Thinking Aloud: Research Design

Here is a question that came up on the Writing Center listserv today:

One of our consultants is wondering about research on the practice of reading the paper aloud at the beginning of the tutoring session. While it's a practice we advocate, different consultants chose different techniques and sometimes adapt them to the writer. Has anyone looked into this in a formal way?

Let's assume you wanted to research this. What's the question? And how would you go about it?

Questions about Final Project

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Empiricism Redux

Hey all~~

Nicely done analysis of Pianko. There are several problems with the study, and collectively, you've identified about all of them.

Questions:

Let's return to Scott's question about genre. What difference does the publication venue make? Do the two articles on the same topic read the same way in the two journals? How does the genre of the journal shape what we know, what we write, how we read?

And let's think in terms of Rory's critique of the dearth of randomization. Suppose you want to do a case study, a set of case studies, or a study with a small N. How do you choose your students, and what difference does that make?

I'll look forward to talking with you all tomorrow about these and other items:

1. The Emig study. It's fairly classic social science epistemology. What do I mean when I say that? It's also not without its limitations: what are those, and how big an impact do they have on the study?

2. The Beaufort study. Emig's study was her dissertation; this is a report from Beaufort's dissertation. Beaufort is also social science in approach. How does it compare to Emig, some 30 years later? What are its limitations?

3. If you look on your syllabus, you'll see that you have a design piece due the week before break. What I'm looking for here is a very small study that you'll complete before the end of the term. We'll use the study I'm conducting with the undergraduate student as an example of a small study so you can see what it looks like.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow,

ky

Assumptions on Pianko articles

From syllabus: "What are the assumptions in one of the Pianko articles? What are the methods, and how are they highlighted? What difference, if any, does genre make?"

What Are the Assumptions of Empiricism?

Starting our thread on empiricism...