Syllabus: GEOG 696, S/11, Dr. Rodrigue

Geography 696-01

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH

Seminar in Geographical Research Methods

Spring 2011

(ticket # 3890
M 7-9:45 p.m. in LA4-204)

Instructor Information

: Instructor: Dr. Christine M. Rodrigue
: E-Mail: rodrigue@csulb.edu
: Instructor's Home Page: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/
: Course Home Page: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog696/
: Office: LA4-103W
: Telephones: (562) 985-4895 or -8432
: Mail Drop Box: LA4-106 counter
: Office Hours: 5-5:50 p.m. MWTh most weeks, but 5-5:50 MWF on 01/28, 02/25, 03/18, 04/29, and 05/13 (faculty meeting weeks), or by appointment

Course Description

: Prerequisites: GEOG 596 (with a B or better), graduate status in geography, and consent of instructor. Critical survey of contemporary methodologies available for framing research questions in geography, emphasizing the connection between research models, research questions, and the selections and limitations of particular methods, techniques, and data. Letter grade only (A-F).

Course Materials

Readings will be assigned (available online through our library and a few may be available on BeachBoard).

Course Objectives

discuss how a research question is framed within the various geographical traditions and methodologies
examine a number of research methods and techniques in a variety of specific subfields in geography
read and critically discuss applications of these research methods in contemporary (and sometimes classical) literature, in order to analyze and critique how the authors went about their purposes and whether they were successful
become acquainted with a variety of ways to obtain, select, and analyze data
develop a graduate student's general area of interest into a focussed and feasible thesis proposal
practice leading discussions
learn to do professional peer reviews/critiques for your colleagues

Course Format and Project

the course will be conducted as a graduate discussion seminar
between 3 and 5 readings will be assigned most weeks: students are responsible for doing all of the readings each and every week, thinking about them, and preparing notes on the main points of the articles and questions they raise
we will have guest speakers, who will assign readings:
- Dr. David Hornbeck, Professor Emeritus, CSUN, and the former President of Area Location Systems, who will discuss graduate school and "working both sides of the street"
- Dr. Al Russo, Director for Research Compliance, Office of University Research, CSULB, who will discuss Human Subjects on this campus
readings will examine geographic research across physical, environmental, human, and technical geography, the balance among them reflecting participants' main interests
discussion will consider research ethics, fieldwork, collecting data, analysis of findings, and (re)presentation of results
the reading load will be heaviest over the first half or two thirds or so of the course, lightening as the workload on your proposals expands in the last part of the semester.
each student will lead at least one (and probably more) discussion(s) of an article and prepare a debriefing paper for your colleagues afterwards that summarizes their discussion and the key points in the article.
the principal seminar product will be a formal proposal for your thesis or project
- this proposal will probably be around 10-20 pages long
- it will include the following elements:
  - the very specific purpose of the thesis or project (the purpose statement is very important: every word in it has implications for methodology and scope)
  - the context of the problem, justifying it in terms of prior literature or, in some cases, legislation and/or social need
  - the data to be used to address the problem and how you plan to acquire them (e.g., original fieldwork, surveying and interviewing, Census material, historical maps or documents, digital elevation models, satellite or airborne imagery, physical processing of materials in a lab)
  - likely problems in acquiring or using the data (e.g., inherent biases) and how you plan to address them so your use of them is legitimate for your purpose
  - methods you plan to use to analyze your data, why they are appropriate, any shortcomings in your methods, and how you plan to deal with such shortcomings, so that your use of the methods and techniques will be legitimate within the research framework/model/methodology in which you situate your work
  - a tentative outline of the structure of your thesis, with each chapter broken down to at least four levels of organization (e.g., I, A, 1, a)
  - an initial annotated bibliography of at least 20 sources, including a minimum of 10 refereed research articles
  - an understandably tentative timeline for each of the major tasks implied by your data search, analysis, and writing
  - a signed statement by a faculty member indicating that s/he has accepted the responsibility of chairing your committee ("adoption papers")
- participants are ACTIVELY to help one another develop their proposals (or review chapters): serve as sounding boards, vicious critics, and shoulders-to-cry-on

Grading

40 percent of your grade is based on the quality and completeness of your proposal
40 percent is based on your participation in seminar discussions and relevant outside activities:
- have you maintained excellent attendance?
- is it evident from your comments and notes that you have really done all of the readings each and every week?
- is it evident from the quality of your comments and notes that you have thought about the readings in depth -- thoroughly digested them?
- do you support and encourage others in their attempts to express themselves? do you notice when someone is shy and having a difficult time breaking into the discussion and help draw him or her in? this is particularly important when you are responsible for discussion of a particular article
- while you must actively participate, do you go overboard and harm discussion by domineering others and "showing off"?
- when you facilitate discussion of a particular article, you will also provide a short debriefing paper (~ 2 pp., single-spaced) for your colleagues the next week, in which you outline key issues and topics that came up in the discussion and your sense of how they relate to the reading.
- after you have your pre-proposal done, start researching the interests of the tenured and tenure-track faculty in Geography: you are "shopping" for a possible thesis chair (you should have some general idea after having taken GEOG 596)
- after you have your full draft proposal, informally interview at least two faculty about their interests and tell them about your own and show them your proposal. Take notes on these interviews and turn them in.
- after you have done your "Majestic Final Draft," continue your discussion with faculty to the point of getting one to agree to chair your thesis
- have your new chair sign "adoption papers" and give them to me for your file
20 percent is based on your frankness, thoroughness, and professional courtesy in critiquing your colleagues' proposals and review chapters
at the graduate level, I feel no obligation to grade on a curve: Helping others improve their work will NOT hurt your position in the seminar. It will help both you and them in a truly win-win situation (except for the bruised feelings to be expected along the way!)
I will assign all grades from A through F, but, since you are graduate students and survivors of GEOG 596, I fully expect most, if not all of you to earn "A's" and "B's." Not doing so could conceivably cause you to be dropped from the program.

Seminar "Deliverables"

an initial one sentence statement of purpose for your thesis
a page long pre-proposal correcting and expanding this statement to sketch its context and importance, possible data sets, and possible methods
complete thesis draft proposal
complete thesis final proposal
verbal critical discussion of each student's initial statement
verbal critical discussion of a small group of pre-proposals related to your own, with markup and comments to help your colleagues
detailed written and verbal critiques of a small group of full draft proposals related to your own
"adoption papers" from a faculty member who has agreed to chair your thesis advisory committee
one or more debriefing papers for article discussions you facilitate
weekly readings notes turned in as a journal near the end of the semester

Seminar Outcomes

a broad understanding of quantitative and qualitative geographic methodologies, research methods, and techniques across the discipline from physical geography through environmental geography and GIScience to human geography
a fully developed and feasible thesis proposal
a timeline for managing the work flow to complete your thesis
professional level skills in writing, critical reading, leading discussions, and peer review
a network of friends and critics you can rely on for peer support for the rest of your graduate studies here
a thesis advisor who will help you establish the rest of your advisory committee, help you with graduate advising tailored to your needs, help you set up a thesis proposal defense and gain advancement to candidacy, and help you develop and complete your thesis in a timely manner

Tentative Topics (not in any particular order)

why go to graduate school in the first place?
what constitutes a good thesis design? (situating thesis within a larger conversation, originality of contribution, validity, generalizability, richness, primary and high quality data, methodological design, scope and feasibility)
Library boot camp
the Human Subjects protocol on this campus and in the law
theoretical and non-theoretical approaches; the use of hypotheses and research questions
quality of data and sampling
interviews, surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, literature content analysis
field mapping, surveying, GPS
Census data and archival materials
Internet data sources
maps, air photos, remote sensing imagery, GIS
physical data collected in the field or generated in a lab, proxies, and methods
statistical methods: descriptive, inferential, data-mining
geography in the "real world"

University Withdrawal Policy

It is the student's responsibility to withdraw from classes. Instructors have no obligation to undertake the extra work needed to withdraw students who do not attend classes and will generally choose not to do so. Withdrawal from a course after the first two weeks of instruction requires the signature of the instructor and department chair (Dr. Del Casino), and is permissible only for serious and compelling reasons. During the final three weeks of instruction, withdrawals are not permitted except in cases, such as accident, serious illness, or death in the family, where the circumstances causing withdrawal are clearly beyond the student's control and the assignment of an incomplete is not practical. Ordinarily, withdrawals in this category involve total withdrawal from the university. The College of Liberal Arts adheres to this policy strictly, and does NOT sign withdrawal forms in the final three weeks of class for other reasons.
To reduce the likelihood of withdrawing from the seminar, please see me if you are having problems with the material, assignments, or anything else that might be distracting you from doing your best work. It is much better to be proactive and contact me sooner rather than wait and get into a tailspin you can't pull out of. I want you to succeed: Please let me know if you're falling behind, so I have a chance to help.

Accessibility

It is the student's responsibility to let me know at the beginning of the semester if s/he has a disability that will require accommodation. I am personally committed to making my classes accessible and providing accommodations that will help everyone compete on an even keel. I need to know about the issue at the beginning of the semester, though, so that we can work out a mutually reasonable and satisfying accommodation.
Related to accessibility, this course will be set up on BeachBoard to enable convenient contact. You will need to have a CSULB e-mail account to use BeachBoard, however. Announcements and messages from me to the class may come by e-mail. If you do not check your CSULB e-mail account regularly, but use another account instead, please set your CSULB account so that it will forward messages to your other account. The CSULB Technology Help Desk is now available for students, by the way. The URL for the Help Desk is http://helpdesk.csulb.edu. Their telephone number is (562) 985-4959.

Makeups

Students are entitled to excused absence in the event of a documented unexpected emergency in a student's life or through prior arrangement with the instructor when the student has advance knowledge of a compelling conflict in schedule, including religious obligations and observances, or professional conference attendance. You will not be penalized under these two circumstances. All other makeup requests are subject to denial or serious penalty.

Policy on Cheating and Plagiarism

Written work that you hand in is assumed to be original unless your source material is documented appropriately. Using the ideas or words of another person, even a peer or a web site, as if it were your own, is plagiarism. Cheating and plagiarism are serious academic offenses. Students should brush up their understanding by consulting the discussion of cheating and plagiarism in the CSULB catalogue. The Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Project student workshops on scientific ethics contain a section on plagiarism that may be a useful review: https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/geography/gdep/ethics.html. Furthermore, students should be aware that faculty members have a range of academic actions available to them in cases of cheating and plagiarism, including failing a student on that particular work, failing a student in the course, and referring the case to Judicial Affairs. If you think you might be getting into a grey area, please come see me so that I can help you navigate this sometimes confusing subject.