The Educational Research Methods group is a SIG of AaeE. 

We encourage everyone to get involved in discussion on this page and through our sessions at the annual AaeE conference.

Check the AaeE conference page for the papers from the  conference.

At the 2010 conference in Sydney, we're planning to run ERM sessions around the theme of Evaluatng Learning and Teaching. We're going to have a workshop, an invited paper session and lots of papers from members. We're also planning an ERM breakfast on the Tuesday morning. Watch the conference pages for further details.

Information on Useful Research Methods in Engineering Education:

• Phenomenography
• Ethnographic research
• Observational methods
• Interviews and focus groups
• Content analysis

Here you can see the notes from a workshop held in Toowoomba. The powerpoint presentation is here. The participants asked for a glossary so I'm putting up one I've used with engineering postgards in the past. Please feel free to add to or contradict these offerings!

If you'd like to improve your knowledge of a particular research method in intensive short courses, check out the ACSPRI pages.  They run summer schools in Canberra and winter schools in Queensland with occasional special workshops and conferences. Most Australian universities are members of the consortium.

You may also be interested in what's going on in Europe: http://euro-eng-ed-research.pbwiki.com/

You'll likely need to request access.

The ASEE's ERM group is at: http://www.asee.org/activities/organizations/divisions/index.cfm#Educational

2010 WORKSHOPS

This year we are running workshops on Evaluation Research and Engineering Education.

The workshops are intended to help academics set up systematic ongoing data gathering and plan evaluations that can be used effectively in tenure and promotion rounds, in influencing policy and in generating research papers.

You can see the powerpoint slides here. There are also some blank matrices to play with here.

And the bibliography here.

Some of you may also be intersted in a new workshop for beginners to the area of educational research. You can find the slides here.

During that workshop there is heavy emphasis on increasing productivity through collaboration using techniques such as writing circles. You'll find some advice about organising a writing circle here.

If you'd like to know more contact Dr Lesley Jolly at ljolly@bigpond.net.au