Course Library

This course is designed to be highly open-ended; you are free and encouraged to select what the topics you find most interesting and pursue those as you explore the field in the first few weeks, select a project, and ultimately try to make a contribution to the field.

You may have entered the class with an idea of what you want to work on; if so, that’s great! On the other hand, this may be your first foray into educational technology. For that, we are providing you with a series of “Getting Started with…” guides. These are meant to be brief primers on various topics to help you explore the field more efficiently. For each, we’ll give you a brief summary of the topic and some recommended reading sources. Once you’ve selected a topic you want to delve into further, you’ll follow the steps of the Research Guide on the right, especially How To: Read an Academic Paper, How To: Find Papers to Read, and How To: Move from Exploring to Investigating.

Research Guide

The course library is largely a repository of sources to get you started on research, but it doesn’t go so far as to instruct you on how to do research, write papers, and so on. That’s where this guide comes in. This guide is intended to instruct you on how to find a topic, search for sources, write a paper, get it published, and go present it! Some of these are more specific to the requirements of this class, but they nonetheless connect to managing projects and getting feedback in the real world as well.