Designing evaluation and research into edcational initiatives

College of Health Sciences Summer Research Program (Photo credit: Marquette University)

Jo-Anne Kelder, Juliette Sondermyer, Rob Phillips and Anne Rothwell presented this session where they introduced the Global Perspectives programme and the associated case study design and findings. The project was based around developing a programme that would be embedded into the first year units offered by the Faculty of Health Science.

The pilot programme was used to inform the research design. The programme is not yet online, and the first 2 phases have provided quite a lot of data, and they are ready with phase 3 where they will be working with 2013 students.

One of the recommendations was to have a supportive system in place when designing research, especially when using an existing framework. In this case, the author mentored the researchers through the process. There were some issues about applying the framework from a book, including an alternative focus, and idealised versus actual phases of research. The mentoring role was extremely important.

It was an interesting paper, especially the way that the presenters identified some of the positives and issues around their approach, but the real bonus about having the author as a mentor. I would have really liked to have seem some of the emerging themes and findings, and will watch with interest.