I am teaching a graduate research class at New York University that begins tonight–Research Process and Methodology (Y51.1900.002.FA08). The course is an introduction to research, and is a required class in the Human Resource Management and Development MS degree program.

I am using 3 texts for this class:

1. Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2. Locke, L. F., Silverman, S. J., & Spirduso, W. W. (2004). Reading and understanding research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
3. Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (2001).  (5th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

While I have more formal learning objectives than I can count, there are really only 3 things I am hoping to achieve in this class. I really want my students to:

• understand that research can help inform and explain practice
• know that there is not a single “right” way to engage in research
• realize that research does not have to be scary

I suppose the main reason I am so excited to teach this class is because of my own three personal objectives for this class that I am finally articulating above. I suffered through numerous research courses, and when I finally learned those three points, research was suddenly very accessible and valuable to me. I only wish somebody would have told me and helped me understand those points earlier in my academic work. They would have saved me from much pain and suffering all on my own.

Tags: nyu, qualitative research, reflective practice, Research, scps

This past week I raised the issue of rebranding my blog by updating my tagline. Thanks to all those wonderful colleagues who offered their comments on this, I am making an update and will “try it on” for a week or so. If I like it, I will keep it; if it still feels somehow incomplete or inaccurate, I will adjust it again.

So, I went from:

Reflective practice in organizational learning, educational technology, and postmodern society.

to

Fostering the practice of postmodern learning and research.

I believe this includes my passions:

• reflective practice
• learning paradigms
• teaching and learning
• postmodernism and post-structuralism
• constructivism and critical theory
• qualitative research
• technology enhanced learning and educational technology
• communities of practice

I wonder if those who know me (or those who may have only recently met me for the first time) think this “fits?”

Tags: community of practice, learning, postmodernism, rebranind, reflectice practice, Research

One of the discussion lists I have recently started to follow, the one from the Association of Internet Researchers, had an email posting that I found very useful, and just received the author’s permission (via email) to repost (as it was not available online outside of its original archived posting). Thank you, Alecea Standlee (who is doing doctoral work at Syracuse University), for putting this together.

I am reposting this without making changes or alterations.

*****

Methods

Chen, Shing-Ling, G. Jon Hall, and Mark D. Johns. 2003. Online Social Research: Methods, Issues, & Ethics. Peter Lang Pub Inc.

Dicks, Bella, and Bruce Mason. 2008.

Hewson, Claire. 2008. “Internet-Mediated Research as an Emergent Method and Its Potential Role in Facilitating Mixed Methods Research.” P. 740 in HandBook of Emergant Methods, edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Leavy. The Guilford Press.

Kazmer, Michelle, and BO Xie. 2008. “Qualitative Interviewing In Internet Studies: Playing with the media, playing with the method .” Information, Communication & Society 11:257-278.

Kendall, Lori. 2002. Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. University of California Press.

Knobel, Michele, Colin Lankshear, and Chris Bigum. 2007. A New Literacies Sampler. Peter Lang Publishing.

Mann, Chris, and Fiona Stewart. 2000. Internet Communication and Qualitative Research: A Handbook for Researching Online. 1st ed. Sage Publications Ltd.

Mulder, Ingrid, and Joke Kort. 2008. “Mixed Emotions, Mixed Methods: The Role of Emergent Technologies in Studying User Experience in Context.” P. 740 in HandBook of Emergant Methods, edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Leavy. The Guilford Press.

Palgrave. 2005. Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. 1st ed. Palgrave.

Additional readings

Anderson, Ben, and Karina Tracey. 2001. “Digital Living: The Impact (or Otherwise) of the Internet on Everyday Life.” American Behavioral Scientist 45:456-475.

Bakardjieva, Maria. 2005. Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life. London: SAGE.

Bargh, John A. , and Katelyn Y. A. McKenna. 2004. “The Internet and Social Life.” Annual Review of Psychology 55:573-590.

Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton University Press.

Lévy, Pierre. 2001. Cyberculture. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press.

McKenna, Katelyn Y. A., and John A. Bargh. 1999. “Causes and Consequences of Social Interaction on the Internet: a Conceptual Framework.” Media Psychology 1.

Palfrey, John, and Urs Gasser. 2008. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. Basic Books.

DiMaggio, Paul. Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, and John P. Robinson. 2003. “Social Implications of the Internet.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:307-336.

Schaap, Frank. 2002. The Words that Took Us There.

Talamo, Alessandra , and Beatrice Ligorio. 2004. “Strategic Identities in Cyberspace.” CyberPsychology $ Behavior 4:109-122.

Thomas, Angela. 2007. Youth Online: Identity and Literacy in the Digital Age. Peter Lang Publishing.

Turkle, Sherry. 1997. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Simon & Schuster.

Walker, Katherine. 2000. “”It’s Difficult to Hide It”: The Presentation of Self on Internet Home Pages.” Qualitative Sociology 23:99-120.

Wellman, Barry , Anabal Quan-Haase, Jeffrey Boase, and Wenhong Chen. 2003. “The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism.” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 8.

Cybercommunity

Ess, Charles, and Fay Sudweeks. 2001. Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village. State University of New York Press.

Kendall, Lori. 2002. Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. University of California Press.

Raacke, John, and Jennifer Bonds-Raacke. 2008. “MySpace and Facebook: Applying the Uses and Gratifications Theory to Exploring Friend-Networking Sites.” CyberPsychology $ Behavior 11:169-174.

General Cyber Theory

Cherny, Lynn, and Elizabeth Reba Weise eds. 1996. Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seal Press.

Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. 2001. The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium. 1st ed. The Guilford Press.

Burkhalter, Byron. 1999. “Reading Race online: Discovering Racial Idenity in Usenet Discussions..” P. 336 in Communities in Cyberspace, edited by Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock.

Dyer-Witheford, Nick. 1999. Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism. University of Illinois Press.

Flanagan, Mary, and Austin Booth eds. 2002. Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. The MIT Press.

Huysman & V. Wulf (2004. Social Capital And Information Technology (Pp. 113-135). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Leung, Linda. 2005. Virtual Ethnicity: Race, Resistance And The World Wide Web. Ashgate Publishing.

Marshall, Jonathan Paul. 2007. Living on Cybermind: Categories, Communication, and Control. Peter Lang Publishing.

McLuhan, Marshall; Agel, Jerome. 1967. The Medium is the Message: an Inventory of Effects. Bantam Books.

Nakamura, Lisa. 2002. Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. 1st ed. Routledge.

Nakamura, Lisa. 2007. Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet. Univ Of Minnesota Press.

Stone, Allucquère Rosanne. 1996. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. The MIT Press.

Rheingold, Howard. 2000. The Virtual Community.

Smith, Marc A., and Peter Kollock. 1999. Communities in Cyberspace.

Vangelisti, Anita L., Daniel Perlman, Jeffrey Boase, and Barry Wellman, eds. 2006. “Personal Relationships: On And Off The Internet.” P. 914 in The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships. Cambridge University Press.

Wellman, Barry , Janet Salaff, et al. 2003. “Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and Virtual Community.” Annual Review of Sociology 22:213-238.

*****

Perhaps having this more readily available, it may help some researchers (or budding researchers) out there.

Let’s see, what can we add . . .

Tags: Online Learning, Research

Are you a Human Resource Management (HRM) professional or manager? If not, do you know one?

I am redesigning and teaching a graduate Human Resource class in the Fall, Research Process and Methodology at New York University, and I am looking to speak (briefly) with HR professionals to ask them one simple question:

1. What research skills or methods do you or your team need to know and understand to do your job?

If anybody can direct me to any responses, please either email me at jk904 (at) nyu (dot) edu or please comment below. I want to meet the needs of my future students, and what better way to do this than by asking people already in the field?

Thank you.

Tags: human resource management, Research

Another editorial I wrote with two of my colleagues, Joanne Singleton at Pace University and Rona Levin at Pace University and Visiting Nurse Service of New York, was just published in the current issue of Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, Volume 21, Number 4. Entitled Disciplinary Perspectives on Evidence-Based Practice: The More the Merrier, we considered the question:  What does evidence-based practice mean and how is it defined and used by various disciplines?

Do I smell a research thread around evidence-based practice, especially in the area of scholar-practitioners? Let’s see, where is my copy of Donald Schon’s Reflective Practitioner?

Tags: evidence-based practice, reflective practitioner, Research, theory

The first article I have published as the lead author just came out in the Winter 2007 issue of Human Resource Development Quarterly, Volume 18, Issue 4. HRDQ is the research journal of the Academy of Human Resource Development. The editorial is entitled Is HRD Research Making a Difference in Practice?, and I wrote it with my writing colleague, Robin Yap.

As scholar-practitioners, we are very interested in the bridge between research and practice, and how that affects organizations and how people function within them. We discussed the value of scholar-practitioners, those people who seek to bring the findings of research into practical use, so that decisions and processes within organizations have more than simply best practices to follow–they are supported by sound research that is in turn built upon applicable theory.

Our conclusion is that it is critical for the field of HRD that research positively impacts practice. After all, if it does not, then it belongs in the fascinating and grand but practically useless world of Plato’s Forms.

Technorati Tags: AHRD, HRD, scholar-practitioner

Tags: HRD, Human Resource Development, Research, scholar-practitioner