M. Harrison Fitt Copyright (c) 2012 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt Recent documents in M. Harrison Fitt en-us Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:41:44 PST 3600 An Investigation of the Doctoral Dissertation Literature Review: From the Materials We Use to Prepare Students, to the Materials That Students Prepare http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt/4 http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt/4 Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:28:23 PST Practically speaking, a well-conducted review of literature is central to a scholar’s ability to pose pertinent and timely questions within their field. As part of the culminating written assessment of a Ph.D. candidate, the dissertation literature review provides a unique vantage point to explore future scholars’ preparation. In spite of its central role within the research process, research about how future scholars are taught the doctoral competencies necessary to conduct a review of the literature for the dissertation or how the dissertation literature reviews are assessed is limited.

In two separate studies, this research uses the Boote and Beile’s Literature Review Scoring Rubric as a framework to explore the textbooks used in the early stages of doctoral education and the quality of dissertation literature reviews from a field of education research. In the first study, seven of the top selling education research methods textbooks from 2010 were analyzed to determine how well they cover the 12 performance criteria on the rubric. While the results were varied, the majority of textbooks were not adequate in their coverage of the performance criteria identified by Boote and Beile. In short, the materials used to prepare doctoral students may not be equal to conveying critical components of the literature review.

Efforts were then devoted to a replication study of exploring the end results of doctoral training and preparation. In the second study, the Literature Review Scoring Rubric was used to assess the quality of 30 randomly selected dissertation literature reviews from Instructional Technology. The scores of the dissertation literature reviews were also varied. While some dissertation literature reviews in this study were of high quality and scored well, the majority of them were of a lower quality.

]]> Melynda H. Fitt PSY 7670 - Literature Reviews, Spring 2008 http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt/3 http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt/3 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:32:19 PDT This course is designed to help students in doctoral programs write a literature review that is appropriate for a dissertation or thesis proposal. The course will emphasize skills for writing the Problem Statement and conducting and writing the Review of Literature. Even though the Procedures section is an important part of the dissertation proposal, it will not be dealt with extensively in this class. Other courses which deal specifically with the appropriate design, analysis, and interpretation issues which the student will use for his or her research should be taken prior to this course. Substantial time will be devoted to critiquing previously written Literature Reviews as a way of helping the student understand what differentiates between a well-written and poorly-written literature review.

]]> Karl White et al. Assessing the Quality of Doctoral Dissertation Literature Reviews in Instructional Technology http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt/1 http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt/1 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:32:38 PDT Assessment of the doctoral dissertation literature review provides insight into a student’s preparation for future work as a researcher. In 2004, efforts to assess the quality of literature reviews in doctoral dissertations were pioneered by Boote & Beile. Their work represents an important response to the call for improved research skills among emerging scholars. The purpose of this study is to replicate their work in a focused area of educational research, specifically Instructional Technology, and to examine the inter-rater reliability of the rubric. The findings suggest that dissertation literature reviews in Instructional Technology show the same need for improvement as dissertation literature reviews from education as a whole. Potential avenues of research are identified as well as improvements for rubric.

]]> M. Harrison Fitt et al. Literature Reviews Expert Versus Novice Tutors: Impacts on Student Outcomes in Problem-Based Learning http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt/2 http://works.bepress.com/melyndafitt/2 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:32:38 PDT The tutor is an essential part of problem based learning (PBL). However, tutor characteristics and role are inconsistent. Meta-analysis was used to investigate both the role and training of PBL tutors as moderators of student learning. Weighted effect sizes were calculated on student outcomes with a modest favorable overall effect size for PBL; a vote count shows favorable results as well. Results indicate a mixture of peers and instructors do best when compared to peers and instructors alone. Tutor training appears to make a difference by itself, but when considered with tutor background, tutor training does not appear to moderate student learning. A framework for study factors and recommendations for future work are provided.

]]> Heather M. Leary et al. Problem Based Learning