Here are my two brainstormed projects, two options to study our 726 class:

1)  The first project would study the classroom dynamics in the course.  The goal of the study would be to discover the patterns of interaction between students and the teacher and among students in order to find out how dynamics influence classroom success.  Data for the study could be previous research in classroom dynamics, the class notes written each week for 726, transcripts from classroom discussions, the seating arrangement, student self-reflections and teacher reflections, and observations from an independent observer (MacNealy 244).  I think case study would be the most effective, possibly in conjunction with feminist method.  Initial assumptions would be that dynamics would directly indicate success or failure of the class, just from past experience as a student.  Of course, our biases would need to be acknowledged, as all of us are participants as well as researchers.  That’s why I suggest the use of the independent observer to triangulate data. 

2)  The second project I considered would study transfer in a methods class.  The main research question this project would try to answer would be, “to what extent does the content of the readings and discussions during class impact a student’s individual research?”  I would look at the relationship between the class activities and the final projects, to see if what was talked about in class was actually applied by the student.  Data used could include the course syllabus, handouts, class notes, final projects, and student self-reflections (possibly student journals, if we asked everyone to keep a journal throughout the course).  I would initially assume that transfer is a highly complex concept, which may or may not be able to be measured to make any conclusions, but at least this study would look at the relationships between the syllabus and the content of the final projects.  Methods would include discourse analysis, case study, and probably most likely grounded theory.  This study might be impossible to implement for our class, as the bias would skew the results to such an extent.  It might be better for outside researchers to do this study on us, or not develop the study until the course was almost over (and our final projects decided upon!).  If we planned this study at the beginning of the course, we might be too influenced by the study when we’re thinking about our final projects, even if we don’t realize it.  So this might be the best kind of thing to do after final projects are handed in.  Of course, this is also a limitation, as the course would be over by the time research would be beginning.  We’d need to know what data we wanted, because once we begin, no new data can be collected.