Connected Learning are central in supporting research into tertiary education at VU. The resources on this page are intended to give you a ‘head start’ on tertiary education research, and are mapped to broad steps in the research journey.
For specific queries, contact the Educational Research Advisor in Connected Learning, Daniel Loton, at [email protected].
Tertiary education research features as an important aspect of VU's strategy, including the VU Digital Strategy.
In 2021, Connected Learning launched a Special Interest Group to support those undertaking research with a focus on aspects of tertiary education. While the primary focus is on the VU Block Model, other educational research is also supported.
The Group has a very broad range of foci, from policy or large-scale educational interventions, to self-studies of individuals improving practice. It is the aim of this Group to facilitate research through staff collaboration, and also by connecting individuals and teams to supporting resources.
A number of mainly informal activities are planned, including a regular casual research writing circle meeting, a peer review program for manuscripts in development, and occasional updates.
The Group is open to any VU staff or research students interested in this broad field of research.
Submit a peer-reviewed journal article and/or conference
With a radical new model of tertiary education and a diverse student cohort, VU is in a unique position to contribute knowledge on innovative approaches to enhance student success at University.
Connected Learning has compiled a range of resources (login required) and links to other researcher development opportunities, to support and fast-track research on the educational experience at VU.
Tertiary education research is a substantial field. Jumpstart your knowledge by looking within the following ‘research syntheses’ which have been collated by tertiary education researchers. They provide a ‘birds eye view’ of the field:
A quick supplemental search should be undertaken to identify more recent topical papers. One way is to use Google Scholar, which can list all papers citing a given work, with results filtered to recent years.
As you read each paper, write a short summary of the method and key results relevant to the topic. These will contribute to your eventual literature review. If you use reference management software, such as Endnote, add each paper as you go.
For training on undertaking a more involved systematic literature review with defined search terms and inclusion criteria, keep an eye out on the VU Researcher Professional Development opportunities.
With a surge of interest on the VU Block Model, Connected Learning undertook a comprehensive review and annotated bibliography.
As there are very few studies on block mode learning, the bibliography focuses on what is arguably the most closely related body of literature - intensive mode learning.
VU researchers are stepping in to fill this gap in knowledge on block mode learning. See a collection of recent publications that investigate aspects of education at VU.
In addition, Connected Learning have over 50 tertiary education research projects approved through its’ internal micro-project application process.
Depending on the size and scope of your tertiary education research project, and the level of experience and resources available to the team, you may wish to consider seeking internal or external funding to support the research project.
Funding avenues will most likely emphasise either the generation of new knowledge in areas where they are critical gaps – likely to align with competitive research grant schemes; or the more immediate benefits to potentially vulnerable student cohorts – likely to align with philanthropic funding bodies.
Researchers have already been successful in attaining funding from the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education on the role of the VU model in enhancing outcomes for STEM students.
All staff at VU have access to the funding source search engine, Research Professional, where you can search for grant opportunities.
Before embarking on writing a bid for research funding, contact the Research Funding team within the Office of Research Services
After you have designed your study, seek ethical approval. All human research in Australia, and at VU, requires ethical approval, consistent with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.
To support relevant research Connected Learning, in co-ordination with the Ethics Chair and Office for Researcher Training, Quality & Integrity, developed and administer an expedited micro-project ethical approval process. Over forty applications have so far been approved, on a variety of topics relating to education at VU.
See relevant forms and process to apply. Note VPN login required.
When planning your study of education at VU, consider pre-existing data sources that may inform your analyses while concurrently minimising participant burden. Higher Education systems generate enormous amounts of data, and studies using this data are sometimes termed 'learning analytics'.
Pre-existing data sources are usually not collected with explicit consent to be used in research, however VU researchers have been successful in obtaining ethical approval to analyse this data. Note that approval is granted on a case-by-case basis.
Example institutional data sources include: student demographics and pathways, assessment results, participation data in the Learning Management System, discussion forum posts, and the Student Evaluation of Teaching and Student Evaluation of Unit (SET/SEU) surveys.
The Information, Analysis and Reporting Department have developed the VU Educational Innovation Datasets Tool for the purpose of researching VU institutional data.
If you'll be collecting new primary data, use VU’s institution-wide subscription to the online survey software, Qualtrics.
Consider that:
From the outset, prepare to share your findings. Depending on your experience in publishing in this field, consider local symposia or conferences, national or international conferences providing peer review sources, and further along the track, aim for a peer-reviewed journal.
Below are just a handful of higher education conferences and journals for you to consider.
Make sure you claim your research outputs on the VU Research Impact system, MORA, and nominate one of the VU priority FOR codes related to higher education. You can check journal rankings on SciMago and contact your Research Librarian for further support.
VU Priority FOR Codes (2018):
Designing a tertiary education (TE) research project involves consideration of research methodology: the specific approaches to collecting, analysing, and making sense of data that ultimately produce the key outcome - findings. To support TE research at VU, we’ve compiled sources that give an overview of research design and methodology common in the TE field.
Some methodological considerations are unique to certain research communities, while others are somewhat universal. Methods are often discussed within the broader traditions of quantitative research, that follows empiricism and uses numbers to understand a phenomenon; and qualitative research, which generally takes a constructivist approach to understand how people construe meaning in their experiences.
If you are new to research, or to TE research – don’t worry! Almost every conceivable methodology has been applied and published in TE. In other words, there is no one right way to do research, but a multiplicity of approaches. With an informed application grounded in prior research, with appropriate justification, the method adopted will help to make a meaningful contribution to knowledge.
Many analyses make use of specific software. Rstudio and R packages are commonly used for quantitative research, and is usually free to use for research. VU also has licenses for SPSS (descriptive and inferential statistics), AMOS (structural equation modelling) and NVivo (qualitative analysis), which can be found on the VU SoftwareCentre.
VU has several methodological training opportunities via the Research Professional Development calendar, including some on specific software. We also recommend signing up to the VU research info mailing list for further updates on researcher development (intranet sign-in required). Further enquiries can be directed to the Educational Research Advisor
Here is a list of specific methods applied in the higher education context:
Huisman, J., & Tight, M. (2016). Theory and method in higher education research. Emerald.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SotL) HERDSA online modules
Sampling - Robinson, O. C. (2014). Sampling in interview-based qualitative research: A theoretical and practical guide. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11(1), 25-41., van Rijnsoever, F. J. (2017). (I can’t get no) saturation: a simulation and guidelines for sample sizes in qualitative research. PLoS One, 12(7), e0181689.
Auto-ethnography - Herrmann, A. F. (Ed.). (2020). The Routledge International Handbook of Organizational Autoethnography. Routledge. (available via library request)
Conversation analysis - Sidnell, J., & Stivers, T. (2013). The handbook of conversation analysis. Wiley-Blackwell.
Practice-based theory - Hofmann, R. (2020). Dialogues with data: generating theoretical insights from research on practice in higher education. In Theory and Method in Higher Education Research. Emerald Publishing Limited.
For studies using raters, observers or coders:
Inter-rater reliability - Gwet, K. L. (2014). Handbook of inter-rater reliability: The definitive guide to measuring the extent of agreement among raters. Advanced Analytics, LLC. (available on request)
Survey design - Fowler Jr, F. J., & Cosenza, C. (2009). Design and evaluation of survey questions. The SAGE handbook of applied social research methods, 375-412.
Validity and reliability of measures - Wagemaker, H (2020). Reliability and Validity of International Large-Scale Assessment. Springer.
Psychometrics: classical test theory, IRT, SET E-SEM - Marsh, H. W., Guo, J., Dicke, T., Parker, P. D., & Craven, R. G. (2020). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), and set-ESEM: optimal balance between goodness of fit and parsimony. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 55(1), 102-119., Carlson, J. E. (2020). Introduction to Item Response Theory Models and Applications. Routledge.
Power analysis - Nakagawa, S., & Foster, T. M. (2004). The case against retrospective statistical power analyses with an introduction to power analysis. Acta ethologica, 7(2), 103-108.
Mediation and moderation - Hayes, Andrew F. (2013). Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach. New York, NY: The
Multi-level modelling - Gorard, S. (2003). What is Multi–level Modelling For?. British Journal of Educational Studies, 51(1), 46-63.
Causal modelling in longitudinal data - Zyphur, M. J., Voelkle, M. C., Tay, L., Allison, P. D., Preacher, K. J., Zhang, Z., ... & Diener, E. (2020). From data to causes II: Comparing approaches to panel data analysis. Organizational Research Methods, 23(4), 688-716., Morgan, S. L., & Winship, C. (2015). Counterfactuals and causal inference. Cambridge University Press.
Randomised controlled trials - Matthews, J. N. (2006). Introduction to randomized controlled clinical trials. CRC Press.
Implementation science - Soicher, R. N., Becker-Blease, K. A., & Bostwick, K. C. (2020). Adapting implementation science for higher education research: the systematic study of implementing evidence-based practices in college classrooms. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 5(1), 1-15.
Meta-analysis - Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Schmid, R. F., Tamim, R. M., & Abrami, P. C. (2014). A meta-analysis of blended learning and technology use in higher education: From the general to the applied. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 26(1), 87-122.
Given the wide variety of methodological approaches and associate debates, it is critical to thoroughly report exactly how a research project was undertaken. The guiding principle is that the research publication should describe the method in sufficient detail for others to replicate the study, and hopefully arrive at the same conclusions (if the study is empirical). Thorough reporting will also increase the chances of acceptance during peer review.
It is important to be aware of the growing movement to Open Science, detailed and facilitated by the Centre for Open Science and the Open Science Framework.
There are several issues associated with Open Science, some are methodological, and others relate to the availability of the research outputs to the public. The two most important aspects to consider for your own TE projects are:
We strongly recommend you pre-register your project, including specific research questions, aims or hypotheses.
Comprehensive reporting of how a study was undertaken is a key issue, not only in TE research, but across all research fields. Many studies are not reported in sufficient detail. This is especially important given many studies in education are subsequently meta-analysed, for which detailed descriptions of the data and method are required.
Check the journal you are aiming for to see if they recommend a particular reporting checklist. The CONSORT (quantitative) or COREQ (qualitative) checklists can help in comprehensive reporting. There is also a mixed-methods appraisal tool for mixed methods research. Finally, the Healey (2019) paper discusses distinct writing styles in SoTL.
With the rise of research output metrics, there are also wider debates on how to assess quality in research. While these may be more relevant to institutions than individual researchers, it is worthwhile being cognizant of their development.
Firstly, VU has its’ own research impact measurement system, MORA. A larger-scale example is the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA, which now has many signatories.
Finally, when your draft is complete, consider uploading your manuscript to a pre-print server. These enable you to share results prior to publication in a journal, to show the evolution of the work, and most journals support the use of pre-prints. EdArxIv is one option that is focused on education, but there are other non-specific pre-print servers also, like Springer’s In Review.
