My cohort posed some really good questions for Dr. Veletsianos. Some of the takeaways that I will be reflecting on while I think about my thesis and future research projects are the following:
When thinking about a research question, don’t focus on the technology itself– look at issues that we have in education and through research, explore the solutions.
Tools and Resources that Dr. Veletsianos uses in research:
- Traditional tools when conducting interviews – audio recording device, computer or iPhone
- Surveys – survey creation tools i.e. Qualtrics 360 (to conduct complex branching), Google Forms. Depending on the complexity of the project, Dr. Veletsianos will determine which one to use.
- Larger projects (with multiple groups) – Dropbox or Google docs – to write or edit documents collaboratively
- To find articles and resources – Library, Google scholar
- To organize articles – Mendeley
- Qualitative analysis software– Deduce, Invivo – tagging with codes
- Descriptive stats and regressions – Excel
- One important integral resource – Colleagues –Very important to bounce ideas off each other, co-write and co- analyze data.
One must remember: Technological and human resources are not all applied to every research project.
When thinking about disseminating our research, we must keep in mind that “researchers should solve real world problems and have real world solutions” (Veletsianos, 2018). In order to reach our broader audiences, we must consider using blogs, social media, placing ads in local papers and speaking with journalists. We have to understand who our audience is and what their expectations are because we can impact communities that we are interested in reaching.
Dr. Veletsianos had some wise words for us which will definitely help us to grow and evolve as future researchers.
References:
Image: Research (clip art). (2017). Retrieved from http://www.clipartpanda.com/clipart_images/scientific-research-research-59353352
Veletsianos, G. (2018, August). George Veletsianos on Research [Mp4]. Victoria: Royal Roads University.
I enjoyed your discussion of some of the ideas that Dr. Veletsianos shared. You seem to have absorbed a great deal from his audio which I also thought was very informative.