Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia

Vicerrectoría Académica y de Investigación

Course: Educational Research
Code: 551027

Activity Guide and Evaluation Rubric – Step 1 - Identifying a research

problem and reviewing the literature related to research problem

1. Activity Description

Type of activity: Independent

Evaluation moment: Initial
Highest score of the activity: 25 points
The activity starts on: Monday, August The activity ends on: Sunday, September
23, 2021 5, 2021
With this activity, you are expected to achieve the following learning
outcome:

- Detect a research problem in your local context through a deeper

understanding of educational issues.

The activity consists of:

Step 1
Identifying a Research Problem: You begin a research study by identifying a topic to
study, typically an issue or problem in education that needs to be resolved.
Identifying a research problem consists of specifying an issue to study, developing a
justification for studying it, and suggesting the importance of the study for select
audiences that will read the report. By specifying a “problem,” you limit the subject
matter and focus attention on a specific aspect of study.

Go to the Learning Environment and in the Course Contents and Bibliographic

References for Unit 1, revise the document Oludeyi, Olukunle y Olajide, O. (2017).
Identifying Problems and Formulating Hypotheses in Research.
Use the principles of active reading to understand and evaluate the information for its
relevance to your needs. Share in the forum your opinion about this guide.

Step 2

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you must choose a topic to research; which topic? One (1) problem or issue,
whatever on education in your city, district, smalltown, village or your educational
institution. For this reason, research problems are the educational issues,
controversies, or concerns that guide the need for conducting a study. Good research
problems can be found in our educational context:

1. The disruptions caused by at-risk students in classrooms

2. The increase in violence on college campuses
3. The lack of parental involvement in schools for students with challenging behaviors
4.Teaching and learning of reference languages as foreign languages.
5.Teaching-learning of Spanish as a mother tongue, second language and foreign
language.
6.Design of didactical material focused on language learning through e-learning
model.
7.Implementation of reference languages with specific disciplinary purposes.
8.Develop of proposals on knowledge management in virtual mediations, pedagogy,
didactic, global pedagogical models.
9.Proposal of assessment strategies for learning in e-learning model.
10. Developing processes for adopting quality standards in language learning through
of e-learning model.

Step 3
Revise the document “Research Methodology: Part 2 - Selection and Formulation of
Research Problem”, and “Conducting Educational Research.

Afterwards, then you had stated your research problem, you must develop the
following aspects completing the Template 1 (You can find it at Practice
Environment):

• You must specify your research problem in one (1) paragraph.

• You must justify it in one (1) paragraph.
• You must describe the need to study it in one (1) paragraph.

Step 4

Reviewing the Literature

According to your chosen problem above; now, it is important to know who has
studied the research problem you plan to examine. In this regard, reviewing the

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literature is an important step in the research process. Reviewing the literature
means locating summaries, books, e-books, papers, documents, websites,
webquests, blogs, journals, and indexed publications on a topic; selectively choosing
which literature to include in your review; and then summarizing the literature in an
abstract.

You must only choose at least the three (3) literatures for developing the following
aspect completing the Template 1 (You can find it at Practice Environment):

• You must write at least the abstracts of these three (3) or more documents or
literature: e.g. if you chose the topic “Teaching-learning of Spanish as a mother
tongue”; you must look into three (3) papers or documents on this topic and copy
their abstracts.

For the development of the activity consider that:

In the Initial Information Environment, you must:

- Check the Course Agenda to organize your time.
- Check all available forums, introduce yourself in the General Forum.
- Verify the dates of the Web Conferences so that you can plan your participation
accordingly.
- Verify your tutors’ synchronous attention by Skype.

In the Learning Environment, you must:

- Download the Syllabus of the course to actively read.
- Go to the discussion forum for the task and get familiar with your collaborative
group.
- Participate in the forum to get feedback from e-mates and tutor.

In the Evaluation Environment, you must:

- Template 1 in PDF file with ítems 1 and 2 developed of this guide, individually:
this file must be posted either on forum so that your mates can improve or
comment it, and on Monitoring and Evaluation Environment.

Evidence of independent work:

The independent evidence to be submitted is:

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One (1) Template 1 in PDF file with ítems 1 and 2 developed of this guide,
individually: this file must be posted either on forum so that your mates can improve
or comment it, and on Monitoring and Evaluation Environment.

Evidence of group work:

The group work evidence to be submitted is:

Interact with your partners about their contributions; help them with ideas and
feedback.

2. General Guidelines for the Development of Evidence to Submit

For Independent evidence, consider the following:

1. All members of the group must participate with their contributions in the
forum.

2. Each student individually must submit the requested product in the environment
indicated by the teacher.

3. Before submitting the requested product, students should check that it

meets all the requirements mentioned in this activity guide.

Please keep in mind that all individual or collaborative written products must comply
with the spelling rules and presentation conditions defined in this activity guide.
Regarding the use of references, consider that the product of this activity must
comply with APA style.
In any case, make sure you comply with the rules and avoid academic plagiarism.
You can review your written products using the Turnitin tool found in the virtual
campus.

Under the Academic Code of Conduct, the actions that infringe the academic order,
among others, are the following: paragraph e) Plagiarism is to present as your own
work all or part of a written report, task or document of invention carried out by
another person. It also implies the use of citations or lack of references, or it
includes citations where there is no match between these and the reference and
paragraph f) To reproduce, or copy for profit, educational resources or results of

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research products, which have rights reserved for the University. (Acuerdo 029 - 13
de diciembre de 2013, artículo 99)

The academic penalties students will face are:

a) In case of academic fraud demonstrated in the academic work or evaluation, the
score obtained will be zero (0.0) without any disciplinary measures being derived.
b) In case of proven plagiarism in academic work of any nature, the score obtained
will be zero (0.0), without any disciplinary measures being derived.

3. Evaluation Rubric Template

Type of activity: Independent

Evaluation moment: Initial
The highest score in this activity is 25 points

First evaluation High level: The student actively participated in the forum by
criterion: posting opinion and chart on time.

Participate actively If your work is at this level, you can get between 4
on task. points and 5 points

This criterion Average level: The student participated in the forum by

represents 5 posting opinion and chart three days prior to the closing of the
points of the total task.
of 25 points of If your work is at this level, you can get between 3
the activity. points and 4 points

Low level: The student participated in the forum by posting

opinion, but not the chart, or vice versa during the last 3 days
of the task. The student did not participate in the forum.

If your work is at this level, you can get between 0

points and 3 points

Second evaluation High level: The student responded the three topics according
criterion: to guide, and demonstrated reflection and logical arguments.

5
Identifying a If your work is at this level, you can get between 4
Research Problem. points and 5 points

This criterion Average level: The student didn’t respond the three topics
represents 5 according to guide. Or he responded the three topics without
points of the total demonstrating reflection or logical arguments.
of 25 points of
the activity. If your work is at this level, you can get between 3
points and 4 points

Low level: The student didn’t respond any of the three topics.
Too many writing mistakes.

If your work is at this level, you can get between 0

points and 3 points

Third evaluation High level: The student answered assertively and relevantly to
criterion: all questions in Template 1.

Answer assertively If your work is at this level, you can get between 4
and relevantly to points and 5 points
Template 1.
Average level: The student answered assertively and
This criterion relevantly to 60% of the questions in Template 1.
represents 5
points of the total If your work is at this level, you can get between 3
of 25 points of points and 4 points
the activity.
Low level: The student answered assertively and relevantly to
less than 59% of the questions in Template 1.

If your work is at this level, you can get between 0

points and 3 points