OJC research project introduction

Project title:

Impact of Online Journal Club on Educational Research Literacy: Towards New Model, Measurement, and Practice

Goal:

To apply online journal club as a signature pedagogy and to evaluate its effectiveness on improving educational research literacy of researchers and students on the global scale.

Objectives:

The main objectives are to create a new research literacy model, to develop and validate a measurement instrument of research literacy in the digital age, and to measure the effectiveness of the online journal club as an eLearning intervention for improving research literacy using the developed instrument. As interdisciplinary research, this study has the potential to create and lead a new branch of research and practice crossing the domains of eLearning, researcher development, and pedagogy. It will open new grounds to promote open and reusable research literacy training on the internet for the global audience.

Three-phases research

Phase 1: Literature Review and Interviews

The purpose of the first phase of activities is to understand experienced researchers’ literature reading strategies and develop the educational research literacy model. Two major research activities include critical literature review and individual interviews with education researchers. A thorough literature review using the methodology of Lin et al. [31] will analyze evaluation studies of research literacy and its synonyms in order to establish a theoretical framework for assessing research literacy as a competency. Interviews conducted online with experienced researchers in the field of education science will elucidate the literature reading techniques of experienced researchers, and their research literacy training experiences as both learners and instructors. The interview data will be analyzed using the comparative content analysis method proposed by Glaser and Strauss [32] as part of the grounded theory practice. This phase will produce a scale that may be used as a direct reference when creating or evaluating an educational program that attempts to promote or increase research literacy. The data will be examined, and the outcomes will inform the project’s subsequent phase.

Phase 2: Survey Study

The second part of the project will create and evaluate a survey scale based on the scale from Phase 1. Researchers and students enrolled in education science programs throughout the world will be invited to participate in the online survey. Previous studies suggested that a sample size of 50 is very poor, 100 is poor, 200 is fair, 300 is good, 500 or more is excellent, regardless of the number of questions in the questionnaire. Although there are no fixed rules for use of sample size for validating a questionnaire, it is recommended to use sample size as large as possible to have a higher respondent-to-question ratio [33]. The methodological technique for validating the survey instrument will be guided by Boparai, Singh, and Kathuria’s [34] research.

Phase 3: Intervention and Experiment

Informed by the results of earlier phases, the third phase will conduct a series of OJC events with global educational academics as hosts and worldwide higher degree research students from programs connected to education sciences as participants. The events will be conceived and developed as an online educational intervention to enhance the research literacy of postgraduate students in the field of education science. At least two host researchers will be present in each event to analyze and present a high-quality, well-recognized scholarly article within the field. The OJC events will be held online using a Moodle-based learning management system and its integrated videoconferencing application BigBlueButton. The usage of online communication platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn will boost community participation and event promotion.