In June 2012 HEA Social Sciences held its first learning and teaching summit which focused on teaching research methods in the Social Sciences. In December 2012 we commissioned 11 projects that were designed to explore further the issues identified at the summit.
The development of research competencies among undergraduate students is high on the agenda of most Social Science departments presently. Among other things this interest in the teaching and learning of research methods reflects a growing acknowledgement that research competencies are valuable to students in terms of graduate employability and that encouraging undergraduate students to develop skills in and an appreciation of research at undergraduate level might have positive implications for postgraduate degree recruitment. In this context we should not forget that there is a real need and place for competent social researchers both within and outside of academia. We live in an age when social data of various kinds and its uses proliferates creating numerous and diverse new research opportunities for those with the requisite competencies. We also live in a period when the social problems/issues that social scientists have traditionally occupied themselves continue to be deserving of research attention. These problems/issues are taking on new dimensions however and new issues/problems are constantly emerging to be investigated. To reiterate there is a crucial need and place for competent social researchers in society today. It is in this sense that lecturers in social science and social research methods should feel some responsibility and be motivated to ensure that Social Science undergraduates are provided with effective opportunities to develop strong research competencies and a broader appreciation of the value and place of social research in society.
The question is of course how do we best ensure that Social Science undergraduates develop strong research competencies? How do we instil in them a sense of the value and place of social research and of those with research competencies? What might those opportunities that encourage and enable students to achieve these things actually look like? It is in this context that the sharing of practice and of experience among lecturers in research methods is required and must be further encouraged. With research methods now making its way up the Social Science curriculum agenda spaces for discussion have begun to open up and are slowly being populated. The HEA has been instrumental in this process via the hosting of events and provision of funding for research (including ours) under the strategic theme of ‘teaching research methods in the social sciences’.
In producing this report we hope to make some contribution to discussion and debate about the teaching and learning of research methods in the social sciences. We hope to make this contribution by drawing attention to a particular undergraduate course (module) in applied social research. This course we suggest represents a unique example of how we might successfully encourage and enable the further development of strong research competencies among Social Science students. In what follows we describe and discuss this course in some detail. We first outline and discuss the aims and desired learning outcomes of the course. We then go on to outline the course process before outlining and discussing the particular teaching and learning strategy employed. Following that we draw on data generated via in-depth interviews with students and VCOs to discuss and consider the relative merits success and outcomes of the course.
