BA Liberal Arts

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• Funding for EU and international students is on our country-specific pages
• Many students work part-time or complete a student internship

This innovative course engages students in creative, reflective, and community-orientated approaches to research, communication, and social responsibility. In the first half of the course, students are inducted into methodologies, methods, and ethics in research design, thinking through key principles in the design and evaluation of cultural, creative and community projects. 
 
In discussion with the course leader, students will then develop a bespoke piece of research in relation to a particular community organisation, project, or group. The class will split into two streams to allow for teaching to be tailored to the students’ projects and to build smaller learning communities for peer support. The course emphasises the range of skills, knowledge, and roles that can contribute in different ways to addressing contemporary challenges and cultivating knowledge across communities.

SALC30010 AR + PR: LibArts L3: Students must take either SALC30010 or SALC30121 AND SALC31122. To take SALC30010 students must have taken SALC21152.

• To identify, apply, and evaluate the key components and values of socially responsible research;
• To enable students to create and communicate  community-facing research that responds to contextual social issues;
• To apply skills and training ininterdisciplinary and challenge-led research from across the Liberal Arts programme;
• To design, enact, and appraise research through dialogue with a project partner or evaluation of context. 

Indicative whole course sessions:  

Semester 1:  

• Methodologies and methods in socially responsible, social justice, and values-led research
• Research Design for Creative and Qualitative Research  
• Ethics, values, and reflexivity in research  

 

Semester 2:  

• Interpreting and communicating findings through a research portfolio  
• Giving and responding to peer feedback  

 

The remainder of the syllabus is communicated through 1-1 or small group supervision that enables more detailed engagement with the relevant aspects of the students’ individual projects. 

The course will be taught using a variety of interactive and experiential teaching styles to reflect the emphasis on developing practical skills in research and communicating with different stakeholders and communities in research projects. The early parts of the course will focus on research design, methods, and ethics, and on discussing of research ideas with the course leader. Students will be encouraged to consider ideas for working with a research partner and to meet with possible partners in the first semester. The second part of the course enables structured support for reflecting on, interpreting, and communicating their research project. The workshops will provide space for action-learning and peer feedback to encourage the benefits of conducting independent research within a learning community. 

• Identify how communities and organisations are responding to challenges and social issues in Manchester
• Integrate relevant interdisciplinary theories and methodologies
• Examine ethical issues in qualitative research 

• Demonstrate critical and analytical skills
• Examine how researcher’s and others’ positionality, experiences, and values influence research
• Summarise research outputs and communicate these to different audiences
• Implement small-scale, bespoke qualitative research in developing own research agenda and explain its role and value 

• Collaborate with partner organisations and/or negotiate access for interviews and focus groups
• Create and implement a data management plan for the storage and use of qualitative research material
• Assess and adapt research projects for accessibility and inclusion, including communicating research in non-essay formats (i.e. report, poster, video) and experiencing different writing and presentation styles 

• Evidence self-organisation skills and an ability to plan research in order to meet deadlines
• Design visually engaging outputs for communicating research using a variety of digital tools
• Identify the needs of a partner organisation or identified sector or community and respond to these by integrating them into the design of a research project
• Analyse challenges and demonstrate flexibility in implementing effective responses depending on context and resources. 

Assessment task	Formative or Summative	Length	Weighting within unit (if relevant)
Research Proposal Outline	Formative	1000 words	0%
Ethics Application	Formative	2000 words	0%
Research Proposal Presentation	Summative	2000 words (10 minutes)	20%
Research Portfolio	Summative	8000 words	80%

 

 

 

Feedback method	Formative or Summative
Peer feedback on research ideas in seminars and workshops	Formative
Academic and placement supervisory feedback on research ideas	Formative
Written feedback on formally submitted research plan	Formative
Written feedback on all summative work within 15 working days of deadline	Summative

 

·    W. Alex Edmonds, An Applied Guide to Research Designs: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2017).
·    Malcom Crowe, ‘Research Today’, in John Atkinson and Malcolm Crowe (eds.), Interdisciplinary Research: Diverse Approaches in Science, Technology, Health and Society (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2006), pp. 1-24.
·    Veronica Strang and Tom McLeish, ‘Evaluating Interdisciplinary Research: A Practical Guide’, Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, dur.ac.uk/ias/news/?itemno=25309 (2015).
·    Steph Menken and Machiel Keestra (eds.), ‘Part 2: The Manual - “The How”’, An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research: Theory and Practice (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), pp. 51-101.
·    Katri Huutoniemi, ‘Evaluating Interdisciplinary Research’, in Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, and Carl Mitcham (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinary Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 309-320.
 
Other readings will be negotiated with academic supervisor based on the student’s chosen project and placement.