The Writing Assignments of
Administrators
By Professor Doom
|
Ethics Reflection
|
20%
|
|
Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis
|
20%
|
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Statistical Analyses
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20%
|
--From the course syllabus. The
other 40% of the grade is from the stilted discussions on the message
board…apparently there are people that will post on the board on the behalf of
the future administrator, for a small fee.
The first assignment,
Ethics Reflection, is a significant writing assignment, 8 to 10 pages, double
spaced. That’s about two of my essays . There are no tests in the course, no
means by which the professor could establish that I know anything. This paper,
assuming I didn’t wish to just hire someone else to write it for me, is to
address five issues, often, according to the rubric, asking for examples to
demonstrate understanding of the issues.
hi,
I would like to rewrite my report ( account management) as it was detected plagiarized. Total word count is 3548 and need to finish within 2 days…
--Administration student
looking to hire help on his paper. Being caught cheating didn’t deter the
student or get him expelled. Obviously. I might be working for this guy. If so,
if I caught a cheater, I’m sure he’d tell me to just let the student “rewrite”
the paper, much like he did…
Here’s What I Need to Write:
Getting my stopwatch ready,
I time myself to see how long it would take to write this paper:
I must first mention what
general characteristics of qualitative and quantitative research methods could
propose ethical issues, along with examples and ideas on how to rectify such
issues. For example, a qualitative research project could easily deal with
personal opinions and observations, and might cause a subject to reveal more
than he initially intended. Emphasis in these types of studies should be placed
on anonymity, so that a subject doesn’t inadvertently incur difficulty upon
himself (for example, a subject that indicates he feels attraction for 10 year
old girls could easily face discrimination if identified, even if he’s never
engaged in any illegal or even immoral behavior), making it more difficult for
the subject to exceed the informed consent agreement. The research design could
also allow opportunity for the subject to amend any information he gives.
Second, the paper must
describe three strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative
research methods, as they relate to ethics. These are pretty much detailed in
the readings for the course. Quantitative methods make provision of anonymity
particularly easy, addressing many ethical issues; however, applying the
results of such methods can be devastating to particular individuals. It’s
simple to establish from medical tests, for example, that over 99.9% of the
population has no particular allergy to peanuts…putting peanut-based products
into commonly eaten items can be rather devastating to those few individuals
with a life-threatening allergy to peanuts, however.
Third, the paper is to
address why it is important for a research methodology to support a question in
terms of ethics. Probably the most important reason is if the methodology is
found to be unethical, it will be impossible to replicate the results since the
study cannot be repeated, making any results from the research utterly
worthless.
Next, the paper must discuss why it is
important that the data collection methods support the research methodology.
This is fairly obvious; if the data collection doesn’t support the methodology,
any results that are somehow obtained would be questionable, and getting those
results might be very difficult. A study examining regional tendencies towards
personal color preference or racial discrimination will get no results if your
data isn’t collected with respect to identifying those regions, and to identifying
colors, and may get skewed results regarding discrimination if there isn’t some
anonymity in the collection.
Project Name: I need help in my Phd topic
Project Description:
Hi ,
I'm Phd student in computer science and i will start my proposal in the topic
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I want to help me to find problem statement in this area and write my proposal
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--a student request for “help”
from a professional writer. It isn’t always Education and Administration majors
that hire writers for these courses, although a few students in the Educational
Research Methods course write about as well as this student. The professor is
punished for catching cheaters, but if accreditors saw how the students write
in general, perhaps they would wonder at how the papers are so much nicer.
Finally, the paper asks
what the student can do to expedite the Institutional Review Board (IRB)
process. The Institutional Review Board approves all research projects (recall,
this course may be the final course before proceeding with the dissertation).
Obviously, the student should follow the guidelines of the IRB to the absolute
letter, and should prepare his research application with an eye towards
anticipating, and answering, questions regarding all aspects of his research,
especially ethical considerations.
My light outline above,
addressing each topic, is nearly two pages, and took about forty minutes to
write (it’s basically my first draft, verifying I had all I needed to write the
paper). The 8 to 10 page, double spaced paper cost me an afternoon, as these
are basic questions, requiring no actual research. I just regurgitate the knowledge that’s in
the book, using more words. Granted, I’m a fast writer, but even a relatively
slow Ph.D. level writer isn’t going to take more than eight hours, a weekend at
absolute most. So, for this one week, we’re clearly at the 10 hours of effort
level for the relatively slow Administrative Ph.D. student.
“We really need to do this
right so that SACS [accreditation] won’t have a follow-up. If they ask for a
follow-up, I have to write a bunch of things that just aren’t true.”
--administrator encouraging the
faculty to provide good assessment data. Even though all we supplied was
grossly manipulated and openly fraudulent data, it apparently was good enough
that administration wouldn’t be required to lie more.
While it is nice to have
institutional bosses write a paper on ethical considerations on research, it
seems like something on integrity would be good. A whole course devoted to
“Don’t enroll every mentally disabled person you can just to maximize those
sweet student loan checks” would be well recommended.
The first major assignment
is little different than a high school term paper. Let’s take a look at the
second writing assignment.
Another paper.
·
ix)
Introduction of research.
·
xix)
Research question.
·
1) Prepare
and organize the data.
·
2) Review
and explore the data.
·
3) Code
data into categories.
·
4)
Construct thick descriptions of people, places, and activities.
·
5) Build
themes and test hypotheses.
·
6) Report
and interpret data.
·
7)
Conclusion.
--from the instructions, addressing
these concepts in the paper should take 7 to 10 pages, double spaced, not
counting appendices and references, which add another few pages (much of it is
transcribed material). This essay is that long.
This paper relies on work
done earlier in the course, where one creates a hypothetical research question
(actual example question from the book, which I used: “How did you discover
your talent for cooking?” I repeat: actual example of course material for this
Ph.D. level course) and conducts a mock interview with a friend (in my case,
girlfriend) or family member to get qualitative information. After each section
1 through 6 (the new material for this assignment), the student is to prepare a
paragraph or two of discussion on his own thoughts of the process. I honestly
feel like a child imitating the adults with this assignment, as I’m simply
going through the motions in a pretend assignment, spelled out completely in
the course textbook. This assignment is the writing equivalent of “paint by
numbers”…I just follow the instructions and the paper writes itself.
The first three sections
are fairly basic: record the data, assemble it into various displays (like a
chart, or a sequential listing, or some other thing—qualitative data has fewer
non-graphical ways of being shown), try to eyeball some patterns or
relationships. All three steps, together, are described in perfect detail in
three pages (total) in the course textbook.
Step four is the hardest
part, I suppose. A ‘thick’ description is discussed in two paragraphs in the
text: the researcher is to give detailed descriptions of all the other factors
not specifically identified in the research question. Types of clothing the
subject(s) wore, the weather, the background noises, and so on, helping to give
a visual, auditory, even olfactory image (reasonable for cooking, as my
girlfriend’s pantry smells of India) of the researcher’s topic. Providing such
in-depth descriptions of the physical setting for the research helps to later
identify possible confounding factors, I suppose, although the “why” is never
really addressed. The benefit to writing thick descriptions, according to the
text, is to “make readers feel like they’re living the experiences described.”
This doesn’t seem to be one of the key concepts of research mentioned earlier,
but I mindlessly do it.
Theme-building refers to
the using of key phrases or code words to help explain the underlying questions
guiding the research. The researcher is to identify patterns in the raw data,
to simplify it into “seven to eight” (that’s directly from the book) themes.
Next comes reporting and
interpreting the data, giving the researcher’s interpretation of what the data
mean. Such conclusions are subjective, of course, but in a qualitative study
this might be unavoidable to some extent.
The course textbook
highlights exactly what to do, with examples, for each of these steps; there is
nothing in the book on “conclusion,” although it’s part of the assignment. The
course instructions for the conclusion indicate the student is to address why
this method of data collection (the interview) is useful for gaining the type
of information in the research.
In 20 years of dealing
with Administration, not a single time have I seen this method of research
being used for anything in higher education. Ever.
Since qualitative research
is completely out of my experience, writing this all out in detail takes a full
eight hours of effort (again, the book gives a walkthrough, making each step
very easy once the data is collected). That might not be a fair assessment, as
the data collection, done earlier, also took some time. Ten hours covers the
entire assignment from scratch. While the first assignment was basically high
school work, this is a fair assignment, a real first year of college level
paper, training a student in basic skills. With everything being qualitative,
it’s all but impossible to get this assignment “wrong,” however. The textbook
does a very good job here, clearly explaining and providing examples of what to
do, even if it doesn’t address “why” nearly enough. Overall, the assignment
feels like a warm-up for a real assignment, one that never comes.
Project Name: Lesson Plans
Project Description:
Hi, I have this assignment that
is 6-8 pages that is due Monday...Somebody was supposed to do it for me for
$80, but…she is no longer able to do it for me. Can you please look at the
details and let me know if you are able to do it and if we can stay for the
long run? Please include a Reference page and use APA format for the
assignment. I have attached all the pages and chapters that you might need
Thanks!Final Project- Due Monday, May 9, 2011Your final assignment for EDU…
--Education student looking to hire a
writer, “for the long run”. Despite, possibly because of, how simple the
writing assignments are in the research methods course, it would be trivial for
me to hire someone else to do it if I were so inclined.
While qualitative research
is interesting, even more interesting is how administrators completely
disregard all qualitative issues despite this sort of training; every measure
they use is quantitative, or quickly converted to quantitative. Student
appreciation of teaching, for example, is converted to a 1 to 5 scale, even if
a “totally awesome” teacher can’t possibly be merely five times as good as a
“completely terrible” teacher. Ultimately all education, as qualitative a
subject as it gets, is identified by retention rate, at least for
administrative eyes. In any event, I’m not sure if students really need
administrators to be able to write basic qualitative research papers, even as I
acknowledge it takes some effort to do so.
Regardless, while this
paper took some time to prepare, anyone who can read and write at a basic level
can follow along with the book’s instructions and present at least a passing
attempt at a paper without any particular knowledge or skills.
Only one assignment
remains in this advanced, 8000 level, course for Adminstration students before
they get their Ph.D.s. The last assignment is where I have an advantage, as it
uses actual statistics. Rather, I would have an advantage, but much like the
papers above, no knowledge or skill is necessary to complete the assignment…in
fact the assignment is so insultingly simple that I’ll save a whole essay just
to address in detail how ridiculous it is.
Until then, realize that
the most advanced course requires literally no knowledge, tests on no
knowledge, and the writing involved can be easily sub-contracted out to a
writer-for-hire. And yet people get these degrees, and use the degrees they get
from these programs as justification for jobs that easily break the $100,000 a
year mark. So, my question for today: how does accreditation approve these
courses and programs? Hint: administrators run accreditation.
Think about it.
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