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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Understanding Research Methods by University of London

4.6
stars
7,866 ratings

About the Course

This MOOC is about demystifying research and research methods. It will outline the fundamentals of doing research, aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at the postgraduate level. It places the student experience at the centre of our endeavours by engaging learners in a range of robust and challenging discussions and exercises befitting SOAS, University of London's status as a research-intensive university and its rich research heritage. The course will appeal to those of you who require an understanding of research approaches and skills, and importantly an ability to deploy them in your studies or in your professional lives. In particular, this course will aid those of you who have to conduct research as part of your postgraduate studies but do not perhaps have access to research methods courses, or for those of you who feel you would like additional support for self-improvement. No prior knowledge or experience in research is required to take this course and as such, the course is for everyone. This MOOC draws on a wealth of existing course material developed to support research training across SOAS, University of London and particularly drawing from the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD). In 2015, the course was nominated for the prestigious Guardian University Award for its innovative approach to online learning. Participation in or completion of this online course will not confer academic credit for University of London programmes...

Top reviews

CS

May 9, 2022

Really easy to follow and great advice from all the experts! It has helped me organise from the beginning of my dissertation and I feel more comfortable getting started on what is a big project ahead.

A

Jul 26, 2017

This is wonderful course especially for research scholars, one suggestion is instead of giving articles from books, please provide a PPT which will be more effective ! thank you for wonderful session.

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2301 - 2325 of 2,503 Reviews for Understanding Research Methods

By stellamary

Jan 24, 2017

good one

By Akpila R

Jun 16, 2020

Helpful

By Dorji w

Nov 12, 2024

great

By 2303C 5

Oct 27, 2023

good

By Mohammed G

Sep 4, 2023

good

By Ramisetti s k (

Dec 24, 2021

Good

By Ghazi K

Jul 8, 2021

good

By Harshad Y

Apr 7, 2021

good

By Geo J D

Mar 4, 2021

good

By Mahmoud M A m

Feb 11, 2021

لطيف

By Happy A

Nov 5, 2020

good

By Nivetha. G

Aug 24, 2020

Good

By Ravindra J P

Jul 22, 2020

Good

By Mostofa K

Jul 18, 2020

Good

By Rehan N

Jun 10, 2020

Good

By Ankit G

May 27, 2020

nice

By Ismail O

Nov 14, 2019

Good

By Dr. A K

Oct 14, 2022

👍

By Erick C

Apr 2, 2017

ok

By Ujjawal D

Jul 22, 2022

t

By Dr. V S

Oct 4, 2021

O

By Emily W

Nov 29, 2020

I wanted to give this course 5 stars because the content is really good, all the reading materials were incredibly useful and I enjoyed the videos and was able to take a lot from them. Unfortunately the forums aren't used as discussion forums - instead of any discussion about the materials there are just streams of requests for people to review submissions, which shouldn't be needed as the course is structured so that each time you make one submission you review three others, also because the e-tivities are only peer reviewed the quality and usefulness of the feedback is mostly not good, out of 4 submissions I have had 10 peer reviews so far and only one of them followed the advice to focus on what was good (but didn't give any suggestions for improvement) and the rest have either been single word responses (eg 'good' or 'fantastic'), despite the recommendation being at least 50 words, some had simply given information about tangentially related topics (a bunch of data about elementary school reading interventions, and a summary of some of the information from one of the other articles which I hadn't been responding to as the task clearly and in bold stated 'or'). This lack of meaningful interaction with anyone left me feeling disheartened and that I was working in a void. I think the moderators should be keeping the discussion forums on track, and that some feedback from the course teachers, even if only for the last submission would make a big difference. I didn't but the certificate because I didn't think that the assessment method for the course was rigourous enough to confer any value to having passed.

By Stuart S

Nov 12, 2020

I think there should have been better descriptions of the assignments and better controls over the work product of students (some of which was extremely weak)

also, the coursework regarding the Research Approach and relation of Designs and Methods was clunky:

it should have started with the Problem Identification (not just through literature review, but trends and current problems), then researcher dynamics, their personal experiences, resources available, etc, and the audience and the purpose of the project. After the stage has been set:

Researcher - Worldview, experience, capabilities, resources

Situation - audience, purpose, attributes, time availability

Project Determination - research Problem identification (Literature Review, Trends in Social and behavioral information, economic background and current issues) - Research Problem

Establish the Research Question - Why is it important, who it impacts, what is the implication from determining an answer, its utility and impact on knowledge, along with research ability and time. Time should be spent on refining the specific question, based on research ability

Research Approach - more clearly state the identification of the overall approach, why is it important to establish Qual v Quant v Mixed, and clearly establish

Research Design - How a design fits into the overall "Approach" (an Approach implies certain designs be used, why and how)

Research Methods - these should be stated and communicated as the specific execution Research Procedures

the course needs to be reordered starting with the high level first and then getting more granular

By Anders L

Jan 16, 2021

I do not recall reading anywhere what level this course is intended for so if I missed that information, I apologize. I signed up for this course as I am interested in (graduate level) research, as indicated in my discussions around PhD work, and I believed this course would be helpful in decemenating other academic works I will read in the future. I have completed graduate level work in Research Designs & Methodology so I suspect this course was not intended for people such as myself. I enjoyed the refresher though, and I will definitely be revisiting the three chapters on Literature Reviews, as this was not an aspect that was covered very thoroughly in my graduate course and would make up a LARGE portion of any work on a PhD thesis.

As for this course specifically, I found some of the video segments very repetitive - several times the researchers interviewed appeared to deliver nearly identical messages. These video segments were rather short but I found some of them redundant. I did enjoy the written assignments, except for the one, I believe in week 3, for which the assignment called for us to "respond to" Creswell, without ANY further details on what the response was intended to detail. I would strongly urge you to make this piece clearer for the future. Overall, I believe this course to be a very good introductory course to research methods.

By Catherinne J F

May 29, 2020

Very good in some ways, very poor in others, so a three.

I learned a lot. I did the reading, I did the exercises and read around the topic. So from my point of view worthwhile. On the other hand I kept getting requests to pay £39 pounds for a certificate. Why not, it presumably says that you have completed a University of London course, which has to be a good thing. I don't need a certificate, as I'm taking the course for my own personal study needs.

However, it became obvious to me that many other people were cheating . It's not difficult at all and I suspect many people paying for the certificate have done little or no work at all. This means that the certificate is completely devalued. I was disappointed that both Coursera and the University of London (which is where both my degree and PGCE certificate are from) are prepared to put their names to something so valueless.

It was clear that there were other people who, like me, were using the course to learn - I learned a lot from reading their submissions, but I wonder how disappointed those people must feel knowing that others are failing to do the work.