Learn how to ask the right questions and design research studies that generate meaningful insights.
This workshop will provide faculty and administrators with the knowledge and skills to design qualitative and quantitative research studies that can answer meaningful questions related to engineering education.
Beginners’ Guide to Designing Research Questions is designed for individuals looking to develop rigorous research studies in engineering education and related fields. Participants will explore both qualitative and quantitative methods, learn heuristics for selecting appropriate approaches, and gain practical strategies for aligning research questions with study design.
Using a pragmatic lens, instructors will guide participants through the full research design process—from formulating claims and reviewing literature to choosing methods that match their goals. Rather than treating qualitative and quantitative approaches as opposing paradigms, this workshop highlights their respective strengths and limitations to support informed decision-making. By the end of the workshop, participants will be equipped to create effective, well-reasoned research plans that yield meaningful insights in their areas of study. This workshop is intended for engineering or technology instructors or administrators who are interested in engaging in engineering education research.
4 hours
How You Will Benefit
• You will learn to write effective research questions that will enhance outputs and can be answered through qualitative or quantitative research methods.
• You will learn how to select quantitative and qualitative research methods aligned to specific research questions, resulting in more impactful and meaningful findings.
• You will receive feedback from experts directly related to your research design.
• You will receive resources to reference after the workshop for designing future studies.
Learning Outcomes
Graduates of Beginners’ Guide to Designing Research Questions for Qualitative and Quantitative Studies will be able to:
- Implement scientific reasoning to design an educational research study.
- Develop research questions that can be answered through qualitative or quantitative research methods.
- Select the quantitative and qualitative research methods aligned to specific research questions.
- Evaluate the appropriateness of analytical approaches for answering posed research questions.
Facilitators
Kerrie Douglas, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She holds a PhD in Educational Psychology and Masters of Science in Education from Purdue. She is the lead of the Science and Ethics for Educational Data (SEED) lab. Her research is focused on improving methods of evaluation and assessment in large-scale engineering learning contexts. She works on problems of validity, equity and how to make inferences about diverse groups of learners. She has been Primary Investigator or Co-PI on more than $24 million of external research awards. In 2020, she received an NSF RAPID award to study engineering instructional decisions and how students were supported during the time of emergency remote instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since May of 2020, she’s been invited to speak at 14 national and international events about how to support and assess students in online learning environments. In 2021, she received the NSF Early CAREER award to study improving the fairness of assessment in engineering classrooms.
Cassandra McCall, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Education Department at Utah State University. In her research, Dr. McCall seeks to understand how dominant engineering and academic cultures and discourses influence disability and professional identity formation to create more inclusive learning spaces for students from minoritized groups. She has extensive research experience with qualitative methodologies including grounded theory, phenomenology, phenomenography, and auto-ethnography. Dr. McCall has written and co-authored several methods-based publications including New Perspectives for Implementing Grounded Theory and Introduction to Grounded Theory: Choosing and Implementing an Emergent Method. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and a PhD in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech.