Moodle Association of Japan MAJ R&D Grant 2022

Project title:

To enhance the research literacy of research students in Japan and China: An online intervention using Moodle and Mahara

Grant approval date:

August 12, 2022

Grant approved:

140,000 yen

Grant provided by:

Moodle Association of Japan (MAJ)

Project goal:

This project is a parallel research effort of developing ResearchIC. The purposes are:

• to create a Chrome extension that can allow Google Scholar users to see an icon of ResearchIC indicating available OJC event related to the viewing academic record.
• to create an online training intervention to improve the educational research literacy of postgraduate students.

Background

Over years at multiple universities in Japan, Switzerland, China, and Hong Kong, I saw one common thing: there is little systemic research literacy training in universities for either the faculty or the students in education science. Research literacy is the ability to access, interpret, and critically evaluate primary literature (Senders et al., 2014). These skills allow researchers to interact with a larger scientific conversation about what studies are needed to best advance current research and practice and must be systematically taught, practiced, and polished so that researchers can make efficient and effective use of the available literature. My observation was unfortunately not a single case; globally there is a continuous informality of the whole researcher development process, which leaves the maturity of researchers to chance (Raddon, 2011). Researcher development, as an emergent discipline and a research field, is very much underexplored in higher education (Bromley & Warnock, 2021; Evans, 2011; Robbins & LePeau, 2018).

Schedule of research and development

This project is action research that includes four stages of research and development activities as shown below. The main goal is to further test the effectiveness of the creation-based learning theory and its associated CLEAR instructional design model and produce a pilot online course for enhancing the research literacy of research students at the university education level in Japan and China.

Stage 1: Course design and platform development. It will develop a fully online and free course that teaches literature review skills and academic literature reading skills to students using the CBL theory and the CLEAR instructional design model. The Moodle platform will be developed and networked with the Mahara platform. The platforms will be tested to ensure their usability and access of functionalities.

Stage 2: Participant recruitment and content placement. All course content will be placed on the Moodle platform. Students will be divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group will participate in the course of creation-based learning, while the control group will participate in a traditional lecturing course online.

Stage 3: Course delivery and facilitation. The two courses will run in parallel at the same time. All student activities will be logged on the Moodle platform and Mahara platform. 

Stage 4: Course evaluation. The course performance will be analyzed using both formative and summative assessment activities, learning logs, and survey data.