSES FOLLOW A MONDAY SCHEDULE
Updates of all studies/ projects should be posted on the Discussion Board in BlackBoard.
Due next week: Summary of data analysis to date (1-2 pages) Trouble-shooting research seminar.
4/2/2009 - Week 10 - TBA - Due:
1-2 pp. IMPORTANT: Summary of data analysis is due!
Data analysis Summary should be posted on the Discussion Board in
BlackBoard. Sign up for day and time for your Oral presentation.
(The sign up sheet is in BlackBoard, under Tools, Wiki Tool)
4/9/2008 – Week 11 – NO CLASS 4/9/2008 - Session replaced
by SCONYC Conference April 12, 2008
- Professional Conference Day: SCONYC CONFERENCE –SATURDAY, April 12,
2008. @ Stuyvesant HS(8:15 am -3:30 PM) 345
Chambers St. NYC
4/16/2008 – Week 12 – Preparation for oral presentations, work on data analysis and writing of papers in class
SPRING BREAK (4/19-4/27/07)
Schedule of Seminar Presentations – Topics (tentative)
4/30/2008 – Week 13 – Topics TBA (Please note: if no one is scheduled to present this week then - Preparation for oral presentations, work on data analysis and writing of papers in class
5/7/2008 – Week 14 – Topics - TBA
5/14/2008 – Week 15 – Topics - TBA
5/21/2008 – Week 16 - IMPORTANT WE WILL MEET FROM 6:15PM TO 8:15PM : Two copies of your completed thesis due. Finals Day 5/21: No extensions.
A plagiarized paper (any part) or paper authored by outside sources will result in a final grade of F and noted on your record.
Some variation in the syllabus may occur due to scheduling changes.
E. ASSIGNMENTS, DUE DATES AND GRADING PLAN
You are responsible for meeting these target dates. A missed deadline for any check-off will result in a grade penalty unless a written request is submitted and approved at least one week prior to the due date.- A schedule for conducting and completing your study should be compiled during the first week of the semester, by February 6th, contingent on proposal approval.
- Requests for extensions must be made in writing with an alternate timeline and justification, subject to approval by Feb. 27th if your proposed schedule differs by more than 2 weeks from the target dates stated in 3, 4 below.
- By the week of April 2nd,your research should be completed i.e. collection of primary and secondary data for quasi-experimental, descriptive and action research (i.e. questionnaires completed, data collected). If your study is descriptive, historical or in an area of science or an area solely dependent on sources of published data, all information, resources and printed matter for your study/project should be in your provenance by this date.
- A "first review"
of raw data or collation of descriptive material is due April 9, 2008. To be submitted using the Digital Dropbox and
posted on the discussion board in BlackBoard..
- For quantitative studies, a
small sample of (or description, if data is not yet
collated) of the data (in tables, figures or other appropriate form) and a
description of how you will analyze your research data/ material. Include
the descriptive and inferential statistics you plan to use. - For qualitative research,
non-quantitative case studies, descriptive research papers, and other
non-empirical studies: A description of
the chapters or sections completed, and a brief description of what remains to
be done. The paper should be 1-2 pages, maximum.
- Presentations of research projects will take place from April 18th – May 14th. You can use PowerPoint, Impress, Zoho Creator or other technology tools to present your project. Before preparing your presentation take a look at this link. You will be required to sign up for a day and time for your presentation. The oral presentations should be 15-20 minutes (approximately 12-15 slides or other equivalent). Have handouts of your study/project.
- Two copies of the research
study are due on or before May 21, 2008. No extensions.
The format and style for your project should follow APA guidelines. - Quotes from primary or secondary sources should not exceed 200 words, properly referenced. Copying of other people’s ideas and/or work without proper attribution is plagiarism. Any such infraction will result in a grade of “F” for the class.
Each paper should be a minimum of 20 pages, double-spaced, 12 font, with
standard margins. It should include the
following sections:
- Title
- Table of contents
- Abstract
- Introduction (including purpose, salient portions of lit. review) conceptual framework
- Methods (including how data was collected and analyzed)
- Analysis (including tables, figures)
- Conclusions, reflections and implications
- References
- Appendix (including
questionnaires, test instruments, sample exhibits)
- Individual Conferences
Conferences are intended to help the researcher complete a blueprint for
the semester and address unresolved questions about the research being
conducted. Conferences will focus on reviewing updates on: precise wording of
the research question, design (i.e.
plan/procedures for the investigation or “treatment”), the data being collected
(sources and quality, quantity of primary, secondary data) and target dates for
each phase of work. If you plan to
conduct a study with empirical data or any study involving quantitative
analysis, consider, in particular: a
statement of the hypothesis, problem or question, treatment plan (if
appropriate), precise nature of data needed, the type and
characteristics of data
collection instruments to be used, (tests, questionnaires...), methods for
collecting and recording the data; sampling,
mechanisms for controlling possible confounding variables, plans for analyzing
data and limitations of the study. If
your study falls into a domain that does not fit the above categories, bring
proposal outline with timeline for completion and a 5-10 page excerpt (data) of
your work in progress.
Timely completion of required checkpoints
above.
25
Quality of
presentation
25
Final written research project
paper 50
Total:
100
Final Research Paper/Curriculum Project and Presentation Information:
- Guidelines for writing your final research paper
- Final research paper rubric
- Oral presentation rubric
- Curriculum project rubric
F. FIELDWORK REQUIREMENTS
A class trip to SCONYC, a professional science teacher conference, is planned for Saturday, 4/12/08. The conference will replace class on 4/9/08.
G. THE COMMITTEE FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN SUBJECTS (IRB)
If you have a question about conducting research projects involving human subjects and need guidance, please visit: http://qcpages.qc.eduORSP/index.htm#humans or contact Ms. Barabara P. Lermand, MA blermand@qc1.qc.edu
H. CUNY POLICY ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
Academic dishonesty is prohibited in The City University of New York and is punishable by penalties, including failing grades, suspension, and expulsion as provided at:
http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/provost/policies/index.html
I. ADA Statement
Students with disabilities needing academic accommodation should: (1) register with and provide documentation to the Special Services Office, Kiely 171; (2) bring a letter to the instructor indicating the need for accommodation and what type. This should be done during the first week of class. For more information about services available to Queens students contact: Pratik Patel, Special Services Office; 171 Kiely Hall; 718 997-5870 (8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.). E-mail address: pratik_patel@qc.edu
J. USE OF STUDENT WORK
All teacher education programs in New York State undergo periodic reviews by
accreditation agencies and the state education department. For these purposes, samples of students’ work
are made available to those professionals conducting the review. Student anonymity is assured under these
circumstances. If you do not wish to
have your work made available for these purposes, please let the professor know
before the start of the second class meeting. Your cooperation is greatly
appreciated.