Bonni [00:00:00] Research is such an important part of what graduate students do. Yet they can often feel that their creativity is stifled in choosing what to study. There’s also the challenge in finding research that will be engaging to others. On today’s episode, Dr Doug Leigh joins us to talk about helping students come up with interesting research.

Production Credit [00:00:23] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni [00:00:33] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to increase our personal productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives. And be even more present for our students.

Bonni [00:01:01] Today I’m welcoming a former professor of mine from my doctoral program. His name is Dr. Doug Leigh. He has a Ph.D. from Florida State University and also a Master’s there as well and a Bachelor’s from Florida State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Instructional Systems where he served as a Director of Technical Projects with various local state and federal agencies.

Bonni [00:01:28] His current research publication and lecturer interests concern cause analysis, organizational trust, leadership visions, and dispute resolution. He has a number of publications which I’d encourage you to take a look at. If you go to teachinginhighered.com/84 they’ll be all the show notes from today’s episode including the link to his bio with his publications.

Bonni [00:01:54] And I’m really excited to talk to him about a special two year assignment he had with the National Science Foundation. Because it really resonates a lot with the topics we’ll be discussing today and I also just think was a neat project to work on with them. Doug, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Doug [00:02:11] Hi. Great to talk to you, Bonni.

Bonni [00:02:12] Nice to talk with you too. I mentioned that you are a former professor of mine which is always fun to have someone I feel so comfortable talking to on the show so thank you for that. And I think something really that was interesting to me in fact happened while we were in school was the special assignment you did with the National Science Foundation. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Doug [00:02:35] Yes. So the National Science Foundation that is what they call intergovernmental personnel assignments. It’s a big mouthful so big abbreviated to the IPA program.

Doug [00:02:48] And essentially what it allows is for the foundation to be able to bring in expertise from around the world really mostly focused on the United States.

Doug [00:03:01] And for two years on the sort of rotator basis and now serving at the National Science Foundation they work in their particular scientific discipline and the ideas that it brings in fresh blood or a fresh approach is an idea as to how science can be done within the country.

Bonni [00:03:20] And what was may be either a big surprise or a big takeaway from that experience from you when you came back to your quote unquote regular job.

Doug [00:03:29] One of the best parts about it was of course being in a structured much like a university. So it’s structured in two different divisions like a school but have different departments and being able to have access to that kind of real brilliance across a variety of disciplines. I might not have had much previous exposure to was really fantastic.

Doug [00:03:53] And the surprising part is probably what shouldn’t be surprising at all. But you know despite the renown that exists within the expertises everybody tends to be pretty laid back and you know they’re willing to help and their intent is to advance science by helping researchers get access to government funds and be able to have proven competitive research within the world.

Bonni [00:04:21] That is such a fun discovery to have. I feel like I have that about a number of things in my life where I think Gosh I should have known in advance that they would be like this but I allowed myself to get intimidated or whatever it is by by the prestige of it.

Doug [00:04:33] All right people end up being really a lot more approachable than I think we fear they might think it might be.

Bonni [00:04:40] Well on the show before we’ve talked about undergraduate research but this is the first time we’re talking about the graduate level of research though we both know there is a lot of parallels between the two.

Bonni [00:04:51] So I would encourage people not to press stop if you only work with undergrad during the Sunday but with your experience I wonder if you would share a bit. What do you see as being some of the challenges that hold the graduate students back from being able to come up with these really interesting research questions to begin their research.

Doug [00:05:10] I think that it kind of depends across different institutions. It’s not uncommon for institutions to essentially have their graduate students working on the research agendas of the faculty of supervisors particularly within the natural sciences but in the social sciences that are at least at Pepperdine.

Doug [00:05:32] And our approach to the Education Division and psychology division students essentially pick their own dissertation topics and sometimes they come in knowing what they what they wish to pursue for for research but oftentimes most don’t hand benefit or seek out coaching on what’s a good topic for me what is something that I should pursue and often situated within their organisations within which they work or that we aspire to work.

Doug [00:06:05] But sometimes students think of pursuing avenues of potential research that might be unusual or perhaps even controversial but it doesn’t really have much of a grounding in the literature in the sense that sometimes the question’s been asked and answered and sometimes the consensus seems to be that it might not be or might not be an important question to ask in the first place.

Bonni [00:06:33] I remember that one of our our the faculty members that we worked with was famous for saying we need to get you famous by Friday you know get it done get it get that get that dissertation done so that you can move on to quote the rest of your life and to write to help sort of this paralysis of choosing a topic.

Bonni [00:06:56] But I would say also that that what I’m hearing from you from our conversation prior and then now is that this finding something that we have an interest in finding something we have a passion in is also important to help propel us through those really difficult times.

Bonni [00:07:13] Can you talk about an example that you remember from working with a student when they they first you started to see those flashes of just passion interest where they really had landed on something that was both interesting to them but also as you say to people that were going to potentially review their research.

Doug [00:07:31] Yeah I think it’s a bit it’s a bit of an unusual example perhaps. So I teach within the Graduate School of Education and Psychology. And most of the students that I work with are interested in leadership and its applications within either organization and business organizations or nonprofits or healthcare and also students within the 12 education and his administration.

Doug [00:07:58] So some years back I had a student who brilliant student and it was a it was a pleasure to be able to be invited to serve as his dissertation chair. So we jumped at the chance and his interest was in Venice Beach. Venice beach is a community here in Southern California and it’s populated by along its canals by cottages little Craftsman style cottages and I believe the 1920s.

Doug [00:08:28] And he was interested in doing sort of an oral history of how those cottages came to be and how they exist within the community and what kind of care it’s been taken of them. And I thought that’s interesting. And of course a document interesting research of course you know the eyes of the beholder. I’m pretty cool yeah.

Doug [00:08:47] But I said How does that connect to your degree in organizational leadership. And he says Yeah. So you ended up choosing a completely different topic. He became interested in knowledge management and what would it take to implement ways of increasing knowledge management within organizations.

Doug [00:09:12] Totally different direction and got there in a way that was perhaps indicative of the experience that he could switch gears that that that effort effortlessly. That’s an unusual case. Within months something like that happens.

Bonni [00:09:26] Yeah it started in a completely different area and wound up in knowledge management. I thought you were going to connect it back to those colleges but alas I’ve been watching too much TV you can get as well perhaps as you said.

Doug [00:09:38] Now that he’s got his dissertation done now need to use able to educate himself to those interests more fully.

Bonni [00:09:43] Yeah exactly. And where do you see typically the challenges come in for people as they work. You know not in every discipline but in many disciplines there’s a literature review so trying to understand what the body of research is how many starts and stops do you typically see along the way and how do you eventually see them smooth out.

Doug [00:10:05] I think one of the things that comes as a surprise to at least doctoral students I would presume that it happens at the master’s level. But some of the differences perhaps between doctoral work and master’s work has to do with the amount of original data collection that’s done within typical dissertations.

Doug [00:10:23] And I get that that’s not always the criteria of the pendam one’s master’s program but I think that the surprise to students coming in the starts and stops not just in conceptualization but also the draft review and feedback process.

Doug [00:10:41] Let me put it this way it’s rare for students to complete a draft of their proposal. Get feedback and then go to their preliminary or oral examinations and then just essentially do another draft before their final oral presentation.

Doug [00:10:56] I worked with students who are very dedicated and hardworking and productive and we take them and are 12 drafts before they get to their their final goals.

Doug [00:11:10] So I try to work with my students to help set up the expectation that when one of desiccation chair is doing a good job but what they are doing they are giving a lot of feedback and that may involve several iterations of drafting on the student’s part. So that’s a bit of a it’s a bit of reality that I think comes as a surprise to some students.

Bonni [00:11:34] I found that so helpful along the way of earning my dissertation was whenever people involved in the process would explain the process to me in advance because it’s it can be really difficult to navigate something like this if you know sort of what those starts and stops may look like that that process of feedback may look like.

Bonni [00:11:53] I don’t know if I ever shared this with you but one of our stats professors the same famous by Friday guy by the way had always said to us if you’re going to have a quantitative dissertation then you had better know every single number on every single chart on every single page in that dissertation.

Bonni [00:12:14] And so I was regularly practicing the questions and answers about if someone asked me what this number means I better know every backwards and forwards table in there. You were among my committee members on my own my dissertation and it was very good that I knew every single number and so you’d get what about this.

Bonni [00:12:35] What about that and what about this. I could I could address your questions and in fact and one point in time had to be very cautious I remember to say actually that’s not what that table is that tables on another page. That table is saying this and afterword my mom thought you were a little mean. And I had to explain that. No he’s doing his job. He’s a very nice man. He’s just doing his job.

Bonni [00:12:57] But that part of it I think is the culture that you have built so well there at your institution. I never felt like I wasn’t supported. But I also never felt like I wasn’t really earning a rigorous degree and I could be proud of that I had worked really hard and been challenged a lot.

Bonni [00:13:14] So that came from your kindness. Along the way but you also are a person who wants us to really reach our potential and beyond you know beyond what we thought we were capable of. What was really a fun story but yes I had to I had to tell her no. He’s actually a really nice man.

Doug [00:13:30] That’s very sweet. It’s a good in the sense that I think as your experience has been and I suspect this most institutions that we we call them defensives you know they are not interrogations and are now getting lined up to be better with questions to prove your worth. Before a student was allowed into the club and that’s pretty much it wasn’t my experience. When I was at Florida State I definitely felt supported.

Doug [00:14:01] But I did feel pressed to be accountable and I don’t mean to say that a student of course shouldn’t be accountable but accountable for my decisions and demonstrating my knowledge a sort of proving my worth and the defenses and I think the way that a lot of scholars nowadays go about supporting students by looking at the preliminary oral and even the final oral.

Doug [00:14:29] Like there’s a meeting of minds. You know this is the first time that say for instance in our case it’s the first time that these four Marines are getting together for the same purpose. At the same time during preliminary oral exam. So let’s think through how we can make something great even better. And let’s put our minds together to do a really great project.

Bonni [00:14:51] And part of that is being so transparent about your intent because like you said about the there’s gonna be you know sometimes up to 12 15 we don’t know how many of these revisions are going to come along the way.

Bonni [00:15:04] But my intent is that you’re going to have a fabulous final product so that they understand where it’s coming from. I think really helps people navigate the process a little bit better. Talk to us a little bit about some of the resources that you use in helping students come up with more interesting research. And I think you may have a little bit about some of the fields and disciplines and science too.

Doug [00:15:29] The first thing that is that it seems to me that what makes for an interesting research certainly doable like it’s not a lot of criteria on any rubric but you know a study has to be interesting in the sense that it’s engaging but it certainly helps keep memetic momentum as the author as the student writer and researcher certainly pleases a committee to when they are able to say I hadn’t thought of that. That’s something that’s that’s unusual.

Doug [00:15:59] And I think if her if a student gets the topic by saying that everything that seems to be the case really isn’t the case at all then the committee chair I guess in the first place just you know say that’s absurd.

Doug [00:16:14] You’ve got to really connect this in a meaningful way to a field. You also don’t want to hear your chair say you know so water. Who cares if that’s irrelevant because it’s not the topic isn’t really connected to what’s already known and obviousness.

Doug [00:16:31] Well it’s certainly something to build upon from the literature. I think that students who can avoid falling into the position of just reaffirming what’s already known since they can avoid doing that are able to position themselves to do research that sticks with them as a passion longer than those who don’t when they do find their research topic very often that seemed magical and invigorating and like can happen through anything any research project is that by the process of collecting information and data and analyzing and a lot of that metic necessarily disappear it’s something that seemed unknown becomes known.

Doug [00:17:23] And while that process can be fascinating very often at the end of the end of the process students can be left feeling little ho hum about what they have just dedicated perhaps years of their life and study.

Bonni [00:17:39] So you’re saying a bit about some of the news that’s come up in science that might represent some interesting research questions.

Doug [00:17:46] Yeah so it to me the idea of a research topic is closely related to that of what makes for an interesting problem. Of course this research papers present the problem that they seek to address and of course that problem doesn’t have to be things gone wrong.

Doug [00:18:03] It can simply be an opportunity for research. So I’d like to think about approaching the problem as sort of a three part argument with the first point that a student might make in their topic is what’s what’s known to be so about a topic of interest to them and then to follow that up with a competing truth about a topic that creates a tension that requires the upshot of research existing and sometimes I guess it’s not necessarily known whether the results will be interesting.

Doug [00:18:40] But by setting up a topic that might be compelling it it can become interesting to the student to the committee because it can expose how an accepted view of the world is just an interpretation of it and offer an alternative to that view of the world.

Doug [00:18:59] So as an example this is more from the findings and rather than the planning study. But in the field of social psychology social cognition is the term it seems to to study human perception and judgment and memory and in the 80s the general take on social cognition was that those kind of mental processes could either only be controlled through an automatic process.

Doug [00:19:31] Much like our respiratory system or that they were volitional that they were things that people chose in terms of how they see and judge into the world. But just ten years after that the consensus seemed to be pretty clear that people’s social cognitions were really combinations of of each of those both controlled and uncontrolled mental processes.

Doug [00:19:54] I’ll share with you they shared with you a link completely people behind the university pay walls for access to academic papers and get to it. But Murray Davis a sociologist who passed away in 2007 wrote some really helpful guidelines for what makes an interesting research that the one that comes to mind is from 1971 and what he’s seeking to do is create a taxonomy of interesting maths this example regarding social cognition and you might call it interesting by organization the idea or disorganization. So there are sort of these binary options.

Doug [00:20:38] The interesting mix of organization or disorganization impulse pony up things that we’ve thought to be similar are really similar or just the inverse the things that seem to be similar are similar. And so by creating that kind of integration within a field or integration within a field pocket’s can be more compelling.

Bonni [00:21:03] And tell me more about how you first found out about Murray Davis and these these this taxonomy that he’s got.

Doug [00:21:11] At the National Science Foundation. I had a colleague who was interested in this sort of approach of what makes for research that’s compelling and he shared with me any more recent article that’s come out that’s sort of a tongue in cheek piece on how to write consistently boring literature I think.

Doug [00:21:33] But it was and it referenced Virgie’s work and I wonder what wonder what that’s about. So access to our library databases and thought Ah this is great. I might be able to use this in my home when I’m teaching was in my room tracked on Monday. I began to research methods class with my doctoral students and were looking forward I’m looking forward to at least talking about is his paper and what it is that does make research interesting.

Bonni [00:22:03] Yeah. And as you’ve talked about it it helps on so many levels helps fuel us you know keep our passion going and then helps other people want to read and I think probably does a good job of organizing our thoughts around the research to which may or may not be necessarily clear upfront.

Bonni [00:22:21] Are there any of the other parts of the taxonomy that you really want to point out before we go on to their recommendation segment or that and it’s a list by the way we’ll have a link to the articles that Doug is referring to at teachinginhighered.com/84.

Bonni [00:22:38] And you can see you can check out further some of the ideas that Doug has had and that Murray has also Marie Davis had around making research interesting but any other site you want to bring up before we go to recommendations.

Doug [00:22:52] Yeah I guess I’ll share one with you. And the idea of a topic being interesting because of it being generalizable or localized research might make an argument that some tappings worth pursuing because what seems like a global truth is really more of a local one or vice versa.

Doug [00:23:12] That’s what’s got to be experienced locally as more go. As an example the Pew Research Center in collaboration with triple j asked which is loosely affiliated with the National Science Foundation recently did a study on the public’s view of science versus that of scientists how science scientist perceive I think it was 13 different topics regarding the field.

Doug [00:23:39] And there were a few like to me in which the two pretty much seemed to be on the fly the space program. For instance I think two thirds of each agreed that it was a worthwhile and investment for the country.

Doug [00:23:51] But in just about everything else there was a pretty big gap between the perceived importance of various science topics and the release of the consensus agreement regarding them.

Doug [00:24:02] So it turned out that the biggest gap was a 51 percent gap was between the public’s perception versus scientists perceptions of whether eating genetically modified food is safe. 9 intending scientists believe that to be and only 37 percent of the public did.

Doug [00:24:23] So I think this can be an instance of things can be compelling to a jump more general audience and I point this out too because he kind of suggested with that with your dissertation it’s even though it’s something that exists only within your you know 3 or 4 person dissertation committee while it’s being created.

Doug [00:24:46] It lives you know well beyond that that conference room or classroom in which the professors take place that exist out in the world and to be able to connect with readers that are five years or 5000 miles away from now being able to grab their interest through pointing out some counterintuitive or unexpected features of the world can be really helpful.

Bonni [00:25:10] Well this is the point in the show where we each give a recommendation and my recommendation is related to what you just said and that is that I found a really helpful resource. It’s a book called Doing a Literature Review and I’ll be linking to that in the show notes again which will be at teachinginhighered.com/84.

Bonni [00:25:27] It’s by Chris Hart and it was just a wonderful resource for me. I think perhaps I could have I shouldn’t say perhaps I could have done a literature review without this book but it really helped me organize things well and I felt that was one of the stronger pieces that kind of helped me get through the entire process.

Bonni [00:25:45] And that would be something I would definitely use with students of mine and would suggest that people do if literature reviews are a part of whatever dissertations or research you may be conducting or supporting students and conducting. It’s a wonderful resource. I would check out doing a literature review. And Doug I know you have a couple recommendations to Yeah you sure to check out the text from.

Doug [00:26:08] You’re right. That is I think one of the challenges that students faces. How do we organize my literature and summarize it in a way that says something more than just a book report or you know sort of summarization but how do I synthesize things and saying something meaningful new to me is one of the important things in doing that is being able to identify literature that is and is important within the field.

Doug [00:26:36] Google Scholar certainly makes that quite a bit more accessible I think that people by getting access to the most highly cited research and the research that may have been relatively new. It still has a greater impact than the field. It is also important. So the best way that I found to be able to do that is through a software called Publish or Perish.

Doug [00:27:03] It’s put out on Harzing.com I’m sure you can post a link and will as a professor of management at Middlesex and she develop the software to be able to do rather robust searches of either Google Scholar or think Bing or whatever Microsoft’s common commonality with Google scholar is and it does a really great job of being able to do massive searches of academic literature based on what’s called Impact scores or essentially given the importance of the Journal and the number of citations it’s got what looks to be like the most critical research to really focus on the most popular most critical literature and focus on looking one’s research topic.

Bonni [00:27:50] And it looks like she talks about right know if it’s her that wrote this particular page I’m looking at but it talks about the good citations and metrics being potential for having had a significant impact on the field.

Bonni [00:28:04] But the opposite of that is not necessarily choose the caution you think is nice. How not to use their software and not to limit yourself too much I thought that was really good. And I know you have one more thing to recommend before we close.

Doug [00:28:17] And this is probably more salient for those in the social sciences. But the ERIC thesaurus. ERIC is a noun and governmental clearinghouse of educational research information and Ceasars can be really useful for me to find out ways in which others within the academic field talk about concepts you might be interested in.

Doug [00:28:42] So for example our students might be interested in something like self efficacy and while that’s certainly a real saying they might discover using inputs or that it’s referred to differently in different academic traditions like perhaps health actualisation or health concepts and it’s really helpful to be able to identify that. So your literature searches can be done more efficiently.

Bonni [00:29:07] When I first went up there to test it out cause I knew you’d be recommending it. Today I was unable to find any descriptors to look at. So I suggest if it’s your first time visiting click on the little browse the source link and you’ll be like a kid in a candy store and having all kinds of fun looking at so many of the topics that are there.

Doug [00:29:26] That’s a great suggestion. Yeah. Good point.

Bonni [00:29:29] Thank you so much for being a guest today on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Doug [00:29:33] My pleasure. Thanks Bonni.

Bonni [00:29:36] Thanks once again to Dr. Doug Leigh for being a guest on today’s show and to all of you for listening. If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly e-mails that I send out what you’ll receive are all of the show notes automatically in your inbox.

Bonni [00:29:50] You don’t have to remember to go check out all the recommendations including these show notes at teachinginhighered.com/84 have links to all of the examples of different kinds of interesting research.

Bonni [00:30:03] And Doug has gone through and put links to examples of those with some really really great studies I hope that you’ll check those out it’s one of those bonus show notes episodes worth checking out and all the books that we referred to in the software etc.

Bonni [00:30:15] So check those out at teachinginhighered.com/84. But if you are worried about not remembering you’ll get one email per week and that will come with all the show notes along with an article on teaching or productivity written by me.

Bonni [00:30:29] Thanks once again for a list name and I do want to say thanks to all of you who have been writing such kind reviews whatever service it is that you use to listen to the show whether that’s iTunes or stitcher.

Bonni [00:30:41] There’s an opportunity for you to recommend the show and help other people discover it. And I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who’s been writing them. You’re so gracious to say such kind things about the show and help other people find out about it through those services.

Bonni [00:30:56] You can find out more at teachinginhighered.com/iTunes or slash stitcher if you want to see a quick way of making those ratings or reviews. Thanks once again for listening. I just realized I forgot to tell you if you want to subscribe to that weekly email that’s at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. Thanks once again for listening and we’ll see you next time.

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