Luca Váradi
Nationalism Studies Program
Learning through research – for a better teaching of interdisciplinary methodologies
Research skills are among the most important transferable skills we provide to our students. In the past seven years, I have started a new approach in the way we teach research methods, moving away from teaching research techniques in theory to making our methods teaching into a hands-on research experience. Giving a solid methodological training is especially important in the highly interdisciplinary field of Nationalism Studies, where students need to learn to find the best-fitting methodological approach to answer their research questions.
During all these years teaching various classes on research methods, I have realised that students learn the most if I let them in on the secrets and techniques of my own research practice – sharing and discussing with them many real dilemmas that are missing from research papers or handbooks. While this has proven to be a successful practice, I also see its limitations, as I can only advise them genuinely about research techniques, I have been practicing myself. These include interviews, group discussions, and cross-sectional, international, and panel survey research. At the same time, I would like to develop my skills to be able to give students more insights into a broader spectrum of research approaches and techniques.
Therefore, in my upcoming “Understanding Research Methods” course, I plan to invite three researchers who cover different areas of research, ones that I do not have first-hand experience with, while our students are generally interested in learning about these. The purpose of their participation would be that while they let students in on the realities and practicalities of their research, and develop small-scale group projects together with the students, I closely follow and participate in their workshops to learn how to discuss research techniques that are new to me. The three researchers will also be asked to give individualised methodological guidance to students regarding their thesis research. It is important that the three researchers I have invited, do not only cover different areas of methodologies, but also are at different stages of their researcher careers – giving students insights into the lives of researchers.
Liliia Sablina is a third-year PhD student at CEU and works with digital ethnography, using online sources.
Daniel Véri is a postdoctoral researcher in CEU’s Jewish Studies Program who works on the relationship between art and nationalism and analyses artworks.
Anna Szilagyi is professor of communication and founder of the Words Break Bones program. She analyses the public discourse with a socio-linguistic approach.
It is foreseen that each researcher will join our introductory class, and additionally visit two classes each to introduce their research practices. This will happen within the first weeks of the semester. Afterwards, they will hold smaller group sessions and individual consultations with students. Students will be required to work with two out of the four instructors (including me): with one of them on their class project (in groups) and with another on their thesis methodology (individually). This will ensure that students will deepen their knowledge through experiential learning about two different types of research methods.
The selection of the invited experts is based on the methodologies used by students of the Nationalism Studies Program.
I hope that by including these three experts, I will be able to broaden my horizon and, in the future, can teach about methods in the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies with a broader spectrum of expertise – still using real-life examples and providing students real research experiences.
András Danis
Department of Economics and Business
Improve future teaching using the lessons learned from the Covid pandemic
The pandemic has abruptly and profoundly changed how we teach. While teaching online has many disadvantages, most of us have also learned a few valuable new techniques. Even after returning to fully in-person teaching, I would like to reap the benefits of these lessons by incorporating some new teaching and examination methods into my teaching portfolio.
One of the techniques that I have come to value during online teaching is online exams. I don’t mean a traditional exam that is proctored through Zoom. Instead, I mean a completely redesigned online examination framework. I have created a large pool of 50 exam questions, and Moodle randomly selects 12 questions for each student. This approach has several advantages for students and for CEU:
- Flexibility: Many of my students work part-time and they have many other courses. An online exam can be available for 12 hours or more.
- Low-stress test-taking environment for students.
- Low risk of collaboration and cheating: Having a pool of 50 questions reduces the risk of collaboration. I plan to improve this further using this grant.
- No extra costs for students or CEU: Moodle is free for students, and the software I plan to use to improve this examination technique is also free.
- Reduced grading work for TAs and faculty. There are substantial upfront setup costs, but the ex post grading time is substantially reduced. Furthermore, the pool of questions can be used for many years in the future.
To improve this technique even further, I plan to create and individual exam for each student. This would happen in an automated way, by using software to use the same exam question, but with different numbers, for each student. I have learned that this can be accomplished with an open-source software called R/Exams, which is a package in the programming language R.
I have already acquired the skills to re-create my exam questions using R/Exams. However, this is a time-consuming process, so I would like to ask for support in the form of a graduate student assistant. I would basically give a question to the assistant and he/she would implement a “dynamic” version of the question, where the software creates 30 different versions of the same question for 30 students. Then, the assistant uploads the exams to Moodle.
The reason why I’m applying for an assistant during the spring semester, even though I’m not teaching in the spring, is that this project is quite time consuming, and I want the new teaching materials to be ready for when I start teaching again in September.
There are two additional parts of the teaching development project:
1. I would like to create 1-2 programming exercises for students, using the R programming language. In the past, most courses in Financial Economics were taught using Microsoft Excel. However, many employers these days seek graduates who can work not only in Excel but in modern programming languages such as R. I have had great success with programming exercises last year, when I was teaching another course at Georgia Tech, my previous employer.
2. I would like to use the same tools mentioned above (i.e., R/Exams software) to create “dynamic” homework assignments, where each student receives an individual set of questions. The benefits are essentially the same as for dynamic exams. In my experience, homework assignments are very important for students. If I suggest students to do solve a couple of problems before next class, without a formal assignment, most of them don’t do it. With formal homework assignments, virtually all students do it, and they typically do much better on exams.
Finally, if there is still some time left, I would love to ask the project TA to improve other teaching materials. In particular, I would like to update all figures and graphs using the newest edition of the textbook. The reason is that most students are much more engaged if they use figures and graphs using the most recent data, say 2021. They are much less engaged if they see a figure with data from 2015.
Motivation and potential to improve student learning: I am convinced that these teaching and examination methods will improve the learning experience and convenience of students, and reduce the workload in the future for my TAs and myself. Also, I believe that students will be more engaged if my courses incorporate cutting-edge programming tools.
Feasibility: I am already using the technology for this project such as the R programming language and the R/Exams package. Therefore, I am convinced that these ideas are feasible. The most stringent constraint is time, which is why I would like to ask for support through an assistant.
Compatibility with CEU Strategic Plan: The teaching development project outlined here is consistent several themes mentioned in the Call for Applications, such as:
- Using new technologies to support learning: automatically generated individual exams and homework assignment help with this goal.
- Greater development of connections between research and teaching: I use the R programming language in my empirical research every day. Finally, I can show my students some of the R-based techniques that I use in my research.
- Incorporation of problem-based learning: automatically generated individual exams and homework assignment help with this goal. They also help indirectly, by freeing up time for me to do more problems with my students in class.