Week 00: General Overview
Start as you mean to go on!
How to prepare for each week in Research Methods
Many hundreds of years ago, I was a Boy Scout, before that, I was a Brownie too, but that’s a story for another day. ‘Be Prepared’ is a valuable piece of advice.
And that’s what I’m trying to help with here. You aren’t going to get the most out of the timetabled sessions, or your extensive independent study, if you don’t have a fair idea of what you need to do, by when, and what each activity entails.
Your teaching team goes to a great deal of effort to answer any and all questions you might have, and we engineer the lectures and labs to preview any expected questions and also allow space for questions of the unexpected variety. But you have to ask them. To do this, you need to have a look ahead and identify anything that needs clarification.
Each week, the Lab Tutors assemble a list of the FAQs from each lab and check to see if any themes are emerging and Gordon will then communicate any relevant answers via the module forum.
Remember, a lack of preparation on your part is not an emergency on our part. And if you aren’t clear on what you need to do, it’s down to you to review all the VLE page content for information (it will be there), or ask the question via the forum or discuss it with your Lab Tutor in the lab.
Lectures are pretty straightforward. The content will be released on the Wednesday prior to the timetabled session, and will comprise both a prepare summary like this, but also the lecture slides and signposts to key readings. I release these on a Wednesday, as it allows me to incorporate any changes arising from the labs or the previous lecture.
Review the lecture slides, have a poke around in the readings and try to familiarise yourself with any concepts that may be new to you. But the major point of the lectures is that you come along, pin back your ears, and engage with the content. More on that in the Module Overview.
You have a 2 hour lab each week, and although there will be some guided activities and skills shared, these sessions are ‘working sessions’ - designed to allow you to work productively on your Mini-Dissertations individually, or more usually, in your groups. It is expected that you coordinate with your group between classes, it’s not a great use of the session to use that to catch everyone up on things and have a bit of bants. 2 hours of industry will keep you moving through the stages of the module well, reducing the amount of time you might need to work independently, or more realistically, freeing that up for other things you need to prioritise, whether it’s work, life, or love.
Or walkies with the faithful hound! ta ta G