Projects

First steps in historical research

Description

Round 3 Teaching Development Grant

This project will create an on-line facility to help students to develop transferable research skills.

Abstract

The principal aim was to create an easily accessible on-line resource that would be of use principally to undergraduate students planning final year dissertations/independent studies in History and any student or local historian working independently about to embark on their first research project. The text is designed to guide users step-by-step through the planning stage, thus helping them to avoid 'wrong turnings' and 'blind alleys' and to develop a viable research project.

It was envisaged that 'First steps in historical research' would normally be used to complement more conventional teaching strategies and it was thus integrated into the teaching of HIST 2001: An Introduction to Historical Research, a mandatory module taken by all second year History single and joint honours students at University College Worcester, in the spring semester of 2003-04.

A subsidiary aim of 'First steps in historical research' was that students should be given opportunities to help each other by supplying encouragement, advice and critical comment as they worked through the planning stage of their projects. Group discussion and e-mail interaction were encouraged and this was identified as an important issue when a sample of the student's work for HIST 2001 was evaluated at the end of the module.

Results

Some difficulties arose in executing the project as originally envisaged:

1. UCW's projected Web CT facility was not up and running at the start of the project, so that student interaction in electronic form was via e-mail rather than discussion board;
2. the tutor mainly responsible for 'First steps' moved to another institution, thus there was a delay before he could complete the evaluation of the sample of student work submitted at the end of the module.

Despite these difficulties, however, the first run-through of the project was completed and eventually evaluated.

The sample of 12/36 students whose written work, e-mail transcripts and verbal comments via focus group formed the basis of the evaluation were virtually unanimous in their view that the course materials provided had been very helpful in guiding them through the early stages of research planning. given the local difficulties (now resolved) in getting the material on-line, students were guided through each stage via a hand-out introduced by the tutor at a tutorial session - the groups comprising students with similar or matching research interests - and developed the confidence to pursue their own enquiries via library and internet resources before reporting back to the group at the subsequent session. The course materials, in the view of staff teaching the module, were especially helpful in encouraging students to narrow the scope of their proposed research projects. Students began to see the importance of asking a well-defined research question rather than simply trying to describe some aspect of the past.

The project enjoyed only mixed success in encouraging students to interact helpfully in the development of their projects. There was some exchange of useful information - a useful search engine or website identified and details passed on to the student's 'partner' and sometimes to other members of the group - but little in the way of critical commentary. Students were, however, very keen to encourage each other - saying that they found each other's work 'interesting' and generally motivating each other to 'keep going'. The importance of this should not be minimised especially when it led to practical consequences - for example, when students discovered a common interest and made arrangements to visit the County Record Office in tandem.

Overall, the principles underlying 'First steps' appear to be sound and the course materials prepared proved fit for their purpose, but students do need to develop the confidence to interact more constructively and at a more intellectual level than was evident in this first run. This is probably most likely to be achieved through a more interventionist approach by tutors in monitoring and helping to steer the developing dialogue between students. Now that UCW's Web CT is up and running, there is every possibility of working constructively on-line with students to this end. This will also help staff to deal with the problem of the very few under-achieving students who lacked the confidence to participate interactively at any level.

Amount