The Collaborative Research Model: Student Learning Teams in Undergraduate Research

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Psychology Research Methods

Case Study: Psychology Research Methods

Psychology Research Methods was taught at the University of Oregon by Jennifer Simonds in the Summer 2003 term. In this case study, you have the opportunity to view video interviews with Jennifer and other project participants and look at course documents such as the course syllabus and calendar, as well as other supporting materials.

Background of the Course

This course is a required course for psychology majors and is populated by upper-division students who have little background in field-specific research. The main objectives for this course were that, upon completion, students would have:

• More effectively evaluated research done by psychologists;
• Learned essential research concepts;
• Participated as part of a research team on a collaborative study;
• Understood the challenges and rewards of conducting psychological research;
• Become a more knowledgeable consumer of information;
• Prepared for more complex research projects in the future.

Posing the Problem

In the beginning, students had the opportunity to consider five possible class-wide topics for research:

• Availability Heuristic
• Illusion of Control
• Illusory Correlation
• Misinformation Effect
• Self-Serving Bias

In order to get a sense of each topic as a potential term-long focus, the students attended an information session with a faculty expert, and each student collected three articles on one of the possible topics.

Developing Learning Teams

A topic was selected — Self-Serving Bias — and students applied for and were assigned to teams. Each team was provided with a “consultant,” a graduate student from the department willing to help the team when they had questions or needed feedback. An additional “consultant” served as the grader for this course.

Team Roles

Each team was responsible for leading a piece of the research project forward, as follows:

Learning Team	Focus and Description
Team Intro	Focus: Introduction Team Intro facilitated selection of the one project topic out of five possibilities. They selected four required and two optional articles for introduction. They wrote article summaries.
Team Hypo	Focus: Hypothesis Development Each class member submitted possible hypotheses for the study based on the articles. Team Hypo evaluated the submissions and made recommendations to the class.
Team Methods	Focus: Methods Development Each class member submitted ideas for methods to Team Methods. Team Methods selected from suggestions and developed methods to test hypotheses. They wrote the IRB application.
Team Implementation	Focus: Research Implementation Team Implementation put the methods into action.
Team Data	Focus: Data Analysis Each class member submitted suggestions of analyses to Team Data. Team Data selected a set of analyses to test hypotheses.
Team Discuss	Focus: Interpreting the Data Each class member submitted to Team Discuss interpretations of results and details of the experiment that might have affected the outcome. Team Discuss evaluated them and made recommendations to the class about interpretation for the discussion section.