| Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs): |
| At the end of the course the students will be able to: | Domain | BT Level* |
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| 1. To understand why do researcher do research? |
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| 2. To understand basic concepts of research, its methodology and terminology. |
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| 3. To apply the knowledge of research processes (reading, evaluating, and developing). |
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| 4. To understand ethical principles of research, ethical challenges and approval processes. |
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| 5. To apply quantitative, qualitative and mixed approaches to address the research problem. Identify the components of a literature review process. To critically analyze and evaluate the published research. |
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| To write an appropriate research problem and define parameters. To distinguish among problem statement, a research question or hypothesis, and a research objective. To organize and conduct research in more appropriate manner. To write research paper, report and thesis. |
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| * BT= Bloom’s Taxonomy, C=Cognitive domain, P=Psychomotor domain, A= Affective domain |
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| Topics Covered in the Course, with Number of Lectures on Each Topic (assume 15-week instruction and one-hour lectures) |
| Week | Lecture | Topics Covered |
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| Week 1 |
1 |
Introduction to the research, What is research? Why do we do research? Who does research? The basic steps of research. |
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2 |
Research basics, Research characteristics, research projects and its pitfalls. sources of research problem |
| Week 2 |
3 |
Hypothesis, delimitations, definitions, assumptions, research proposal and its components |
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4 |
Research process, methodologies and comparison among different research methodologies. |
| Week 3 |
5 |
Literature Review, Why literature review? How to conduct literature review? Topic identification, Sources of literature. |
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6 |
Reading the literature, Research paper template |
| Week 4 |
7 |
How to read a research paper? Comprehension and Evaluation |
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8 |
Synthesis and Paper review |
| Week 5 |
9 |
How to write a paper? Types of research papers. A scientific contribution, Structure of a paper. |
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10 |
Literature review analysis and synthesis, systematic and argument analysis. |
| Week 6 |
11 |
Methods of argument analysis, Fisher and Toulmin method. Assembling and organizing literature using map. |
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12 |
Writing the literature review and Review article |
| Week 7 |
13 |
Research article, table, figure and equation citations and indexing. |
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14 |
Preparing Bibliography, APA style, MLA, Chicago manual. Where to publish? A template for reviewing |
| Week 8 |
1 hours |
Mid Term |
| Week 9 |
15 |
Elementary statistics, Population, sample, parameter, statistics, quantitative and qualitative data, level of measurements, designing experiments. |
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16 |
Methods of sampling, frequency distributions, analysis of frequency distributions, basic measures (ratio, proportions and fractions, percentage, percents, percent change, percent increase, percentile, rate, exponential notations and precision) |
| Week 10 |
17 |
Data analysis, descriptive statistics, Mean, Median, Mode and Range, Standard deviation and variance |
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18 |
Skewness, Kurtosis, coefficient of variance, correlation, regression, histogram and data normalization, Discussion related to Midterm Exam. |
| Week 11 |
19 |
Confusion/Error matrix, Important terms, Rates calculations, Accuracy |
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20 |
Misclassification rate, Recall, False positive rate, True negative rate, precision, F-measure |
| Week 12 |
21 |
Receiver Operator Characteristics (ROC), creating ROC, interpreting the ROC |
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22 |
Area under the curve, Relation between sensitivity, specificity, FPR and Threshold |
| Week 13 |
23 |
Measure of Association, strength of prediction, classification problems, classification accuracy, confidence interval for classification accuracy, |
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24 |
Impact of sample size, reliability and validity, Std Deviation and coefficient of variation |
| Week 14 |
25 |
Z Score, Standard (Z) scores, calculating Z Scores, Interpreting Z Scores |
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26 |
Z Score tables, Use of Z score tables, Cumulative Z score, Level of confidence, |
| Week 15 |
27 |
Research problem identification, Research proposal writing, Why do we need to write proposal? |
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28 |
Contents of research proposal, Presentations, |
| Week 16 |
29 |
Writing research reports and thesis. Contents of report and thesis. |
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30 |
Presentations, Discussion about final exam |
| Week 17 |
2 hours |
Final Term |
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