About
What is Research Methodology and How Can it Help Me?
Research methodology is the study of the tools and skills used to collect and interpret information. Research methodology is embedded in every field in which a student can major. But, research methodology is also more than that. Research methods are ways of knowing that directly impact our ways of being in the world. Exploring such connections is applicable and meaningful, as it allows us to see how the use of research methods contributes not only to the collecting and interpreting of information, but also to the development of a person’s ethical character as well.
Essential Questions
■ What methods help a person to be a good listener? ■ What methods help a person to be a good collaborator? ■ What methods help a person to be a creative thinker across all fields of study?
Curriculum Overview
The Achieve Scholars Program is an 18-credit hour, 4-year curriculum in which students participate throughout their undergraduate studies. It is intended to be flexible and responsive to students’ needs wherever, and whenever, possible. The curriculum overview below details the academic experiences of The Achieve Scholars Program.
There are four overarching and guiding questions that drive the Achieve curriculum. Each question defines the work of a respective year in the curriculum.
Freshman Year: New Thinking What methods/skills are necessary for unifying knowledge? How does one conduct research that is at once, between the disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond all discipline?
Sophomore Year: New Questions What methods/skills are necessary to ask the two questions: What does it mean? What does it mean to me? How do these hermeneutical and phenomenological questions enrich both disciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge, and contribute to deep learning?
Junior Year: New Voices What methods/skills are necessary for conducting research with people and not on or for people? How can such methods/skills contribute to the ethical development of an individual?
Senior Year: New Research What methods/skills are necessary to demonstrate how ways of knowing about the world produce ways of being in the world? How does one, ultimately, communicate their relationship to, identity within, and their language of, ethical and transdisciplinary research?
Benefits
Each student who is selected to participate in the Achieve Scholars Program will benefit from the in-depth, transdisciplinary, theoretical approaches of how to unite fields of study; thus becoming more creative and effective scholars and/or professionals within their field. A skillset such as this will prepare students for graduate-level studies in a way that many students do not discover often until they are in graduate school.
Contact Information
For more information, please contact: Dr. Darren Surman / dsurman@ua.edu / 205-348-5551