- Global Research Methods and Major Proposal

Catalog description

This course aims to help students develop basic research competencies they can use in future classes while providing them with practical research skills they can use during their off-campus (OCS) program. The course draws from a diverse range of research projects and scholarship that helps students develop a greater understanding of, and appreciation for, the value of global research. Students learn the value of a global, transdisciplinary framework that transcends disciplinary borders, resists methodological nationalism, and draws on diverse methods and methodologies that help students to decenter Western-centric forms of knowledge production while being attentive to the importance of local-global flows and ways of thinking. Students learn to use mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) research, including archival research, compiling and using data sets, online surveys, interviews, ethnography, textual and discourse analysis, data visualization, as well as the basics of statistical analysis (both techniques and common software). The course also helps students develop their intellectual focus for the International Studies (INTL) major, both thematically and geographically.