EDIN at AISHE August 2011 - update

Professor Glynis Cousin, Director of the Institute for Learning Enhancement at Wolverhampton University led a workshop on Researching University Education for EDIN last Thursday 25 August. This was a pre-conference workshop for the AISHE Conference and an EDIN-AISHE collaboration. Glynis is the author of Researching Learning in Higher Education (2009) and drew on this work to argue that research is always a work of interpretation and that quantitative and qualitative research are not opposites, both yield different kinds of intelligence. She suggests that in research we should look at the problem and then choose methods we are good at. She argued that research has a aesthetic dimension, a craft dimension and that researcher should write for the intended audience. She made a plea for research that examines student-teacher relations i.e. the transaction and suggested we go back to classic studies and ask 'what is going on?'. She recommends Stake (1995) on case study research as well as her own book for further reading. Thanks to Glynis for a stimulating and challenging workshop. Thanks to Saranne Magennis of NUIM AISHE President and AISHE for collaborating with EDIN on the workshop.