Foundations of Research & Scholarship / Fall 2014 / Course Number: DYNM 500 Schedule: Wednesday 6:00pm-9:00pm
Instructor: FREEMAN, STEVEN GRECO, JANET L.
Course Description: A main objective of this foundation course is to improve the academic papers and presentations in all Organizational Dynamics work, including the capstone. Because the discipline of writing for academic purposes is based on skills that are not common to business writing and because the writing process is central to learning in this program, Organizational Dynamics offers this course designed to assist participants in developing efficient, reliable, and fruitful academic writing, and presentation techniques. This course counts toward completion of the Organizational Dynamics Foundational requirement.
Class Sessions
- Identifying your Interests
- Mind Maps; Concept Maps
- Identifying your audience
- Understanding knowledge creation: How do we know what (we think) we know?
- The Research Process
- Types of Research
Developing a Research Question and Thesis
- Developing a research question
- Problem Formulation
- Developing a research thesis
- The Nomological Net: Concepts and Indicators
- Types of research projects and papers
- Types of Relationships
- Variables
- Hypotheses
- The Unit of Analysis
- Appropriate Scope
- Choosing a Topic and Question for your Reseach Paper
- Coming up to speed on current knowledge
- Conducting a literature review
- Using the "Deep Web"
- Search techniques
- Evaluating sources
- Types of journals and journal articles
- Primary sources and secondary sources
- The nature of scientific evidence
- Types of data
- how to used and present data
- Validity and rigor
- Assertions and support
- Healthy skepticism
Organizing and Presenting your Work
- Goals to consider in writing your paper
- The structure of a paper, how to organize it.
- Clear thesis; clear main supporting points
- Context & Connection: A hook for your audience
- The pyramid process: Using each section and each paragraph to support the main argument
- The structure and function of sections and paragraphs
- Understanding your paper from your reader's perspective Transitions between sections
- Specifics to make your writing compelling
- Steps in writing a research paper
- Closing: Discussion, conclusions, implications
Graphical & Numerical Display
- Principals of Visual Display
- Principals of Numerical Display
- Telling a Story with Pictures
- Telling a Story with Numbers
Case Study Research
- Designing Case Studies
- Preparing for Data Collection
- Collecting Data
- Analyzing Case Evidence
- Reporting and Publishing
Steven F. Freeman