Research

Module Overview and Sections

In this module, you will…

1. Reflect on what you and your students learned through your COIL project
2. Explore different modalities for disseminating your work to others
3. Gain inspiration from COIL research projects disseminated by Penn State faculty and their partners
4. Develop a research project based on your COIL experience
   • • Determine your readiness to conduct research on your COIL project
     • Design a research project on your COIL experience
     • Choose an outlet for sharing your COIL research

After your COIL project is complete, schedule time with your COIL partner to reflect on your experience together. What does it mean to reflect on your experience? Philosopher David Schӧn wrote an influential book about reflective practice, in which he differentiates two kind of reflection.

It can be important to recognize that you and your COIL partner may approach the task of reflection differently. You may have different levels of experience not only in reflective thinking itself but also in communicating that feedback to others.

• Constructive reflection may be influenced by positionality. Imagine, for example, a new part-time instructor who may be uncomfortable sharing critical insights with a more experienced tenured partner.
• Constructive reflection may be influenced by cultural norms.
  • In cultures that tend to exhibit what is called high-context communication, feedback is often delivered gently and subtly, and often includes both words and body language. This form of communication is prevalent, for example, in countries such as China and Brazil.
  • In countries such as the U.S. and Sweden, there tends to be a preference for low-context communication, which places value on feedback that is direct, explicit and concrete.

Noel Habashy and his partner at Riga Straddins University placed their students in mixed project teams focused on specific outputs in global agriculture. Once the projects were completed, the instructors had the members of each team rate each other on the extent to which their teammates demonstrated cultural humility when working together.

In their shared reflection after the project was completed, both instructors noticed that there seemed to be distinctive patterns in how the two groups of students approached the peer review process. In a lively conversation, they began to speculate on the possible cultural, economic, and institutional factors that might influence how students approached tasks like this and why the two groups might do so differently. In this conference paper, they shared their ideas with a multi-national group for feedback and broader insight.

CEEISA-ISA Joint International Conference Rijeka, Croatia June 2024

Further Reading

Deardorff, D. K. (2022). Communicating successfully across differences within COIL virtual exchange. In The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange (pp. 274-286). Routledge.

Würtz, E. (2005). Intercultural communication on web sites: A cross-cultural analysis of web sites from high-context cultures and low-context cultures. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), 274-299.

Cook-Sather, A., Abbot, S., & Felten, P. (2019). Legitimating reflective writing in SoTL:“Dysfunctional illusions of rigor” revisited. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 7(2), 14-27.

Greenberger, S. W. (2020). Creating a guide for reflective practice: applying Dewey’s reflective thinking to document faculty scholarly engagement. Reflective Practice, 21(4), 458-472.

Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. Jossey Bass.

Your Motivation(s)

You and your COIL partner have likely formed a strong bond and have worked together to design and implement your project. That said, working together on a teaching project is not the same as working together on a potential research project.

Reflecting on Your Motivation to Do Research

Here are some questions for you both to consider (together, if possible) as you move from pedagogical partners to co-researchers.

• • We’ll start with perhaps the most obvious question: why are you interested in pursuing a research project on your COIL experiences? Is your motivation more intrinsic (you really want to do it) or extrinsic (you feel like you should do it)? How does such a research project fit in with your long-term professional goals?
  • How is such research recognized and rewarded at your institution? In other words, what kind of credit would you get for a presentation or publication on this subject (you might also check out section 3 for alternative formats)?
  • How would you describe yourself as a scholar? What tools, theories, methods, perspectives, experiences and skills do you bring to the table? What (if any) tools, theories, methods, perspectives, experiences and skills would you like to learn more about?
  • What is your prior experience/comfort level in conducting academic research (on any topic)? Academic research in what language(s)? Social science research specifically? (Note: You do not have to have a background in any of these to be able to conduct a research project—but it can help in planning a project to understand what each partner brings to the table.)
  • How much time and energy do you have to commit to designing and implementing a research study? What kind of timeframe would work best for you (e.g., finish the project over the summer)?
  • How will you reconcile the differences in your responses to the questions above? How can you work together to turn your differences into strengths?

Who else do you think might be interested in reading about the results of your project? What about instructors in disciplines very different from yours? What would they learn from your work? Also, your audience may not be limited to other instructors—what about students? Or staff? Or leaders? It may also not be limited to academia. Are there any public stakeholders—what about parents? Employers? Alumni? Working practitioners? Granting agencies? Government entities? Try to think of at least six different categories or roles (e.g. a history professor interested in the same region; an academic advisor who places students in your courses).

Here are five types of audiences that you might consider for your work.

Jacqueline McLaughlin brought PSU students together with students at the University of Bucharest (Romania) for a virtual course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). Faculty and students on the ground in Romania collected samples in the field related to water conservation in the Danube river delta; and the students all worked together to analyze those samples and present their findings (virtually) to a group of academic and civic stakeholders. Because water issues cross over multiple disciplinary areas, the researchers chose to publish a study of student learning outcomes in the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.

McLaughlin, J. & Cruz, L. (2024). Take a CHANCE: Assessing a short-term, virtual, binational CURE as a model for sustainability education. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Penn State Behrend associate professor Massimo Verzella supports integrating virtual exchange into his English composition and literature classes. Through COIL projects, he aims to help students develop a comparative understanding of language structures and functions. In this article, he explains virtual exchange and provides examples of networks to facilitate cross-cultural learning. The article was published in a journal with a global readership and established interest in global learning.

Verzella, M. (2018). Virtual exchange between cross-cultural teams: A sustainable path to the internationalization of college courses. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal, 11(3).

In this section of your COIL journey, we will roll up our sleeves and begin the process of developing and designing your research project. Before you get started on the design, we invite you to take a moment and reflect, both individually and with your COIL partners, on what kind of research project you might be interested in pursuing. If you’re unsure about the right research project for you, here’s a quick self-assessment to guide you:

Ask yourself…

…what skills, knowledge, or dispositions do you need to develop for a successful research study? Are there colleagues with complementary skills or experiences who could join you?

…who are you as a scholar? With what research approaches are you most and least comfortable? About which scholarly methods are you curious? What learning theories or perspectives interest you?

…if you present or publish your COIL project, how will it be recognized and rewarded in your institution? What types of scholarship “count” towards your advancement? What criteria must your scholarship meet to be recognized?

…what are your current personal and professional priorities? Where does research fit in? If you study your COIL project, what is your timeline for implementation, completion, submission, and publication?

What Kind of Research Design Is Right for Your COIL Project?

There are four primary research designs used in most classroom-based research with COIL projects. Click on each type to learn more.

Self-Assessment to Match Experience Level with Research Designs

Let’s begin with some questions about your prior research and scholarship experience. You don’t need prior experience to conduct research on your COIL project. This assessment tool is designed to match your current experience level with suitable research designs.

Self-Assessment to Match Environmental Factors with Research Design

In addition to prior experience, it can be helpful to consider other environmental factors related to how the project might fit into your professional life (e.g., how much time you have to commit to the project) and the nature of your course.

Now that you’ve thought about your audience(s), it’s time to think about how you want to disseminate your work in a way that would best suit your motivations to do research, the time you to do research, and the audience you’re trying to reach.

Take a moment and visualize that you have successfully completed this task—your COIL project has been shared with your desired audience. What form do you imagine this taking? When most instructors think of a research project related to teaching and learning, they imagine that the outcome will be an article in a peer-reviewed academic journal (sometimes referred to as a PRJ). There are also some formats for published research that are close to the PRJ, such as book chapters or published conference papers.

While PRJs, book chapters, and conference proceedings are the most common final form that teaching and learning scholarship takes, there are other scholarly forms that you might want to consider. Here’s a short list of other recognized mediums for disseminating your teaching and learning scholarship…

• Conference presentation
• Conference poster
• Magazine/periodical article
• Social media post (e.g. blog, vlog, online column)
• Digital artifact (e.g., a web site, a repository, a gallery)
• Grant proposal
• Creative Work (such as a mural, a photo essay, a poem…)

When planning your research agenda, it can be helpful to know more about typical dissemination timelines that you might expect.

• A fairly typical project timeline runs something like this: plan the study over the summer, collect data/evidence in the fall (possibly spring as well), write up in late spring/early summer, submit by mid-summer
• Web outlets, such as blogs, usually have the shortest timelines. In fact, these kinds of outlets are often eagerly looking for new and timely content.
• Academic conferences typically issue calls for papers and presentations 6-9 months from the event itself. In most cases, you do not have to have your research project finished when you submit the abstract for review, but it is generally considered good form to have it completed by the time you actually present.
• A typical journal in this field publishes approximately two issues per year. Although there is a great deal of variation, the typical turnaround time (from submission to first decision) for a peer-reviewed article is 3-6 months. It is also pretty typical to expect that you will need to do some revisions of your work prior to final publication. A standard timeline from submission to publication is approximately 1 year.
• Be on the lookout for special issues or themes, as these often have higher acceptance rates and faster turnaround times.