I have been lucky to supervise many undergraduate students as they complete their final year education research projects. It’s an exciting time as students bring their enthusiasm, interest, and knowledge to a fresh project each year. It is also a challenging task; students who are expert in their own discipline such as chemistry have to learn new terminology and new ways of approaching research, that may seem unfamiliar. The time constraints of a final year undergraduate study adds to the challenge: completing a research project in a new area that is the basis of an academic thesis in 6 – 8 months is quite a task!
It has always been my wish to help students immerse in the world of education research a little more smoothly by producing a guidebook mapped on to their academic journey, and I have been compiling such a guide – or components of it – over the last few years. It’s intended to be a primer, helping to direct an academic journey and signpost to some useful resources and approaches that are commonly used by those working in this domain. The intention is that I will publish aspects of this over the coming months, and new articles will be linked from a dedicated page: A Guide to Completing your Undergraduate Chemistry Education Research Project. Note that this is “a guide” not “the guide” – these are based on my own experiences and observations as a student, a researcher, a supervisor, and a journal editor in chemistry education. You and your supervisor will have different experiences and perhaps different approaches; the task ahead of you is to be able to make meaningful decisions about approaches you take on your research journey.
I hope that once a resonable compilation is complete that they can be joined together to form a guidebook, so I welcome feedback/omissions/corrections!
Good luck with your undergraduate research project. It is an exciting time!
To cite this page (Harvard)
Seery, M. K. (2021) Introducing a guide to completing your undergraduate chemistry education research project. Available at: http://www.michaelseery.com/introducing-a-guide-to-completing-your-undergraduate-chemistry-education-research-project (Accessed: 31st February 2021).