Course Description and Overview

Welcome to Fundamentals of Research, created by the Tea Leaf Center for the Virtual Federal University.

The Fundamentals of Research Course is designed for students and other individuals who want to better understand the research process. It could be an organization that wants to do more research, or an individual who wants to develop their research skills for their own professional development. The course is also useful for those involved in research projects who want to understand the broader context of the project – this could mean someone who is participating in a research project or providing translation or other services to researchers.

This course is meant as an introduction, so by itself it may not be enough to teach you how to design and lead a research project. But it will give you basic knowledge about doing research, and it will help you be part of a research project in the future, understand research you read and hear about, and maybe lead your own small research. For more information, we have provided additional resources [where] to help you. We have also provided comprehension and discussion questions on [where?] for you to test your knowledge and discuss the topics with other students.

Module 1: Understanding and Preparing for Research

This module will include four units providing an overview of key concepts and terminology related to research, considerations of research ethics and risk reduction, and key considerations of data literacy. This will provide the baseline for understanding the subsequent modules, and will allow the students to understand and critique research projects, reports and data they may encounter. Units will include the following topics:

• Introduction to research, research process and terminology
• Selecting a research question and doing a desk review
• Ethics (principles, informed consent, confidentiality) and risk reduction
• Data literacy

Module 2: Research Design and Data Collection

This module will include four units more focused on the process of designing a research project and collecting data. Each unit will contain information and examples relevant to qualitative and quantitative (basic descriptive statistics) methods. While not an exhaustive treatment of the subjects, the module will prepare students to design basic research projects or to participate in larger projects as part of a team led by a more experienced researcher. Units will include the following topics:

• Research methodologies: qualitative and quantitative
• Designing tools for research
• Sampling and selecting participants
• Interviewing skills

Module 3: Analyzing and Writing about your Research Results

The final module will introduce how to analyze, triangulate and validate the findings of qualitative and quantitative research. It will introduce relevant principles and processes of these tasks and illustrate them with examples relevant to students’ experience. The last module will cover key components of presenting research results, including tips on how to organize and write a report and considerations for visualizing data.

• Qualitative analysis
• Quantitative analysis
• Data Cleaning, Validation and Triangulation
• Presenting results – research reports and data visualization