Dear Reader,
For this paper, I plan to explore the pros, cons, and logic behind general education requirements, and how these are perceived by students at DU. I have found that many students are often strongly opposed to general education requirements, despite their nearly universal presents in academics throughout the country. For this reason I wish to explore why, either why there is a possible discrepancy between these two forces.
To do this I wish to conduct several interviews with students, preferably of different backgrounds and opinions on the topic. I wish to ask what their opinions are of the current gen. ed. requirements, how they feel these requirements should be addressed, and whether they understand and agree with the logic behind them.
I wished to address this particular topic because, especially as a first year student, I felt it particularly concerned my peers and myself. I felt it was an issue that many had strong and very varied feelings about, both students as well as administrators.
-Andrew Thomas
Dear Andrew,
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely an interesting research topic as I have found myself becoming slightly more and more opposed to general education requirements myself as I continue with my first year here at DU. The clearest and most effective piece of your process note is the part where you discuss the methods you intend to use: “To do this I wish to conduct several interviews with students, preferably of different backgrounds and opinions on the topic.” I think your questions are very open-ended and could result in you collecting an overwhelming amount qualitative data (depending on how extensive your interviewees are feeling like being) that you are going to have to sort through. I have heard from previous students that many of the general education requirements over the years have changed and it might be interesting to research this a bit more. Why are general education requirements changing? Are they getting more or less extensive? Also, it would be interesting to compare the general education requirements here at DU to those of other schools. I would also want to know what you plan on doing with this information, I feel as though just simply stating that it concerns you might not be the true reason for you researching this topic. Perhaps stating your views on the issue would help your cause. I think the main point of what I’m trying to say is that you should apply this research to something, why do you actually care about this topic?
After reading your draft, I think that the same critiques that apply to your note apply to your draft. You draft is very reflective of what is in your research note and therefore the same problems exist in both. You need to identify the point of doing this research (more than just curiosity).