Reflect on your perceived value of this course. Include both positive and negative aspects of your experience. What might you have done to improve your learning experience in this course? How might the University or your instructor provide additional support for your learning? Were there topics covered in this course that seem particularly relevant or irrelevant to your experiences and to what you expect to come in future courses?
This course has been extremely helpful in laying a foundation for improving critical thinking skills as well as providing a good introduction into action research. I think that many graduate level courses are focused on a chosen field rather than a broad range of topics and this is a good thing. This allows for deeper understanding of the material at hand and has the added benefit of the student being genuinely interested in the subject matter. I took Accounting for my undergraduate but I wasn't interested in it. I even understand needing to have an understanding of accounting and finance but I feel no connection to the material. A Masters allows that connection. That being said, I did not feel a connection with this course. I totally understand the need for this course, and I understand how these concepts covered in this course relate to the overall theme of Leadership, but it wasn't teaching leadership principals. I almost view this course as pre-requisite course so all students understand what is expected in future courses. I understand this, but it doesn't mean I feel connected to it. The material on action research was most helpful. It is good to know what is expected of a student in this program. It also provided a good place from which to grow as a researcher. I enjoy research and I especially enjoy qualitative research. Understand how people interact and think is important from a leadership standpoint. A few things were un-ejoyable or provided little utility. TheBrain is something I can do without. I understand wanting to provide tools for students to be able to organize thoughts and plans and TheBrain may even be widely accepted. I fully understand that I may be the only guy who thinks I could have saved that $300. I don't need concept maps to organize my research, and while I usually lose points on papers due to formatting, I've never had a paper be poorly organized.
Which brings me to my last point and that is I would like to see more support for students like myself that focus more on substance than form. I accept that there needs to be a standardized format for submitted work and instructors (and this one was no different) with ERAU typically post resources for formatting. My larger point is that within the module it is helpful to have that information handy. The section detailing literature reviews had this under "What is a literature review?"
"The purpose of a literature review is to find relevant scholarly material to inform your area of study. You conduct a literature review to discover what others have said about the topic that you are studying. You may find that someone has already done the legwork and has studied a situation very similar to your own. Perhaps you can generalize the results of that study to your own situation. You might find that someone has completed research that you find interesting and that you would like to extend through a similar study."
Ok that's easy enough to do. Of course there is nothing there to inform about formatting or form. My mistake was using the same format as an annotated bibliography. I am efficient that way. This link http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/literature-reviews/ details literature reviews and is much more in-depth than what ERAU provided. It also pretty much says "book report only a scholarly one". Sardonic humor aside, I would have benefited from a better understanding of what a literature review entails. At this point in my academic career I should have dug deeper on my own into the concept so the failure is just as much mine.
Overall this was a great course and I took away a good foundation for future classes. Dr. Beasley was engaged and facilitated discussions well and provided timely feedback. Two thumbs up.
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