The first module in the ‘Using the RSD’ series is aboout how you may introduce your students to the RSD facets by experiencing these for themselves in large class settings. The module has five examples, with one example explained in detail and another showing footage of students engaging in deriving the facets of the RSD. It runs for about 20 minutes.
The module is called ‘Introducing your students to the RSD facets’ and available here:
This is the first module because, after interviewing graduates we found:
– understanding RSD-based rubrics was difficult but important
– there was a risk that rubrics could remain as ‘frozen conversations’ rather than helpful documents
– numerous encounters, including the ‘deriving activities’ described in the module are important for long term research skill development.
The above evaluation is found in the report on RSD emebedded across whole degree programs.
If you watch this module, you could comment on ideas that you have on what stimulus you might use in your context, and how you could organise the learning tasks so that students come up with differentiated lists. I for one would be interested! The more discipline-specific examples that we can gather, the better armed we will be to help students develop richly their research skills in multiple contexts.
The first module on how to use the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework is now available. Its called ‘Introducing your students to the RSD facets’ and available here:
What are the long term advantages when students encounter explicit research skill development and assessment, framed by the RSD, in multiple courses across their degree program? Our study, funded by the Office of Teaching and Learning (Australia), interviewed 27 Graduates one year after completion of such degree programs as well as 23 students during their honours year after encountering RSD in multiple courses in their earlier years to find out.
A large proportion of graduates found that RSD helped them to develop research skills that were highly applicable to their working environment.
Honours students found that the RSD was helpful with the development of their own identity as researchers.
The report on the project ‘Outcomes and uptake of explicit research skill development across degree programs:’Its got a practical outcome in my world, in what I do’ can be found here:
One theme that emerged was the helpfulness of using the same framework in different context, to enable students to see the big picture. As one Honours student said:
Since the beginning [of First Year], they have … been consistently applying this structure to all of our assignments, we have come to think that way for science.
In the contexts investigated, the RSD was able to provide a common conceptual structure, and yet allow for a great deal of diversity of approaches.
How important is it to provide a coherent thread across university education, from your perspective? And how effective could the RSD be in helping educators to achieve this coherence across diverse courses of a university degree?
Feel free to comment and to complete the poll below.
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